How to Get a Public CCTV Camera Installed on Your Street in Korea

To get a public crime prevention camera put up on your street in Korea, file a request with your district office (구청 gu-cheong), or with city hall (시청) or the county office (군청) where there are no districts. Staff visit the site, score it and install the highest-scoring sites within each year's budget, so a request may become next year's project. Before a public agency installs a camera in a public place it must also hear opinions, through a public notice (행정예고, at least 20 days) or a hearing of opinions, or through a briefing, survey or poll for the residents directly affected.

Where to file the request

Which office takes the request differs by local government. Some take requests at the city or district office, and some decide sites together with the police. Sejong's 2019 FAQ, for example, says to file through the city website's complaint board ("시민의 창", the citizens' window) or by phone, while the CCTV guideline of Guro-gu in Seoul says crime prevention cameras are installed in consultation with the Guro Police Station.

Channel	When to use it	Notes
District office (구청), city hall (시청) or county office (군청): website, phone or 국민신문고 (e-People), the national online complaint portal	The usual route	Call the office's main number and ask which department handles new crime prevention CCTV. The department differs by office: 자치행정과 (the administration division) in Seodaemun-gu, 지능형도시과 (the smart city division) in Sejong.
Let the local police station know too	Places with repeated crimes or 112 (police) calls	Some local governments, such as Guro-gu, pick sites together with the police.
Participatory budget proposal	Your spot keeps losing out on budget	Propose it as a project in the local government's participatory budget call. See below.
Inside an apartment or villa complex	Inside the complex	Not a public CCTV matter. Ask the management office or the residents' council (입주자대표회의).

If you don't speak Korean

• Copy the address in Korean. Find the spot on a map app and copy its Korean road-name address (도로명주소) into your request, so staff can find the place without guessing from a translation.
• 1345 Immigration Contact Center. Run by the Ministry of Justice, it offers counseling on civil affairs and administrative information in several languages, weekdays 09:00 to 22:00 (after 18:00 only in Korean, English and Chinese). It also provides three-way interpretation for local governments and other public institutions handling foreigner-related work. Dial 1345 from any phone in Korea.
• In Seoul, 120 Dasan Call Center. Seoul City's English site lists 02-120 as its number, and its legal information site says to dial 120 and press 9 for English.

How Sejong scores a requested site

After a request comes in, staff survey the site and score it to set priorities. Sejong's 2019 FAQ lists its criteria. Other local governments may use different ones.

Criterion (Sejong)	Points	What it looks at
Public use (공공 활용성)	30	Whether many people pass through
Overlap (중복성)	20	Whether cameras are already installed around the requested area
Area analysis (지역분석)	30	Schools, residential streets, places where crimes occurred
Crime prevention environment (범죄예방환경조성 분석)	20	Blind spots, areas vulnerable to crime
Total	100

Sejong says it sets priorities from these scores each year, taking the budget into account, and installs cameras in that order. The highest-scoring sites go up first within that year's budget.

What to put in your request

Write to the four criteria above; they are what a site survey looks at, at least in Sejong.

• Exact location: the Korean road-name address or building number, or a description someone can find on the spot, such as "the alley between building A and building B."
• Foot traffic (public use): a school route, the way to a bus stop, a street many people walk home on late at night.
• Existing cameras (overlap): on Viewcone (보는지도), our map of public CCTV, find the camera nearest your spot and check whether its estimated view area reaches it. The drawn area is an estimate (published direction, angle and range where the agency gave them, otherwise defaults, cut off by buildings), so state it as "the nearest public camera does not appear to cover this spot". Tap the camera and open "자세히" (details) to copy its management number (관리번호), the record's ID in the national dataset, so staff can tell which listed camera you mean. How to search the map is covered in How to Check CCTV Locations Near You in Korea.
• Nearby facilities (area analysis): schools, daycare centers, parks, dense housing.
• Risk factors (crime prevention environment): stretches with no street lights, corners that block the view, actual incidents or 112 calls.

From request to installation

1. Request filed: with the district office, city hall or county office.
2. Site survey and scoring: staff visit the site and score it against their criteria.
3. Priority and budget: sites are chosen within that year's or the next year's budget, so a request may become next year's project.
4. Police and committee review in some districts: Guro-gu's guideline says crime prevention cameras may be installed after consulting the Guro Police Station and a review by the district's CCTV operation committee, a step it allows skipping when installation is urgent or for other special reasons.
5. Hearing opinions: before installing a camera in a public place, a public agency must hear the opinions of experts and stakeholders (Personal Information Protection Act, Article 25(3)). One way is a public notice (행정예고) listing the planned sites for at least 20 days.
6. Installation and sign: in most public places the operator must post a sign showing the camera's purpose and location, recording range and hours, and the contact of the person in charge (Personal Information Protection Act, Article 25(4)).

