South Korea is facing a new, younger type of criminal — the 'MZ gangster'

• South Korea's National Police Agency has been targeting organized crime rings across the country.
• A majority of those arrested lately are Gen Z or millennials below the age of 30.

South Korean police have been cracking down on organized crime in recent months, and authorities have announced that a majority of those they have been arresting are Gen Z or millennials.

The country's National Police Agency (NPA) said on Wednesday that 1,183 members of organized crime rings had been arrested across the country between August 7 and December 16, The Korea Herald reported.

According to the report, 888 of those arrested were "MZ gangsters" who were younger than 30.

Law enforcement sources said that the nature of the crimes being committed by the younger criminals had changed compared to that of older generations, with more instances of online gambling, scams, and fraud being seen.

Police said that nearly 40% of the charges involved "intricate/business-type illegal activities," such as running online gambling sites, while just over 21% were for extortion and violence.

In a workshop designed to help prosecutors working on these cases, attendees were told that the MZ gangsters "join forces based on profit, rather than based on factions like before," The Times reported.

"There is a need for authorities to re-establish the meaning of organised crime rings, and find ways to respond to such crimes," the workshop was told.

An NPA spokesperson told The Times that the agency would "strengthen the gang crackdown system to establish a more effective crime response system and focus our investigative capabilities on various forms of organised crime centred on MZ generation gangsters."

According to the Organized Crime Index, which provides metrics on organized crime around the world, South Korean authorities have been pushing to rid the country of "all mafia-style groups" since the 1990s, adding that "the few remaining organizations are small and do not exert control over territories or engage in intensive violence."

It adds that foreign crime syndicates have a large role in criminal markets in the country, with mainland Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakuza, and Russian mafia gangs all playing a part.