South Korea has quietly become one of the world's most advanced users of i2 solutions. From national disaster response and cybercrime investigation to public health crisis management and university education, i2 has become embedded in how the country gathers, analyses and acts on complex data.
This case study draws on conversations with Professor Jion Kim of Hallym University's Department of Forensic Information Science and Technology, Professor Dr. Pyounghun Moon of the Korean Police Investigators' Academy, and researcher Yeri Gu of regional i2 reseller partner UniSoul Friends.
For years, South Korean police, in common with their counterparts worldwide, relied on Excel spreadsheets for investigative data. The goal was always visualisation, but the tools were limited. i2 changed this fundamentally. Investigators in the country now work with entities and links: a clear picture is formed of people, phone numbers, bank accounts, IP addresses and locations. Patterns that were buried in rows and columns become visually immediate, directly supporting operational decisions.
i2 allows investigators to analyse in more flexible ways. It acts like a blank canvas where investigators can draw the information they want. i2 is an essential product for Korean national police investigators.
Professor Dr. Pyounghun Moon, Korean Police Investigators' Academy
The value of i2 is most visible in some of South Korea's most sensitive and complex investigations:
When the Sewol ferry sank in 2014, a national tragedy that claimed many lives, Prof. Kim was the investigator responsible for analysing the call data records of a key figure associated with the incident. Using i2, he mapped communication patterns around the suspect, identified critical connections and ultimately located and apprehended the individual.
"It was a case that demonstrated how network analysis could reveal the truth from information gathered from many data sources," said Prof. Kim. "After Sewol, an increasing number of investigations began to rely on i2 to uncover crucial clues."
South Korea faces sophisticated cyber gambling operations run from overseas, often from China. Unable to travel freely across borders, investigators rely entirely on data. Using i2, police analysed MAC addresses, IP information, call records and bank accounts to build visual models connecting foreign operators to illegal gambling infrastructure, weaving disparate technical threads into actionable intelligence.
In other areas, investigators used i2 to trace the flow of money between bank accounts and expose the perpetrator of a digital asset investment fraud. By visualising how cash flowed into and out of a central account and how accomplices were paid, the full architecture of the scheme was revealed. Similarly, when cryptocurrency mixing services were used to obscure the trail of tainted funds, investigators imported blockchain and off-chain data into i2 to connect crypto activity to real-world individuals and accounts, making cases prosecutable.
Perhaps the most distinctive Korean success story for i2 came outside traditional policing. During the Covid-19 pandemic, investigators and epidemiological teams faced massive volumes of data generated every ten seconds between smartphones and telecom base stations.
By using i2 iBase, we were able to handle this enormous, high-frequency dataset efficiently, and trace interactions and movements to identify the first infected person in a key outbreak, said Prof. Kim.
The work led to dedicated training programmes for epidemiological staff, demonstrating that i2 is as valuable in public health as in criminal justice.
Hallym University established its Department of Forensic Information Science and Technology to address growing demand in criminal psychology, CSI and digital forensics. When Prof. Kim joined from the police, he introduced i2 into the curriculum; the first academic deployment of the software in South Korea.
Built into a course on crime data analysis, it uses anonymised real cases from Prof. Kim's investigative career, including an illegal election case in which suspects initially denied involvement. Students work with call data, financial flows and IP records before ultimately bringing their own cases to solve.
A key benefit is i2's ability to make social network analysis (SNA) tangible. Concepts such as degree, betweenness and closeness, used to identify authority, control and independence within criminal networks, are no longer abstract theory. Students see these metrics computed and visualised in real time.
The student response has been very positive, especially among those who aspire to become police investigators. Working with real data and powerful visual tools has made their learning concrete, relevant and inspiring.
Professor Jion Kim, Hallym University
The Korean Police Investigators' Academy follows a structured progression: foundational data skills and i2 basics, through specific data types such as call records and IP logs, to live case analysis with field experts. Like Hallym, said Dr. Moon, the final stage asks students to bring their own cases and apply i2 to real investigative challenges.
The reach of i2 in South Korea now extends well beyond individual investigations. Within the Korean National Police, a dedicated unit uses iBase for phishing crimes. The Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials (CIO) has adopted both i2 Analyst's Notebook and iBase to combat high-level corruption. At Hallym, Prof. Kim has established a research lab focused on public safety, leveraging i2 for advanced analytical work.
Crucially, South Korea has made a strategic choice that sets it apart. Rather than relying on specialist analysts, it is training investigators themselves to use i2 directly. As Prof. Kim explains: “In North America or Europe, the police have their own data analysers - the specialist in data analysis. But for the Korean police, the aim is to train the officers so that they can handle and visualise the data with i2 themselves.”
That choice, reinforced in university classrooms and police academies, is building a generation of professionals who move from raw data to meaningful insight independently.
“i2 allows investigators to analyse in more flexible ways,” Dr. Moon explained.
In Korea, i2 is no longer just a software platform. It is part of the infrastructure of modern investigation and public safety, shaping how crimes are solved, how crises are managed, and how tomorrow's investigators learn their craft.
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Through i2's partner UniSoul Friends, South Korea now has a dedicated business and training partner, with ambitions to expand i2's use across the Asia-Pacific region in digital forensics and public safety.