Police Consider GPS Devices to Fight Kidnapping
By Kim Tae-jong
Staff Reporter
Police plan to require all cell phones to have position-finding modules embedded in them as a means to solve kidnapping and missing persons cases. But the plan immediately invited skepticism due to its questionable effectiveness and the fear of infringement of privacy.
Officers did not specify who would shoulder the cost to equip each handset with a global positioning system.
``With only 20 percent of cell phones having GPS modules. it's difficult find missing people,'' Song Gang-ho, an investigation director of the National Police Agency, said Wednesday during a news briefing. ``We are going to push for steps to equip all handsets with this GPS module.''
To efficiently cope with missing persons cases, it is essential to revise related laws to allow police to have easy access to information necessary to inquire into the whereabouts of missing persons, Song said.
Police also plan to introduce an electronic tag system. The tags, which can be attached to bags of schoolchildren, are monitored by nearby stations and allow parents to be aware of their children's location.
The plans have raised questions about their effectiveness, as they require an estimated budget of up to 3 trillion won just for the GPS module attachment to cell phones. Many human rights groups claim that such devices can endanger citizens' privacy.
The plans come as police are being asked to take action after a series of cases, including the murder of two schoolgirls found dead after they went missing last year.
Police will also empower about 1,000 special detectives to be responsible for missing person cases.
Given the importance of timely investigations, police will form a task force immediately upon the report of a missing person case. Currently, they launch investigations within 24 hours after the first report.
They will also reinvestigate a total of 19,395 unsolved missing person cases from the past three years.