A real public notice: Seodaemun-gu, 2025

On April 30, 2025, Seodaemun-gu in Seoul published a public notice (행정예고) for its 2025 crime prevention cameras (Seodaemun-gu Notice No. 2025-635). It listed 20 locations: 15 new installations and 5 sites getting an added fixed camera. The comment period ran 20 days, from April 30 to May 20, 2025. Any agency, group or person with an opinion could submit a written comment to the district's 자치행정과 (administration division) in person, by mail or by fax, and the notice said the project would go ahead as announced if no comments came in.

When the spot you asked for shows up on a list like this, installation is close to final. And if a planned camera would look at your window, the comment period is when to ask for a different position or angle.

If the budget keeps passing you over: the participatory budget

Under Article 39 of the Local Finance Act (지방재정법), the head of every local government must set up and run a participatory budget program in which residents take part in the budget process. You can propose a project such as "crime prevention CCTV for the alley in our neighborhood" in its call for proposals. Who may propose is set by each local government, so check the eligibility rules in the call before applying.

Paju in Gyeonggi-do did exactly this. With projects residents proposed for its 2021 participatory budget, it installed 21 crime prevention cameras at 5 selected sites for 113 million won. The participatory budget committee reviewed the proposals, and selected projects went into the next year's budget.

Each local government's website has a participatory budget section with the call schedule and how to apply. A proposal from several neighbors shows the need more clearly.

What the data shows: more than 7,000 new crime prevention sites a year from 2017 to 2024

Viewcone maps the national CCTV standard dataset (전국CCTV표준데이터) from the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, using data downloaded 2026-09-20. I counted the sites whose purpose is listed as 생활방범 (neighborhood crime prevention, the kind this post is about): of the 167,619 such sites assigned to a province, the 97,050 with an installation year show more than 7,000 new sites in every year from 2017 to 2024.

Installation year	New crime prevention sites (all purposes)
2017	7,949 (10,673)
2018	8,236 (12,181)
2019	8,719 (13,054)
2020	10,270 (14,514)
2021	7,193 (10,626)
2022	7,768 (12,124)
2023	8,387 (11,644)
2024	8,208 (11,409)
2025	5,349 (7,583)

These are the installation years of sites still in the data, so cameras removed since then are not counted. Recent years still have sites waiting to be registered, so 2025 may be undercounted. The limits of the open data are covered in How Accurate Is Korea's Public CCTV Dataset?.

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Sources

• Personal Information Protection Act (개인정보 보호법), Article 25 (restrictions on installing and operating fixed video devices), paragraphs 3, 4 and 5 - Korea Law Information Center, version in force from 2026-09-11. Paragraph 4 exempts military facilities, national key facilities and other facilities set by decree from the sign requirement.
• Enforcement Decree of the Personal Information Protection Act, Article 23(1): a public agency hears opinions through one of (1) an administrative pre-announcement (행정예고) under the Administrative Procedures Act or a hearing of opinions, or (2) a briefing, survey or poll for the residents directly affected by the camera.
• Administrative Procedures Act (행정절차법), Article 46: a pre-announcement lasts at least 20 days, or at least 10 days when urgent.
• Local Finance Act (지방재정법), Article 39 (resident participation in the budget process) - Korea Law Information Center
• Sejong City FAQ: requesting a new crime prevention CCTV - how to file and the scoring criteria (posted June 26, 2019, in Korean)
• Guro-gu CCTV operation guideline, Article 8 (collecting opinions before installation), in Korean
• Seodaemun-gu public notice for 2025 crime prevention CCTV - Notice No. 2025-635, in Korean
• Paju installs smart crime prevention CCTV through its participatory budget - Boan News, April 1, 2021, in Korean
• Immigration Contact Center (1345) - Ministry of Justice
• Seoul City English site (call center number) and Seoul legal information in English ("Press 9 for English Service")
• National CCTV standard dataset - Public Data Portal (Ministry of the Interior and Safety). Yearly counts use the data downloaded 2026-09-20, sites assigned to a province by coordinates as on Viewcone, and the 생활방범 purpose.

Nothing here is legal advice. The law articles above were checked against the versions in force on 2026-10-19, and request desks and scoring criteria differ by local government, so check with your district office before applying.

FAQ

Do I have to pay for a public crime prevention camera?

Public crime prevention cameras are installed with the local government's budget (Sejong's FAQ ties installation to each year's budget), which is why an accepted request waits its turn. Cameras inside an apartment or villa complex are not public CCTV, so you would arrange those with the management office or the residents' council.

Can a public camera be pointed at my window?

The operator may not, for a purpose other than the one the camera was installed for, arbitrarily operate it or point it at other places (Personal Information Protection Act, Article 25(5)).