Two Months Wasted Before Massive Search Deployment in Missing Person Case

[Anchor]

The case of Jang Mi-ran, who went missing in Jeju last May, was closed by the detective in charge, who claimed to have made contact with Jang. However, no records of a phone call from that time were found. After squandering precious time, the police have belatedly launched a search operation.

Reporter Jung Yong-gi from JIBS.

[Reporter]

A significant gap has emerged in the search and investigation for Jang Mi-ran, who has been missing for over three months.

After the detective in charge closed the case on May 15, there were a grueling two months without any active searches or checks on her daily life until a second missing person report was filed.

With the storage period for many public security CCTV cameras limited to around 30 days, tracking her movements faces severe limitations, and investigations into private CCTV cameras installed by local business owners are also proving difficult.

[Merchant near Hallim Port: (The police) did look at the CCTV footage, but I am not sure what they actually saw. They looked once or twice, or maybe three times. Since there was nothing there, I guess they could not see anything.]

On the second day of the public search for Jang, a massive police force assembled.

The number of search personnel increased fivefold, with around 140 officers deployed for intensive searching.

Jang's final movements have been traced primarily to two locations.

The search is centered around the accommodation Jang left on the night of May 12, and Hallim Port, where her mobile phone base station signal was last detected on the morning of May 16, four days later.

Scent-tracking dogs trained to detect human body odor have even been deployed to search secluded streams.

The police are vastly expanding their search, focusing on the accommodation where the missing person stayed and the locations where her final movements were confirmed.

The fallout is growing as police investigations reveal flaws in the handling of the case, including the absence of any call records between Jang's phone and the detective in charge.

The family is desperately waiting for even the smallest clue to shed light on Jang's whereabouts.

(Camera: Kang Myung-chul, JIBS)

Jung Yong-gi, JIBS
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.