Police Officer Faked Missing Persons Closings to Avoid Heavy Workloads: Investigation Results

The motive behind the crimes of Police Inspector Boo, who was arrested on charges of falsely closing multiple missing persons reports in Jeju, has been revealed.

During a briefing today (Sept. 1), the Jeju Provincial Police Agency announced, "Inspector Boo stated that because the missing persons were ordinary adults, she took it lightly, and that the fear of the burden of transferring cases—which requires managing numerous tasks if cases remain unclosed—led her to falsely close them."

A profiler deployed during the investigation into Inspector Boo also identified "work-avoidant motives driven by fatigue from accumulated work burdens and heavy responsibilities" as the primary background of the crimes.

The profiler added, analyzing that "Inspector Boo's evasive coping and irresponsible attitude combined to lead to the crime of false closures."

Inspector Boo is accused of lying to a reporter that she had made contact with a missing woman in her 30s, surnamed Jang, who was reported missing last May, before arbitrarily closing the case and deleting data regarding Jang from the missing person profiling system management list.

She is also accused of using a similar method to falsely close a missing person case regarding a man in his 60s filed on July 2.

Police became aware of Inspector Boo's crime during the process of searching for Jang and booked her on August 14.

Subsequently, police discovered the body of the man in his 60s who had been reported missing on August 22, and recovered Jang's body in Hanrim-eup, Jeju City, on August 24.

Inspector Boo had claimed that she had made contact with the missing persons, but once police investigations began, she ultimately admitted that it was a lie.

Police plan to forward Inspector Boo to the prosecution in custody today.

(Reported by Park Se-won | Video by Kim Hye-ju | Graphics by Yang Hye-min | Produced by SBS Digital News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.