How Fresh Is Korea's Public CCTV Data? Comparing Record Ages Across 16 Regions

In the previous post I showed that the national CCTV standard dataset mixes data base dates from 2020 to 2026 in a single file. Despite the name, it's not one national snapshot - it's a union of snapshots taken at different times.

That raises a natural follow-up: which regions publish the freshest data, and which are running on the oldest? I grouped 378k records by region and compared their base dates.

Dataset and method

Item	Detail
Dataset	전국CCTV표준데이터 (National CCTV Standard Data), Ministry of the Interior and Safety
Snapshot date	2026-09-20 (download date)
Total records	381,036
Analyzed	381,010 rows inside the configured bounding box (lat 32-39.5, lon 123-132)
Region assignment	Region polygon containing each record's coordinates
Age	snapshot date − data base date in months

2,750 records (~0.7% - island and borderline coordinates) fell outside every region polygon and were excluded, leaving 378,260 records across 16 regions. Gwangju and Jeonnam are aggregated under the merged Jeonnam-Gwangju boundary.

The base date marks when a record's contents were last valid, not when the camera was installed. Think of it as when the managing agency last refreshed the data.

Region × base-month timeline

Rows are the 16 regions, columns are base months. Cell color shows the share of that region's records carrying that base month - shares within each region, not absolute counts, so high-volume regions like Seoul or Gyeonggi don't automatically look darker.

A few patterns stand out immediately:

• A clear concentration in May 2026 - the brightest cell for most regions. The largest single base date in this snapshot is 2026-05-18 with 114,242 records (30% of the file). Many agencies appear to have refreshed around the same period.
• Gangwon's big block sits at 2024-07 - the last two years are nearly empty.
• Daejeon spreads across 2022-2023 - a broad band of older records rather than one recent batch.
• Jeju is almost entirely two batches - 2025-05 and 2025-11 - barely any refresh since.
• Sejong is concentrated in a single month, May 2026 - 1,678 of 1,679 records. Looks consistent with a wholesale refresh at one point in time.

The heatmap already shows a clear freshness gap between regions, but let's turn it into exact numbers.

Median record age by region

For each region I computed every record's age in months, then took the median. Median over mean because a handful of 2020-era rows would drag the average around.

Region	Records	Median	Mean	Newest	Oldest
Seoul	59,767	4 mo	11.4 mo	2026-07	2021-04
Gyeongnam	39,273	4 mo	7.2 mo	2026-09	2020-09
Busan	17,703	4 mo	9.9 mo	2026-06	2023-07
Incheon	13,852	4 mo	6.5 mo	2026-05	2021-07
Chungbuk	13,640	4 mo	5.9 mo	2026-07	2022-06
Ulsan	5,934	4 mo	4.1 mo	2026-06	2024-07
Sejong	1,679	4 mo	4.0 mo	2026-07	2026-05
Jeonbuk	16,608	9 mo	11.5 mo	2026-06	2021-10
Gyeongbuk	35,553	10 mo	13.7 mo	2026-06	2020-02
Chungnam	31,557	10 mo	13.5 mo	2026-07	2021-10
Daegu	20,677	10 mo	13.5 mo	2026-06	2021-10
Gyeonggi	57,554	11 mo	15.1 mo	2026-07	2020-01
Jeonnam-Gwangju	24,746	11 mo	16.2 mo	2026-06	2020-03
Jeju	1,012	16 mo	13.9 mo	2025-11	2024-07
Gangwon	30,902	26 mo	23.8 mo	2026-07	2021-07
Daejeon	7,803	27 mo	23.7 mo	2026-05	2021-10

A few things worth reading:

• Seven regions sit at a 4-month median - Seoul, Gyeongnam, Busan, Incheon, Chungbuk, Ulsan, Sejong. Over half their records are May 2026 or newer.
• Gangwon at 26, Daejeon at 27 - roughly a 6-7x gap versus Seoul by median.
• The median-mean gap carries real information. Seoul's median is 4 months but the mean is 11.4 - mostly fresh records with a long older tail. Busan (4 vs 9.9) looks similar.
• Jeju's newest record is 2025-11 - the freshest thing in this snapshot is already ~10 months old. No refresh appears to have happened in about a year.
• Sejong's mean equals its median (4.0/4) - consistent with a single-batch update.

What "stale" actually means - freshness buckets

Median numbers are abstract. A more intuitive metric: what share of a region's records are over two years old?

• 63% of Gangwon's and 52% of Daejeon's records are over 2 years old. More than half their data predates September 2024.
• Seoul still has 14% over 2 years - fresh on median, but ~8,400 records date to 2024 or earlier.
• Busan is bimodal - 71% under 6 months, yet 23% over 2 years. Fresh batches and abandoned records coexist.
• Gyeonggi's middle band is thick (38% at 6-12 months) - a substantial share of records hasn't moved to the newest base dates.

Why regions differ this much

The structure of the dataset makes it inevitable. The ministry standardizes the format only; over 200 agencies fill in and upload their own content. There's no unified rule for when to refresh.

So each agency ends up on its own cadence. Some regions look like they were refreshed in semiannual sweeps; others still hold large shares of 2024-era records. Cadences can differ even within one region across cities, counties, and police jurisdictions. The "fresh core plus older tail" pattern in Seoul and Busan looks consistent with that kind of mixture.

What to keep in mind when reading the stats

• Compare camera counts only alongside base dates. Putting 2024-based and 2026-based regions side by side injects up to two years of installs and removals as distortion. "Gyeonggi has more cameras than Gangwon" may partly be a freshness gap.
• A stale base date doesn't mean the camera is gone. The camera may exist while the data was simply never refreshed. Old data reads better as "unverified currency" than "absent."
• Mixtures exist within each region too. A regional average hides agency-level gaps - one county can be current while a neighboring district sits two years behind.

The same limitation shows up on the map

Viewcone inherits this data. Region pages and the map carry source and base-date labels, but a large share of Gangwon's points may still reflect 2024 positions while Seoul reflects 2026. Even at the same zoom level, the data's vintage differs by region - worth keeping in mind while browsing.

Takeaway

"National CCTV data" is not one point in time but a union of snapshots taken on different schedules. May 2026 holds a large concentration of records, yet not every region moved to current data. Sejong is essentially built from a single base month; more than half of Gangwon's and Daejeon's records still carry base dates from over two years ago.

One-line answer: it depends on the region - 4 months median at the freshest end, 27 months at the stalest. When citing the numbers, check each region's base date too.

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Method

Analysis is based on the CSV downloaded 2026-09-20 (381,036 rows). Each record was assigned to the region polygon (Overture divisions) containing its WGS84 coordinates; 2,750 records outside all boundaries were excluded. Age is the month difference between data base date and the snapshot date. Median is used as the headline metric instead of mean to damp extreme values.

Source

• 전국CCTV표준데이터 - Korea public data portal (Ministry of the Interior and Safety)
• The analyzed file was downloaded 2026-09-20

FAQ

Does an old base date mean the CCTV is gone? No. The base date is when the data was last organized, separate from actual installation or removal. Read old data as "last verified a while ago."

Why are Gangwon's and Daejeon's data so old? Each managing agency refreshes on its own schedule. The standard unifies the format, not the refresh cycle - some agencies' data appears to have gone unrefreshed for a long time.

How accurate is the region assignment? Records were placed by the region boundary containing their coordinates - camera location, not agency address. 2,750 boundary/island records (0.7%) matched no polygon and were excluded.

Will the next snapshot look different? It can. When an agency refreshes, that region's distribution shifts newer. Everything here is as of 2026-09-20.