Jeju Police Accused of Falsely Closing Missing Persons Cases Also Illegally Deleted Records of Children and Dementia Patients

141 of 298 Cases Involved Children or Dementia Patients
10 Falsely Closed, 15 Illegally Deleted
Workload Cited as Excuse...
Total Collapse of Public Safety Network

The anger over the total collapse of Jeju’s public safety system is spreading uncontrollably, as it has come to light that nearly half of the missing persons cases handled by a current police officer—who is accused of falsely closing a missing persons case involving a woman in her 20s who was ultimately found dead—were incidents involving vulnerable groups such as children and dementia patients. In addition, dozens of further cases have been identified in which records were unlawfully deleted or falsely closed in the Missing Persons Profiling System.

Jeju Western Police Station Building.

According to the Jeju Metropolitan Police Agency on September 2, a full review of all 298 missing persons cases handled by Sergeant A, formerly of the Jeju Western Police Station's missing persons team, revealed 10 additional cases suspected of having been closed with false information, similar to the incident that recently caused public outrage.

Notably, there were also 15 additional instances identified in which records were intentionally deleted from the national “Missing Persons Profiling System” on fabricated grounds, even after it had been confirmed that the missing person was safe and unharmed.

What is even more shocking is that of the 298 cases Sergeant A handled, as many as 141 cases (47.3%) involved individuals legally protected under the “Act on the Protection and Support of Missing Children, etc.” (“Missing Children Act”), specifically those cases involving children under the age of 18, dementia patients, and people with intellectual disabilities.

Despite the fact that cases involving such individuals require immediate police mobilization for search and location tracking upon the receipt of a report—meaning the “golden hour” is critical—an investigation has confirmed that a significant number of the 15 cases Sergeant A deleted on false grounds were missing children cases. A police official commented, “It is difficult to disclose the exact number of children’s cases, as the investigation is ongoing.”

During an internal affairs investigation, Sergeant A reportedly stated, “I treated missing adult cases too lightly, and if I did not close the cases, I would have had more work to do, and the burden of transferring the cases would have increased, so I closed them falsely.”

However, he has yet to provide a convincing explanation for why he fabricated justifications and permanently deleted records from the national missing persons profiling system—even in cases where the safety of the missing person had already been verified.

As evidence emerges that the police deliberately manipulated and concealed the safety net for the lives of vulnerable groups for the sake of gross investigative convenience and negligence, distrust and anger among Jeju residents have reached their peak.

Criticism is mounting because, while frontline investigators ignored protocols and arbitrarily abused the national database, supervisory approval and oversight systems did not function even once. This incident, therefore, is being seen not simply as individual misconduct, but as proof of a fundamental breakdown in the leadership and internal affairs system of the Jeju police.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.