Limitations of Defining Executive Protection under the Security Services Industry Act and Legislative Remedies : Focusing on Overseas Systems and Practitioner Perceptions

Purpose: This study examines the institutional limitations of the Security Services Industry Act (SSIA) of Korea, which classifies private security services into six statutory categories but does not explicitly define “executiv e protection” (gyeongho) despite its extensive use in industry and everyday discourse. Instead, protection work is subsumed under “personal protection services,” which may not sufficiently capture the operational reality of protection tasks. The study aims to identify how this definitional gap generates interpretive confusion, increases field-level errors, and weakens accountability and training standards. Method: The research adopts a qualitative design combining doctrinal review of the SSIA and its subordinate regulation, comparative legal and policy review of Japan, EU-related standards (EN 15602 and ISO 18788), and the U.S. (California) regulatory materials, and semi-structured in-depth interviews with seven practitioners who each have more than ten years of field experience in protection-related work. Interview topics addressed the gap between statutory and field terminology, task-boundary decisions, liability attribution, training adequacy, and desired legislative amendments. Results: The findings indicate that practitioners consistently understand executive protection as an integrated risk-management service rather than a single protective act. Core components repeatedly identified include pre-event risk assessment, movement and route (itinerary) control, access control, crowd interface management, and on-site risk management—functions that frequently overlap with facility security and crowd/traffic control. However, the current SSIA definition of personal protection services is purpose-oriented (protection of life and body) but operationally abstract, leaving the boundaries of lawful task performance and responsibility allocation uncertain. This ambiguity contributes to inconsistent interpretations across contracting entities, supervisory au-thorities, and training providers, and may intensify disputes when incidents occur. Conclusion: Rather than restructuring the six-category system, this study proposes a legislative refinement that preserves the existing classification framework while revising the definition clause of “personal protection services” to explicitly include operational essentials of executive protection (movement/route control, access con-trol, and on-site risk management). Such clarification is expected to reduce interpretive burden in the field, im-prove consistency in supervision and training, and strengthen the legitimacy and professionalization of protection work in Korea.