The working visit to the International Police Summit 2021 in Seoul was a productive event attended by ASEANAPOL Secretariat Executive Director DAC Jim Wee and Head of Administrative & Technical Staff Supt. Azrul Hisham bin Mohd Shaffei. The International Police Summit 2021 was hosted in Seoul, South Korea commencing from October 20 till October 23, 2021 with the theme of “Policing Strategy for New Era”. In conjunction with the International Police Summit, the Korea National Police Agency also celebrated their 76th Korea National Police Agency (KNPA) Ceremony.
During the visit, a bilateral meeting was held with KNPA’s leadership, attended by the Deputy Commissioner of Korea National Police Agency, Mr Jin Gyo-Hoon. In the meeting strategic discussion was deliberated and both ASEANAPOL Secretariat Executive Director and Deputy Commissioner KNPA Mr Jin Gyo-Hoon agreed on the opportunities focusing on capacity building with KNPA as a Dialogue Partner to ASEANAPOL. In conclusion to the meeting the KNPA team thanked and showed their utmost appreciation toward the ASEANAPOL Secretariat for professionally and willingly to support the International Police Summit 2021. They also encourage Secretariat and ASEANAPOL Member Countries’ participation in the next coming event, 1st Korea-ASEAN International Crime Investigation Capacity Building Program that the KNPA planned and host is in November 2021. Executive Director DAC Jim Wee next informed KNPA that the 40th ASEANAPOL Conference will be held physically in Cambodia sometime beginning of March 2022 and stressed that KNPA must attend in person to meet up with the Chiefs of ASEANAPOL.
In the same occasion during the summit, the Executive Director and the secretariat also had the opportunity to meet and conducted a bilateral meeting with the Bangladesh Police on October 20, 2021. During the meet up, the Honourable Inspector General of Police, IGP Benazir Ahmed, inquired about the status of their application of to be an observer to ASEANAPOL which Executive Director DAC Jim Wee shared that all the ASEANAPOL Member Countries supported the application and it is just pending the endorsement at the 40th ASEANAPOL Conference in March 2022. Discussion moved on to suggest Bangladesh Police that they can start proposing strategic proposal and project proposal to the Secretariat as these will be tabled to ASEANAPOL Member Countries. The Bangladesh Police IGP supported the suggestion and will form their own internal group to work on this as he noted that there are lots of Bangladesh national working with the ASEAN region.
The overall event was a successful implementation from KNPA and Secretariat observed respective Police Chiefs/Heads of Delegation/Agencies coming from Kyrgyz Republic, Ubekistan, Viet Nam, UAE, Angola, Nigeria, Czechia, El Salvador, Chile, Mongolia, Bangladesh, INTERPOL, IACP, Ethopia, Guatemala, Colombia, Turkey, Netherlands, Rwanda, Singapore, United Nations, Oman and United Kingdom.