Tracking Adult Missing Persons Like Children... Dedicated Investigation Unit to Be Established

Acting Police Commissioner Presides Over Meeting to Overhaul Missing Persons Investigations
Plans Underway to Establish Dedicated Unit for Wide-Area Missing Persons Cases

The police plan to establish a legal basis that will allow them to verify and track adult missing persons’ location information and public transportation card usage records in the same way as they do for children. They also intend to launch a dedicated unit to direct wide-area missing persons investigations.

Kim Jongchul, Acting Commissioner of the National Police Agency, is presiding over a meeting to review measures for reforming missing person investigations on the 4th. National Police Agency

On September 4, Kim Jongchul, Acting Commissioner of the National Police Agency, convened a meeting to review measures for overhauling missing persons investigations and discussed plans to improve current procedures. Having designated “Reforming missing persons investigations” as the agency’s number one directive, Acting Commissioner Kim received reports on the occurrence and handling of missing persons cases, 112 emergency calls, and the status of local police station and precinct responses, and inspected the overall response system.

First, the police intend to create a legal framework so that, just as with missing children, investigators can verify and track relevant information upon discovering a missing person. Because adults who went missing have generally been classified as simple runaways until any suspicion of crime is confirmed, there have been significant limitations for police when trying to track public transportation card usage or location data of these missing adults.

Additionally, to further systematize the supervision and management of investigation progress and provide wide-area direction for missing persons cases, the establishment of a dedicated organization is being pursued. To resolve the problem of split functions—where search and investigation are handled by the Criminal Affairs Bureau and systems and policies by the Public Safety and Transport Bureau—all related work will be consolidated within the National Investigation Headquarters.

Furthermore, the agency has checked the progress of improvements to the missing persons profiling system so that individual case officers can no longer arbitrarily close cases, instead requiring approval from the criminal division chief. This will be rolled out nationwide starting September 7. In addition to principles such as registering and confirming all missing persons cases in person before closing them, and station chiefs conducting direct inspections, further improvements are being prepared. The current situation in which night-time and holiday missing persons cases have often been handled by a single officer will be corrected so that at least two officers are assigned; the necessary personnel increases will be coordinated with relevant government departments. Even if personnel numbers grow, it will take time for them to be deployed to the field, so for night-time and holiday periods, missing persons cases will be handled in cooperation with the violent crimes unit.

Acting Commissioner Kim stated, “Above all, it is essential to identify and correct gaps by examining the process from the perspective of missing persons and their families, and to establish a system to ensure that policies are properly implemented in the field.” He also instructed that opinions from field officers be actively collected to develop practical and effective countermeasures grounded in frontline perspectives.

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