When Jang Mi-ran disappeared from South Korea’s Jeju Island in May 2026, her boyfriend did what families are supposed to do when someone vanishes without explanation. He called the police and trusted them to find her. Within hours, an officer told him there was no reason to worry. According to police records, the officer, Sergeant Bu, claimed he had personally spoken with the 37-year-old. Jang was safe, he said, but did not want her location disclosed. The family believed him. There was only one problem. The conversation never happened. Bu unilaterally closed her file that same night, eliminating any chance of her loved ones finding her. She wasn’t alone, as investigators later found that he had done the same with as many as 298 cases. The Herald Business Jang had been staying long-term at a pension in Hallim-eup, on the western side of Jeju City. At around 10:15 pm on May 12, 2026, CCTV captured her leaving the property alone. She was wearing slippers and carrying only her mobile phone. There was nothing in the footage to explain where she intended to go or how long she expected to be away. Then contact stopped. callnews24 Her phone showed no later calls or meaningful location changes before eventually powering off. Police later said the data suggested she most likely died during the early hours of May 13, although decomposition would ultimately make establishing her precise cause and time of death difficult. When Jang remained unreachable, her boyfriend went to the police. At 6:43 pm on May 15, three days after she was last seen, he formally reported her missing. ViiV_333 KAnneSAnderson Police initially responded as expected. Officers traced her phone’s last known position toward Hallim Port, roughly 1.5 kilometers from the pension, and began searching around the area. The operation, however, lasted only around two and a half hours. At approximately 9:16 pm, Bu closed the case. He told Jang’s boyfriend that he had reached her and confirmed that she was safe. “I got in touch with Jang, and she said she was fine,” the officer was reported as saying. According to the account given to the family, Jang simply did not want her boyfriend or relatives told where she was. The Herald Business Jang never came home or contacted her relatives. As the weeks passed, the explanation that she was safe but simply did not want to be found became harder to accept. Her boyfriend tried to file another report on July 17, but the existing police record created an obstacle. Two days later, on July 19, her family successfully reported her missing again through authorities in Seoul. Only then did the case begin moving again. KBS WORLD News/YouTube When police checked whether Bu had actually spoken to Jang in May, the supposed call vanished under scrutiny. Desperate, her family took matters into their own hands. They began distributing her photograph publicly and appealing for information themselves. rei_yoshiki NeokoAKtion A concentrated search involving police, Coast Guard personnel, helicopters, drones, search dogs, divers and patrol vessels eventually followed, months after the first report. By August, Bu himself was under investigation. Ron Lach/Pexels (Not the actual image) Closing the emergency response was only part of what happened. Jang’s details had also been entered into South Korea’s missing-person profiling system, which police use to manage reports, past disappearances, search information and case outcomes. To remove someone from active management, officers generally need to record that the person has been located or enter another recognized reason for closure. cottonbro studio/Pexels (Not the actual image) Investigators later found that Bu had recorded Jang as a traffic-accident casualty, allowing her information to be deleted from the active list. In reality, nobody had located her. When investigators eventually examined Jang’s phone records, they found no call between her and Bu at all. An internal review produced the same result. The consequences extended beyond a false entry on a computer, however. sabinealy ppokckcb Because the disappearance was no longer being actively investigated, valuable evidence disappeared with time. Most public security cameras around the area retained footage for only 30 days. By the time Jang’s family managed to reopen the investigation, recordings from 111 surveillance cameras and seven traffic cameras covering the period after she vanished had already been erased. Then another family came forward with a disturbingly similar story. KOREA NOW/YouTube On July 2, a family reported a man in his 60s missing on Jeju. Sergeant Bu handled that case as well. Once again, he allegedly told relatives he had contacted the missing person. Once again, the family was told their loved one was safe but did not want his whereabouts disclosed. KOREA NOW/YouTube The man’s son later described why the family initially accepted what they were being told. “Right after we filed the missing-persons report on the 2nd of last month, the officer in charge told us our father was safe,” he told local media. Even then, the family remained worried and asked police for help twice more. “The officer explained, in effect, that our father had asked that his location not be disclosed, and we believed that explanation and waited for him,” the son added. When they returned again because they still could not contact him, the family said police told them the missing man was not answering his phone and that they should investigate on their own. llacerrtae axey401 Then they saw news coverage about Jang Mi-ran and with it, the horrific realization that they had been lied to. The following day, 51 days after he disappeared, the man’s body was found. On August 23, the bereaved relatives went directly to Jeju Western Police