Why Did Police Officer Boo Falsely Close the Missing Person Case?

SBS's "Unanswered Questions," which aired yesterday (September 19), tracked down Police Officer Boo, who falsely closed a missing person case in Jeju Island.

On May 12, 36-year-old Ms. Chang went missing after leaving home. Although her family and boyfriend filed a missing person report, she was eventually found as a skeleton in a palm tree forest in Hallim-eup, Jeju City, 104 days after she went missing. Shockingly, the palm tree forest was revealed to be located just 400 meters away from her accommodation.

Ms. Chang's boyfriend had filed the missing person report due to her absence. The officer in charge at the time was Police Officer Boo of the Missing Persons Investigation Team at the Jeju Western Police Station. He called back, claiming that he had gotten in touch with Ms. Chang two and a half hours after receiving the report. He then stated that Ms. Chang did not want her location information to be disclosed to her boyfriend, and notified him that the case would be closed.


However, this was a lie. Days after the missing person report was filed, no one had been able to get in touch with Ms. Chang, prompting her family to file another missing person report, during which his lie was exposed.

The police had never actually spoken with Ms. Chang since she went missing, and Officer Boo had marked Ms. Chang as deceased in the internal police missing persons system to delete the report record.

As it turned out, this was not the only case that Officer Boo falsely closed. Officer Boo handled a missing person report for a man in his 60s the same way last June. Beyond this, incomprehensible actions by Officer Boo came to light as he manipulated details or falsely closed as many as 25 missing person reports, stirring public outrage.


Furthermore, on the day Ms. Chang's body was discovered, the police announced that her cause of death appeared to be hanging, suggesting she had taken her own life. It was a hasty announcement made even before an autopsy took place.

However, even through an autopsy, a clear cause of death could not be determined for Ms. Chang, who was found in a skeletal state, and there were no definitive clues to infer the cause of her death. Nevertheless, the police had hastily announced the cause of death.

Ultimately, these police actions raised various suspicions. Alongside questions surrounding the mobile phone base station locations and CCTV sightings from the early stages of the disappearance, doubts were cast on whether it was even possible to hang oneself by tying a shoelace to a palm tree.

In response, the production team conducted an experiment and confirmed that the possibility of incomplete hanging could not be ruled out. However, it was difficult to judge whether it was suicide or murder based solely on this result. Therefore, the broadcast further emphasized that hasty inferences and deductions must be refrained from.


Regarding Officer Boo, the police announced, "As a result of profiling analysis, it is presumed that the crime of false closure stemmed from a combination of work-avoidant motives driven by fatigue from accumulated work burden and heavy responsibilities, along with the suspect's evasive and irresponsible attitude."

However, to dismiss it as mere laziness felt puzzling, as Officer Boo had demonstrated meticulousness in the case of the missing man in his 60s by finding and utilizing contact information from other case records.

A crime expert commented on this, saying, "This is not an act driven by avoidance, flight, impulse, or a loss of self-control. He took highly selective, active, and intentional actions. He deliberately made it impossible to find the missing persons, and we must uncover why Officer Boo committed such acts."


The expert also drew attention by stating, "God complex refers to committing criminal acts using one's position or authority to gain a sense of superiority and satisfaction as if one has become a god. The most representative case is Harold Shipman in the UK, who injected lethal poison to kill patients he judged unworthy of living."

Finally, the broadcast emphasized that while Officer Boo was the one who turned numerous missing person cases into unsolved mysteries, he was not solely responsible for turning them into deaths shrouded in mystery.

(Produced by Kim Hyo-jung)