"Trust Has Collapsed," Lawmakers Criticize in Unison; Police Chief "Apologizes"

[Anchor]

Regarding this incident, both ruling and opposition lawmakers severely criticized the police in the National Assembly, stating that public trust in the police has collapsed. The Minister of the Interior and Safety and the Acting Commissioner General of the Korean National Police Agency bowed their heads in apology.

Here is a report by reporter Ha Jeongyeon.

[Reporter]

At a full meeting of the National Assembly's Public Administration and Security Committee.

Lawmakers from both the ruling and opposition parties unanimously lashed out at the police over their fraudulent handling of the missing person case involving Jang Miran in Jeju.

[Chae Hyun-il / Democratic Party of Korea 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 a death investigation like this, are cases like this being discovered frequently?]

[Kim Yeji / People Power Party lawmaker: I don't think this is a matter that should be left only to internal investigation and inspection results. This is a false closure and a failure of internal control. You need to inspire more trust, but incidents that continue to erode trust are happening.]

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

Following the Jang Yoon-gi case and now the Jeju missing person case, as the police's shoddy handling of cases comes under fire back-to-back, the Acting Commissioner General of the Korean National Police Agency also bowed his head.

[Yoo Jae-seong / 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, when faced with criticism from an opposition lawmaker asking, "Public trust has collapsed, so can the police still be trusted with the investigation, and is it okay to abolish the prosecution's supplementary investigation rights?", Acting Commissioner General Yoo Jae-seong argued, "The Jeju missing person case is separate from the supplementary investigation rights."

Lawmakers also continued to question the motive behind the crime, asking why "Inspector A falsely closed the missing person case," but Acting Commissioner General Yoo did not give a clear answer, only stating that "it is a matter that must be clearly uncovered through the investigation."

(Video by: Shin Dong-hwan | Video Editing: Jeon Min-gyu)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.