NATIONAL SECURITY: Differences in Leaders Followership in the Korean Security Police Organization according to the Number of Police Officers and Work Location

Purpose: This study aims to verify differences in leaders followership with police officers working in the secu-rity police organization, the backbone of the security of the Republic of Korea, and discusses ways for the leaders of the security police organization to improve the followership. In particular, the study focused on how the lead-ers followership differs depending on the number of police officers in the security police organization and work location among different variables. Method: In this study, among police officers in the security department as of 2020 who had experience in work related North Korean defectors, 100 trainees in the Police Human Resources Development Institute were surveyed via self-administration method to verify differences in leaders’ followership according the number of police officers and place work. Frequency analysis, t-test, and One Way ANOVA were used as analysis methods. Results: According to the analysis, the leaders followership is forming positively in a medium-sized security police organization of about 11 to 20 members. As for the differences in the leaders followership according to the work location, in most questions, it was showed that tier 1 area(big cities) was higher than tier 2 area(small and medium-sized cities). And the analysis of the connection between the number of police officers and work location showed that the leaders followership were the most positive in the mid-sized organization(11 to 20 police officers) in big cities. Conclusion: In conclusion, through a choice and concentration strategy, the security department should make sure that the police stations in tier 2 and 3 operate minimal functions such as analyzing trends in security crimes or supporting and protecting North Korean defectors, and that the National Police Agency, local police agencies, and police stations in tier 1 areas play most of their roles. Second, the size of the organization will be composed of 11 to 20 people, but it will be effective for large organizations such as the National Police Agency and local police agencies to organize the overall size of the security department into 11 to 20 people in consideration of security demand in small organizations such as police stations.