Station and publicly confronted the department over its handling of the disappearance. “What were the police doing while a person turned to bare bones, until he was beyond recognition?” the family demanded. KBS WORLD News/YouTube On the morning of August 24, searchers reached a palm farm in Hallim-eup. At approximately 10:46 am, they discovered what they described as “badly decomposed human remains.” The location was only several hundred meters to around one kilometer from the area where Jang had been staying, depending on the route and measurement used in contemporary reports. KBS WORLD News/YouTube Her clothing matched what she had worn when last seen, and her phone was found nearby. DNA testing subsequently confirmed the body was Jang. She had been missing for 104 days. Valentinex97 NoofHadi41273 Police initially said the position of the remains suggested a possible hanging and that there were no obvious indications of another person being the culprit. Because of the advanced decomposition, however, the precise cause could not be determined. Pavel Danilyuk/Pexels (Not the actual image) Once investigators began examining Bu’s work, the scale became difficult to comprehend. He had worked on the missing-persons team at Jeju Western Police Station from March 10, 2025, until July 23, 2026. During that period, records showed that he closed 298 missing-person cases. KOREA NOW/YouTube That was roughly three times the simple average for individual officers, although some reports had initially been worked by several people before Bu formally closed them. The system at the time allowed an officer to close such reports without a supervisor’s authorization. zivvydoo oceanTae12 Acting National Police Commissioner Yoo Jae-seong later acknowledged that this was both an individual and institutional failure. “We will examine the entire system and make institutional improvements so that this never happens again,” he told lawmakers. Four officers in Bu’s chain of command, including senior figures at Jeju Western Police Station, were removed from their duties while investigators examined how the practice had gone unnoticed. Ayşenaz Bilgin/Pexels (Not the actual image) By September 1, Jeju police said they had identified 25 additional cases containing suspected false closures or falsified records. In 10 cases, Bu allegedly closed the investigation without contacting the person reported missing or otherwise confirming that person’s safety. Fortunately, investigators later located all 10 alive. cottonbro studio/Pexels (Not the actual image) Another 15 people were also alive, and their whereabouts had actually been confirmed. But Bu had reportedly entered false reasons such as accidents, homicides or other casualties to remove their cases from the profiling system. When questioned, Bu eventually admitted that he had not contacted the missing people in the cases at the center of the scandal. 5ozmp Santos366712 According to police, he said he regarded the missing people as ordinary adults who would probably return on their own and wanted to avoid the additional work involved in keeping cases open and properly transferring them. “Bu said he had been complacent because the missing people were ordinary adults and that he falsely closed the cases because he felt burdened by the work involved in handling cases that remained open,” a Jeju police official said. ViiV_333/X Bu was taken into emergency custody in late August on suspicion of dereliction of duty, falsifying and using official electronic records, and obstructing official duties through deception. A court initially ordered his release after finding that the emergency arrest did not satisfy the legal requirement for urgency. Authorities subsequently obtained a detention warrant, and Bu was sent to prosecutors in custody on September 1. By the time Bu was arrested, anger among the families had reached a boiling point. A video from the scene went viral online, showing enraged relatives confronting the officer as police escorted him through a crowd. One particular relative surged toward Bu, shouting and attempting to reach him while officers restrained him. At some point, the man breaks free and starts desperately running behind the police vehicle carrying Bu. KBS WORLD News/YouTube The scandal soon reached President Lee Jae Myung, who warned that South Korea was preparing to give police considerably greater investigative authority at precisely the moment the Jeju case was exposing serious weaknesses in internal accountability. “Police are likely to wield the greatest power among state institutions,” Lee said. “Responsibility must be strengthened in proportion to the size of the authority.” JoeSaraza BlueskiedC That concern was particularly sensitive because reforms had stripped prosecutors of their remaining investigative powers, leaving police positioned to assume a substantially larger role beginning in October. If one officer could falsely terminate missing-person cases for months without a supervisor noticing, critics asked what would happen when the institution received even greater authority. KBS WORLD News/YouTube At the time of writing, Jeju authorities have announced reforms including stronger supervisory controls and changes intended to preserve surveillance footage for longer periods. National police also ordered supervisory approval for missing-person case closures while the electronic system is redesigned. The consequences have expanded far beyond the 298 reports assigned to Bu. South Korean authorities have announced reviews of hundreds of thousands of previously closed missing-person cases as they search for similar failures elsewhere. AlHendiify carmine_dead JswagSharon debikeyks Poo_Charinrat FLRoofKoreanv2 BARKcast thechadsenate Chimchim101315 rbpea1993
