"Trust Has Collapsed" Amid Unified Rebuke... Police Chief Apologizes

[Anchor]

At the National Assembly, heavy criticism poured out that public trust in the police is continuously plummeting over the Jang Mi-ran missing person case. The Minister of the Interior and Safety and the Acting Commissioner General of the Korean National Police Agency bowed their heads.

This is Ha Jeong연.

[Reporter]

At a plenary session of the National Assembly's Public Administration and Security Committee.

Lawmakers from both the ruling and opposition parties unanimously rebuked the police over their fraudulent handling of the Jang Mi-ran missing person case that occurred in Jeju.

[Chae Hyun-il / Democratic Party Lawmaker: According to the manual for receiving and handling missing person reports, isn't there a reporting system to superiors? But arbitrarily handling it as an unverified body case like this—are cases like this being found often?]

[Kim Ye-ji / People Power Party Lawmaker: I do not think this is a matter where we can simply wait and watch the results of the internal investigation and inspection. This is a fraudulent closure and a failure of internal control. You need to inspire more trust, but incidents that continually destroy trust keep happening.]

As it was revealed that Senior Inspector A of the missing persons team at the Jeju Seobu Police Station arbitrarily closed other missing person cases in addition to Jang Mi-ran's, Minister of the Interior and Safety Yoon Ho-joong stated, "Because the police failed to perform their proper role, a citizen's life was lost."

Following the Jang Yoon-ki case, the poor handling of cases by the police has repeatedly come under fire, starting with the Jeju missing person case, prompting the Acting Commissioner General of the Korean National Police Agency to also bow his head.

[Yoo Jae-sung / Acting Commissioner General of the Korean National Police Agency: Regarding the investigation into the missing person case in Jeju, I think it is deeply regrettable that we have caused concern to the public.]

However, in response to an opposition lawmaker's criticism asking, "With public trust shattered, can the police still be trusted with the investigation, and is it okay to abolish the prosecutors' supplementary investigation powers?", Acting Commissioner General Yoo Jae-sung argued, "The Jeju missing person case is a separate matter from the supplementary investigation powers."

Lawmakers also continued to question the motives behind the crime, such as "Why did Senior Inspector A fraudulently close the missing person case?", but Acting Commissioner General Yoo only stated, "These are matters that must be clearly uncovered through the investigation," failing to provide a clear answer.

(Photo courtesy of Shin Dong-hwan | Video Editing: Jeon Min-gyu)

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