"Missing Person is Dead," He Said... Then Tracked Location Upon Receiving New Report

▲ The police officer from the Jeju Western Police Station who falsely closed a missing person case

It has been revealed that a police officer identified as Officer A in Jeju, who was arrested on charges of falsely closing a missing person case, tracked the cell phone location of a missing woman in her 30s, surnamed Jang, four times last month after a new missing person report was filed.

Although Officer A had himself entered into the missing persons system back in May during the initial report that Jang had died in a traffic accident, he tracked her location again under the pretense of searching for her.

According to data submitted by the Jeju Provincial Police Agency to People Power Party Representative Park Sang-woong, Officer A checked Jang's location four times from 5:16 PM on the 20th of last month to around 2:20 PM on the 21st.

Following a renewed missing person report for Jang on the 19th of last month, Officer A was deployed to the search operation at the time and checked her location.

However, Jang's cell phone was turned off on May 16, four days after she went missing on the night of May 12, causing all location-tracking attempts at the time to fail.

Earlier, when the initial missing person report regarding Jang was filed at around 6:43 AM on May 15, Officer A also checked Jang's location a total of seven times from approximately 7:08 PM to 8:55 PM.

However, it was found that the records of those past location inquiry results were deleted around the 15th of this month, which marks the expiration of the three-month retention period for personal location information.

Although an investigation into Officer A was underway around the time the personal location information inquiry records were deleted, it remains unconfirmed whether the police extended the retention period to secure those records.

Officer A falsely closed the missing person case about two hours and thirty minutes after the initial report in May, claiming he had made contact with Jang, and subsequently deleted Jang's information from the missing person profiling system's management list.

Investigations revealed that he entered a traffic accident casualty code, which signifies that Jang had died in a traffic accident, as the reason for deletion.

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