Kim Jongcheol, Acting National Police Commissioner, Makes First Visit to Jeju Over 'False Closures' in Missing Persons Cases

Kim Jongcheol, the newly appointed Acting Commissioner (and Deputy Commissioner) of the National Police Agency, will make Jeju Island his first official destination. This is intended to inspect the inadequate response to recent missing persons cases in which investigations were falsely closed by the police, only for the missing individuals to be later found deceased.

Kim Jongcheol, Commissioner of Gyeongnam Provincial Police Agency, who was appointed as the Deputy Commissioner General of the National Police Agency and took on the role of Acting Commissioner General, is responding to reporters' questions on the morning of the 2nd ahead of his farewell ceremony. Photo by Yonhap News Agency

The National Police Agency announced on the 2nd that Acting Commissioner Kim will visit Jeju Island in the afternoon of the 3rd, where he is scheduled to console the bereaved families of missing persons, visit the site in Hallim-eup, Jeju City where a woman in her 30s was found dead, and receive a briefing on major issues from the Jeju Provincial Police Agency. He chose to visit Jeju as his first official trip after immediately presiding over a leadership meeting in the morning.

An official from the National Police Agency stated, "This field visit will be Acting Commissioner Kim's first on-site activity since taking office," adding, "It is being conducted to review the poor response to the Jeju missing persons cases and to develop follow-up measures."

On the 1st, the Jeju Provincial Police Agency sent Sergeant A (34) from the Jeju Western Police Station to the prosecution under detention on charges including forgery and use of official electronic documents, obstructing the performance of official duties by fraudulent means, and dereliction of duty for repeatedly closing missing persons reports with false information.

According to the police, Sergeant A is accused of falsely closing missing person reports related to a woman in her 30s who went missing in Jeju in May this year and a man in his 60s who went missing in July, among others, thereby neglecting his duties and obstructing search operations for the missing. All individuals from the cases falsely closed by Sergeant A, including Ms. Jang Miran (37), the woman in her 30s, were later found deceased.

During a press briefing at the time, the police announced the results of a comprehensive review of 298 missing persons cases closed by Sergeant A while he worked in the missing persons team at Jeju Western Police Station from March last year to July this year. They identified an additional 10 cases suspected to have been falsely closed and 15 cases likely closed for fraudulent reasons.

Specifically, the 10 cases that were falsely closed were similar to the case of Ms. Jang, who was found dead after being reported missing in May—the reports were closed without verifying the safety of the missing individuals. In 10 other cases, despite local police confirming the locations of the missing persons, false reasons such as 'traffic accident death' or 'unidentified corpse' were entered to close the cases. However, police stated that all the missing persons involved in these cases have since been confirmed to be safe.

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