Cheong Wa Dae Reported "Immediate Case Registration," But Did Police Try to Cover Up Blunders?

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We have obtained a document showing that police leadership reported to Cheong Wa Dae about a month before the Jang Yoon-ki incident that they would immediately register cases upon receiving reports of stalking crimes. However, this report was not implemented in the initial response to the Jang Yoon-ki case, and it has been confirmed that prosecutors are investigating whether the police ordered the cover-up or minimization of the case to hide these blunders.

This is a report by reporter Kim Deok-hyeon.

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On March 14, Kim Hoon, a stalker in Namyangju, murdered a woman in her 20s with whom he had previously been in a relationship.

[President Lee Jae-myung: Wasn't this horrifying crime left unprevented due to complacent responses?... Please swiftly supplement the system without any loopholes.]

Two weeks later on March 27, a relevant countermeasures meeting was held at Cheong Wa Dae. SBS obtained the document that the National Police Agency reported to Cheong Wa Dae at the time through a lawmaker's office.

The police pointed out problems such as cases where victims of relational crimes, including stalking, reported incidents but police closed them internally without formal case registration.

To improve this, they reported that they would immediately register cases upon receiving related reports regardless of police station jurisdictions, and also proposed basic investigations to secure custody for high-risk groups.

However, this content reported by the National Police Agency to Cheong Wa Dae was not implemented during the response to Jang Yoon-ki's stalking crime that occurred about a month later.

On May 3, a Vietnamese woman identified as A reported to the police when Jang Yoon-ki, who had sexually assaulted her, appeared around her home again.

Jang Yoon-ki's crime appears to fall under the "high-risk group" mentioned in the Cheong Wa Dae report document, yet responding police officers did not formally register the case and closed the scene after merely "sending a warning text message."

Jang Yoon-ki, having received only a warning text, discarded his mobile phone and freely loitered around the area, murdering the late Lee Chae-won about 28 hours after the stalking report.

Had the police registered the case immediately upon receiving the stalking report as mentioned in the Cheong Wa Dae report document and classified him as a high-risk group to secure his custody, they could have prevented Jang Yoon-ki's murder.

Prosecutors, who recently secured the document, suspecting that the National Office of Investigation may have ordered the minimization of the Jang Yoon-ki case to conceal the fact that the investigation was not conducted according to the report to Cheong Wa Dae.

Park Sung-joo, then head of the National Office of Investigation, explained to SBS that the instruction for "separated allocation" was "intended to have the competent department thoroughly investigate whether there were additional stalking victims."

(Video Journalist: Yoon Hyeong | Video Editor: Shin Se-eun | Designers: Seo Hyun-jung, Lee Ga-jin | Photo courtesy of: Office of Representative Park Soo-min)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.