Five years have passed since the farmer Baek Nam-gi (Nam-ki) died after being hit by a police water cannon, but the debate on the water cannon is still ongoing in South Korean society. The police are still revising internal guidelines restricting the use of water cannons. At demonstration sites, civilian organizations, such as service contractors and universities, used water hoses to shoot water at demonstrators, a modification of the water cannon. In pro-democracy demonstrations overseas, government law enforcement agencies were criticized for using South Korean water cannons.

According to the coverage by the Kyunghyang Shinmun on November 10, the National Police Agency was in the process of revising “Guidelines on the Use of Water Cannon Trucks,” a set of internal guidelines stating the criteria for the use of water cannons. The police began revising relevant guidelines after they stirred controversy for aiming the water cannon at Baek on November 14, 2015. However, they have yet to reach a conclusion. A police official said, “We plan to complete revising the guidelines as early as the end of this year or by early next year at the latest.”

Baek died on September 25, 2016. In September 2017, the Police Reform Committee, launched to improve police human rights issues, recommended the police to basically ban the use of water cannons at demonstrations and rallies.

This January, they stipulated the standards for using water cannons in legislation. According to Article 13, Paragraph 2 (criteria for the use of water cannon trucks) of the Regulations on the Criteria for the Use of Dangerous Police Equipment, a presidential decree, the police can only use water cannons when “there is a clear and direct threat to the legal interests of a third party and to public peace and order due to civil unrest” and when “there is an urgent danger, such as the destruction of designated important state facilities or the suspension of functions at such facilities, due to direct actions of aggression.” In April, the Constitutional Court also reached a decision that directly aiming the police water cannon at citizens violated the Constitution.

But the current guidelines, last revised in April 2014, state less restrictive conditions for the use of water cannons compared to the law. According to these guidelines, the police can use water cannons “when necessary to prevent harm to the body and life of a third party or police officer from illegal demonstrations and rallies and civil unrest.”

The police official said, “The current guidelines on water trucks do not go in line with the conditions stated in the presidential decree and are practically no longer enforced on site. We have not used water cannons since 2015.” He further explained, “We submitted revised guidelines on the use of water cannons to the Police Commission in September, after reflecting the recommendation by the Reform Committee, the revised presidential decree and the decision by the Constitutional, but there was a view that ‘The use of water cannons was overly restricted, preventing them from being used in the case of civil unrest and riots as permitted in the presidential decree,’ and decided to review another proposal. The new guidelines are completely different from the 2014 guidelines. They are more specific than the presidential decree and stipulate tighter conditions for the use of water cannons.”

Law enforcement agencies have stopped using water cannons, but recently, there have been cases where civilians followed past police actions and responded harshly to demonstrations. In 2017, the employees at Seoul National University sprayed water from a fire hydrant at the students opposing the school’s decision to create a campus in Siheung. Last month, the National Human Rights Commission announced that this was an infringement of basic rights. Last month, a service contractor hired by Suhyup (National Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives) used hoses to shoot water at merchants at the Noryangjin Fish Market in Seoul.

This year, at a pro-democracy rally in Thailand, water cannons manufactured by a Korean company were used. NGOs criticized the government for promoting water cannons and bus barriers at the Korea Police World Expo, organized by the National Police Agency and the city of Incheon last month and said, “Various equipment for public safety exported as part of the K-COP project can be used to violate the rights of citizens in other countries.”