South Korean police are set to re-examine around 310,000 missing persons cases that were closed in the past three years. This decision follows a scandal involving an officer arrested on suspicion of falsifying records to close files for two people who were subsequently found dead.
The arrested officer, who worked at the Jeju Western police station, is accused of closing the file on a 37-year-old woman, Jang Mi-ran, shortly after her partner reported her missing in mid-May. Her body was found on Monday, 104 days after she was last seen. The same officer is also accused of closing the case of a man in his 60s on the day his family reported him missing in early July; his body was found on Saturday.
The officer has denied wrongdoing, stating he contacted the two missing individuals before closing their cases, according to the Jeju Provincial Police Agency. He was arrested this week and faces charges including dereliction of duty and falsifying official electronic records.
President Lee Jae Myung has ordered an investigation into the police's handling of the situation and instructed the force to develop a reform plan. The interior minister, Yun Hojung, apologised to the public on Wednesday, acknowledging that the case exposed a structural flaw in how police manage missing persons.
Under Korean law, only children, autistic people, and individuals with dementia or mental disabilities are formally treated as missing, allowing police to use tools like phone location data and emergency alerts. Others are classified as runaways, without automatic access to these tools. More than 70,000 adults were reported missing last year, with 99.7% of cases closed without a full-scale search; 931 of these individuals were later found dead.