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President Lee Jae-myung speaks during a senior aides meeting held at Cheong Wa Dae on the 3rd. / Yonhap News

President Lee Jae-myung stated on the 3rd that "the police must take a series of recent incidents as a mirror and embark on internal self-purification and institutional reform with painstaking resolve." This was an order to conduct an overhaul of case-handling procedures as well as command and supervision structures from the public's perspective, as vulnerabilities in frontline public safety, including inadequate responses to recent missing persons cases, have come to light.

Presiding over a meeting of senior secretaries and aides at Cheong Wa Dae on the afternoon of that day, President Lee remarked, "We must conduct a comprehensive review across all case-handling procedures, not just for missing persons cases, to identify any flaws in existing practices and systems."

President Lee stated, "Recent successive incidents reveal non-negligible vulnerabilities in our public security," adding, "They demonstrate that even if the majority of police officers do their best on the front lines, misconduct by a very small minority can create significant holes in the entire system."

President Lee noted that institutional improvements must be pursued from the perspective of the public and victims, rather than through an internal police lens. "Breaking away from an insider's view, we must meticulously examine what was lacking and what needs rectification from the public eye, the viewpoint of victims, and the perspective of an objective observer," President Lee said.

He also called for measures to prevent any investigative vacuums surrounding follow-up systems for prosecution reform. President Lee urged, "Only a month remains until the launch of the Public Prosecution Office and the Major Crimes Investigation Agency. During the remaining period, relevant institutional frameworks must be thoroughly reorganized with our best efforts, and necessary policy measures must be implemented strictly so that not the slightest vacuum emerges in protecting the lives, safety, and rights of the people."

President Lee underscored that the ultimate objective of reform lies in the tangible improvement of citizens' everyday lives. "The objective of all reform is the substantial improvement of the public's daily life," President Lee said, stressing that "reform is not merely words in statute books, but is realized and evaluated within the everyday lives of our people. All relevant agencies must pool their efforts to establish a public safety system that citizens can trust and feel secure in."

                                                                                                        Park Young-hoon