A prominent art appraiser is found dead inside a locked vault in a Seoul gallery. The only thing missing is a "worthless" piece of broken Ming dynasty porcelain. However, the appraiser’s final act was to swallow a small, encrypted microchip, which leads Jun-ho on a trail across the sea to the Philippines.

What will the next decade look like?

The challenge? These workers are also victims (human trafficking). Investigations now require social workers, translators, and forensic accountants.

: India’s investigative backbone is the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and state police forces, still operating largely under the 1861 Police Act and the 1973 CrPC (Criminal Procedure Code). Investigators face a crushing caseload—often over 500 cases per officer. Forensics labs are chronically under-resourced, though the 2020 National Forensic Sciences University aims to change this. Notable successes (e.g., the 2008 Mumbai attacks investigation, which traced the sole surviving terrorist back to Pakistan via satellite phone records) sit alongside infamous failures (the delayed, politicized investigation into the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy). The introduction of the new Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) in 2023 attempts to mandate videography of crime scenes and timelines for forensic collection, a revolutionary shift if implemented.

For investigators, the rule is simple: Stay ahead of the tech, or stay out of the way.

: All major Asian nations are members, though North Korea is a curious outlier. The NCBs enable rapid sharing of Red Notices and criminal intelligence.

When a murder happens in Tokyo or a ransomware attack hits a bank in Mumbai, the investigation rarely stays local. It goes regional.