Locating missing persons remains challenge for police with too many cases, too few officers

Some 340 people are reported missing every day in Korea. The police received 124,223 missing cases last year, according to the National Police Agency data Democratic Party lawmaker Lim Ho-seon shared.

The Gwangjin police rescue a student who attempted to take their own life on Jamsil Bridge on June 30. [JANG SEO-YUN]

Some 340 people are reported missing every day in Korea.

The police received 124,223 missing cases last year, according to the National Police Agency data Democratic Party lawmaker Lim Ho-seon shared.

Of the cases, adults accounted for the highest number at 74,936, followed by those younger than 18 at 26,416, people with dementia at 14,527 and those with intellectual disabilities at 8,344.

The high number of such reports and the public’s criticisms of the police’s lagging initial responses to several cases, including the death of a 22-year-old who went missing near the Han River in 2021, led the police to revamp systems related to finding missing persons.

Sending out public alerts to mobile phones to people living in the area where the case was reported is one of the follow-up systems implemented.

On the morning of June 30, the police sent an emergency text notifying people that they were looking for a missing man in eastern Seoul.

“[The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency is] Searching for an 85-year-old man wandering around in Gwangjin District, eastern Seoul,” the text read.

The text described the missing adult as 163 centimeters (5.3 feet) tall, wearing a yellow stripe and gray collared shirt, gray pants and black sneakers when he was last seen before disappearing.

The only clues that the police had were mere descriptions of his height and outfit.

He was first reported missing to the Gangnam Police Precinct in southern Seoul at 1:50 p.m. a day earlier.

The Gangnam police asked the Gwangjin police for aid after a security camera footage showed the man taking a subway from Gangnam-gu Office Station in southern Seoul and walking around Guui Station in eastern Seoul. The Gwangjin police have jurisdiction over the area.

Police said it was difficult to track the man in particular as he did not have his cell phone with him.

Police officers on June 30 watch security camera footage at Guui Station to find a person with dementia reported missing. [JANG SEO-YUN]

Another security camera footage showed the man taking an escalator heading toward exit 4 of Guui Station. He then took the same escalator and returned to the platform in a few seconds, as a Gwangjin police inspector said is what a person with dementia often does.

The man wandered around Guui Station for about an hour and took a train heading toward Gangbyeon Station.

This was the last time he was captured on security camera.

Two police officers and the missing man's son watched security footage at Gangbyeon Station, but the man was nowhere to be found.

The missing adult was finally located at around 6:05 p.m., after police in Gangseo District, western Seoul, called that they had found and were protecting the man.

This was about 28 hours after the man was reported missing.

The police, especially in areas with a high prevalence of missing persons, investigate every case of a reported missing person. The Gwangjin Police Precinct is one of them, as it receives as many as 20 to 30 cases daily. This is because seven Han River bridges and Mount Acha are under the precinct's jurisdiction.

In the first quarter of this year, the precinct resolved 462 cases of missing persons, the highest number by a police precinct in the country.

The Gwangjin police miraculously rescued another teenager who attempted to take their own life on the night of the same day the missing dementia patient was found.

Police attempted to track the teenager's location, but the student's phone was turned off. They continued calling the teenager. The phone dialed and signaled that the student was on Jamsil Bridge in Songpa District, southern Seoul.

After identifying the student's location, police officers immediately drove to the bridge and found the student on a bridge railing.

They rescued the student and sent them to the police station.

"If we arrived later, we might have lost our chance [to save the student]," a police officer said.

"[I was] very nervous because the student might have instantly jumped off the bridge if we ran too fast to chase and save the student."

A man with dementia in his 90s reported missing was found at a restaurant in Daegu in March. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Missing person cases sometimes are precursors to violent crimes.

A taxi driver murdered at an apartment in Paju, Gyeonggi, on Dec. 25 last year was found after his son reported to the police that his father had not returned home for six days.

An inspector at the Gwangjin Police Precinct also shared a similar case of when it was too late for the police despite tracking a missing person's location in May.

According to the inspector, a friend of a missing man called the police to report his friend missing, saying his friend had been missing work and was out of touch, adding the friend was in economic hardship.

The police could not trace the man's location as he had nothing on his credit card records. The only evidence in hand was that he went to Suwon Station in Gyeonggi on a subway.

The police inspector visited Suwon multiple times, although the area was not under his precinct's jurisdiction.

After a continuous investigation, the inspector found in a security camera footage that he bought tools to take his own life with two other people he met online.

The police then discovered the man and the two others entering an abandoned building.

But by the time the police arrived at the building, the man was already dead.

The Suwon police apprehended the two other people on suspicion of assisted suicide.

To reduce time when tracking a person reported missing, the Seoul Metropolitan Government announced last month it will establish an artificial intelligence system to search for specific people captured on security cameras.

"It is crucial to find missing persons as the number of older adults with dementia surged lately with the country entering the phase of an aging society," a metropolitan government spokesperson said.

The system is expected to find children and older adults with dementia that disappeared within the critical time, according to the city government.

Ideally, guardians, legal representatives and family members of a missing person are eligible to file for a missing person case.

But practically anyone can report such cases since the police's internal guidelines say they need to accept cases based on the caller's testimony regardless of the caller's relationship with the missing person.

This is why police officers find it challenging to deal with some cases, as sometimes those who hold a grudge against those who disappeared lie or exaggerate to the police when reporting about them.

The police, therefore, only notify whether the missing person is safe or not rather than disclosing their location to the caller after they find them.

The police say there are even cases when a person calls the police because they cannot reach their significant others for a day after they fought.

Although many cases end up as a mere happening, the police, in principle, are required to investigate every report on missing people.

"The police deployment is prioritized when it is evident that violent crime took place, but for most cases, the police are sent to the site as cases are filed because it is difficult to suspect what happened based on the caller's report," a Seoul police investigator said.

A Gwangjin police official added "visiting the site in person" and "doubting even the slightest possibility [of crime]" is the key to resolving reports of missing people.

But some point out the limited number of police personnel taking care of such cases makes it difficult for them to handle every case reported in the country.

A total of 831 police officers at 163 police precincts nationwide are assigned to teams designated to search for missing people, while a total of 124,223 missing cases were reported to the police last year.

"It is ironic to evaluate cases' risk levels just based on a caller's report as they are directly connected to a person's life," Lee Keon-su, a professor at Baeksuk University's police department, said.

"The number of police personnel handling missing person reports should be increased, and evidence related to filed reports should be collected quickly by expanding cooperation between police and related institutions."

BY JANG SEO-YUN,CHO JUNG-WOO [cho.jungwoo1@joongang.co.kr]