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This study looked into properties of the documents in the judicature <Drafting Materials(起案)> as well as the recorded aspects of Hanseong-bu crimes and criminals’ characteristics between 1896 and 1906. Serious crimes sentenced to life imprisonment and above were mostly among total crimes written in <Drafting Materials>, but major offenses like officials’ bribe and embezzlement including political crimes as well as violence, economic, and social crimes were found to be more than 90%. Through this, characteristics of crimes in Hanseong-bu from 1896 to 1906 were summarized as follows. First, property crimes infringing and threatening individual properties were widely committed in Hanseong-bu. The percentage of property crimes dealt with by the judicature between 1896 and 1906 was over 50%, and it increased by more than average 70% in the 1900s. Second, industrialization and urbanization of Hanseong-bu after the Age of Civilization attracted various classes of people into the city, which finally resulted in increases in crimes of Hanseong-bu. 45% of criminals in Hanseong-bu were committed by the eight level of farmers who came up to the city, and among them 57.6% were from Gyeonggi-do. The reason why property crimes were more intensively generated in Hanseong-bu was due to country people’s robbery and theft. Third, crime rates in Dongseo(東署) were highest and areas around Four Doors(4대문) were the crime-racked districts. Major criminals of Hanseong-bu were between 20 to 35 years old, and they were 'Jikyok'(occupational classification) of merchants and craftsmen. Criminals who lived in Hanseong-bu were mostly merchants and craftsmen as well as laborers, unemployed men who had a little properties rather than other 'Jikyok'. In addition, the relations with ages and crime types were found, so that robbery, theft with activity were committed by those who were 20 to 30 years old(57%), and they were major criminals of property crimes. On the contrary, criminals who were aged 26 to 50 committed forge, which showed even age groups than other crimes. In case of crimes of opening a grave, criminals aged 46 to 60 were shown to be more than 60%, so old people were major criminals of the crime rates.

The judicature, Drafting Materials(起案), crimes, Hanseong-bu, property crimes, crime rates