Jeju officer admits closing missing person cases to avoid extra work

The Jeju Provincial Police said Tuesday that an officer who prematurely closed multiple missing person cases on the island admitted to closing them to avoid the extra workload involved in keeping the cases open.

The controversy erupted after it emerged that the officer had closed the missing person case of Jang Mi-ran, a 37-year-old woman missing for months, without confirming her whereabouts. Last week, police said they had removed all four officers in the chain of command at Jeju Seobu Police Station from their duties, pending an investigation.

Police said the officer did not take Jang’s disappearance seriously because she was an adult and wished to avoid the workload associated with keeping the case open. “He indicated that he felt burdened by the additional work required if the case remained unresolved and prematurely closed it as a result,” police said at a briefing.

Profilers who questioned the officer believe that negligence, driven by fatigue from a growing workload, was the main motive behind his actions.

After closing Jang's case, the officer removed the case record by entering “death in a traffic accident” into the system, police added.

The officer handled 298 cases while on the missing person team at Jeju Seobu Police Station, where he served from March 2025 to July this year. In addition to the two cases already known, a police review found 25 more suspected of being closed prematurely.

Of those, 10 involved cases closed without confirming the missing person's whereabouts, the same pattern seen in the two known cases. Police said, however, that all of those individuals were later confirmed to be safe.

In another 15 cases, the officer removed case records by entering reasons such as “death in a traffic accident” or “unnatural death” into the system, even though the person's whereabouts had already been confirmed.

The officer was detained last week on charges including dereliction of duty and forging public electronic records. He initially claimed to have contacted the missing individuals, but admitted it was false after police began investigating.

The Jeju Provincial Police said last week an autopsy on the body found at a palm farm on Jeju Island confirmed it was Jang. They said the position of the body when first discovered suggested she died by hanging, but later said the cause of death could not be determined because of the advanced state of decomposition.

Doubts about police investigations deepened after the officer who handled the Jang Mi-ran case was accused of closing another missing person case in a similar manner in July. A man in his 60s was found dead last month, 51 days after he was reported missing.

In that case, police said the officer entered “whereabouts confirmed” into the system, because the person making the initial missing person report had visited the police station and spoken with another officer before filing the 112 report and he worried a deletion would be noticed.