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/ Yonhap News

A police officer accused of falsely closing a missing person case involving a woman named Jang Mi-ran in Jeju has been placed under emergency arrest after evidence emerged that he had similarly falsified the closure of another missing person case.

The Jeju Metropolitan Police Agency announced on the 22nd that it placed a police corporal, identified only as "Officer A," under emergency arrest at a location in Jeju City on charges including dereliction of duty, falsification and use of electronic public records, and obstruction of official duties by deception. Officer A is affiliated with the Jeju West Police Station.

Police said they confirmed that Officer A had falsely closed another missing person case in addition to Jang's.

While conducting a comprehensive review of all cases Officer A had handled, the Jeju Metropolitan Police Agency confirmed the previous day that on the 2nd of last month, Officer A had used a method similar to the one used in Jang's case to falsely close a separate missing person case.

Officer A is accused of having arbitrarily closed Jang's case, a woman in her 30s reported missing in Jeju in May, and is also accused of deleting related records from the police's internal missing person profiling system during the process.

At the time, Officer A reportedly closed the case on the grounds that "contact had been made with the missing person," and the search that had been underway since the initial report was reportedly halted just over two hours later as a result. More than three months since the initial report, Jang's whereabouts remain unknown to this day.

                                                                                                           Park Se-young