A woman disappears into thin air. The family reports the case to the police, but a few hours later a seemingly decisive reassurance arrives: the officer in charge claims to have spoken directly with her. He’s fine, he says, he just doesn’t want to reveal his whereabouts or have contact with his family. The searches are then stopped.
Three months later that woman was found dead. It is the beginning of the scandal that is shaking the South Korean island of Jeju and which has now taken on a national dimension. At the center of the investigation is a police officer accused of having irregularly closed several files relating to missing persons, declaring that he had contacted them when, according to investigators, those conversations would never have happened.
The woman found dead a kilometer from home
The case that sparked the scandal concerns Jang Mi-ran, 37 years old, who disappeared on the night between 12 and 13 May 2026 in the Hallim-eup area on Jeju island. The companion reported the disappearance on May 15th. But just two and a half hours after the file was opened, the agent in charge announced that the woman had been contacted by telephone and that she had said she was fine, asking not to reveal her location. The searches were stopped. The problem is that, when investigators reconstructed what happened months later, no trace of that phone call was found.
The family filed a new complaint in July and the case was handed over to other agents. On August 24, 104 days after her disappearance, the woman’s body was found in a tree-lined area about a kilometer from where she lived. A detail that inevitably fueled controversy: if the searches had continued immediately, that place could have been checked much earlier.
The videos from the cameras have now been deleted
Another aspect of the story concerns the images from the surveillance cameras. The images from 118 cameras in the area were automatically deleted at the end of the normal retention period, which is approximately 30 days. When the case was finally reopened, most of the videos useful for reconstructing the woman’s last movements no longer existed.
However, the officer apparently deleted some information relating to the file from the police computer system and entered closure reasons that did not correspond to reality.
Second missing person found dead
A second case made the policeman’s position even more serious. A man in his 60s was reported missing on July 2. Also in this case the same officer reportedly told his family that he had spoken with him and received reassurances about his condition. This practice was also archived.
The family, however, continued to look for him and filed a new report. The man was found dead on August 22, 51 days after he disappeared. The discovery prompted investigators to systematically check all the files handled by the agent.
Nearly 300 cases under investigation
And this is where the most impressive fact of the story arises. In about a year and five months the policeman followed up on 298 reports of missing persons. All are now under review.
At the moment the investigators have identified around ten suspicious files, in which it is necessary to verify whether the contacts declared by the agent actually took place. In some cases it has not yet been possible to directly trace the missing people.
The officer was arrested and the investigation now aims to establish why he acted in this way and whether other officials could have noticed the anomalies before.