Police have launched an investigation into suspicions that bodycams introduced by the police last year are actually manufactured in China, violating the original bidding requirements.
Last year, the police received a delivery of some 14,000 bodycams from a consortium of a large corporation and a mid-sized enterprise, which were then distributed to frontline police officers.
Bodycams are communication devices that police officers attach to their bodies to record on-site situations and transmit them to the internal police system.
At the time of the bidding, the police gave prior notice that Chinese-made terminals would be excluded from the bidding process.
This was an effort to block the possibility that evidence-gathering footage and other data recorded by police bodycams could be leaked to China due to vulnerable security.
Company A, which was in charge of procuring the bodycam terminals, reportedly told the police that "there are no companies in South Korea capable of mass-producing bodycams" and that it would produce and import them through original equipment manufacturing (OEM) at a factory in Taiwan.
Subsequently, Company A delivered approximately 14,000 bodycams claimed to have been manufactured at the Taiwan factory, which have been distributed to traffic police, district units, and substations nationwide since late November of last year.
However, suspicions were raised that the bodycams supplied by Company A bear a striking resemblance in functions and external appearance to a specific product from Company H, a top firm in China's wireless equipment market.
The two products are known to match not only in external features, such as the position and shape of buttons, but also in key specifications like 4K resolution and night-vision shooting capabilities. The police reportedly received this tip-off from a company that was eliminated in the bodycam business selection process.
China's Company H was previously indicted after it was caught hiring some employees of the U.S. telecommunications company Motorola between 2006 and 2020 to steal confidential information regarding its radio technology.
The Anti-Terrorism and Foreign Intelligence Investigation Division of the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency is reportedly investigating Company A on charges of fraud and obstruction of official duties by fraudulent means.
The investigation aims to determine whether the products supplied by Company A are effectively Chinese Company H products disguised as being made in Taiwan.
Regarding the related suspicions, Company A reportedly denied the allegations of supplying Chinese-made products, stating, "All of the supplied bodycams are OEM products made in Taiwan."
(Reported by Jung Da-eun | Video by Seo Byeong-wook | Design by Yang Hye-min | Produced by SBS Digital News)
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