Temporary Security Measures Without “Investigation”

Police investigations are currently underway on a large scale as a string of missing person stories are being reported across the country following the murder case of female school students who were found dead in Pochon lately after being reported missing. However, police officers working in the first line criticized the measures as “a makeshift attempt that does not thoroughly take the police manpower situation and efficiency into consideration.” They said that more fundamental measures have to be taken urgently through the reform of the system, rather than just showing up as a temporary event.

-Simultaneous searching that seems like a momentary action

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency (SMPA) lately issued orders to its police offices that they will have to work closely with the press and publicly advertise the scene of their in-depth search applying rescue dogs.

According to the orders, the policemen should search suspected areas by mobilizing local patrol units, women and youth divisions, the criminal division and the 112 special team as soon as the missing reports are received. The problem, however, is that this event-looking search is apparently not helpful at all to either chasing the suspects or finding the missing people.

“Such temporary actions have been more than increasing recently,” said police officers. “The event-like searching will result in the waste of manpower, which most police offices are currently suffering.”

Furthermore, it is still doubtful that “a notice of searching within a designated period” would bring an efficient result. Once the search action is widely known, there will be a preventive effect of murders during the period (one week).

Yet, unauthorized facilities that keep the missing children illegally, or the murderers, known as “aengburie,” who force children to beg for money, will be offered more opportunities to hide themselves from the police officers’ investigation.

-Fundamental measures needed

Collaboration between the relevant agencies is also in bad shape. The Ministry of Health and Welfare reported that accommodations for children and adolescents, including unauthorized facilities, numbered 1,200, whereas the SMPA counted them as 3,000. The most likely place where the missing children or adolescents can be found is in unauthorized accommodations. But the two mainly responsible authorities are not even coinciding with the key numbers of the accommodations.

In such situations, it is getting more difficult to take basic steps, such as registering records of children held at accommodations, let alone launching an investigation into the unauthorized facilities.

In addition, the legal system of the involved division in the police agency is also unclear. At present, it is the women and youth division that takes charge of missing cases. However, this division actually does not exist in “the article of the structure of public servants.” As murders targeting women and children were sharply increasing, the SMPA founded it on February 2002 as a temporary division, but has yet to receive an approval from the Ministry of Government Administration.

Since it is not a legal division, input of manpower is essentially impossible. These days, the women and youth division is operated by the police officers who belong to other divisions. Therefore, it is hard to expect a sense of duty or specialty from the officers who temporarily work for the division.

“While treating the missing children and disappearance cases, the involved agencies indeed have failed to work cooperatively,” said Lee Kum-hyung, a director of the women and youth division of the SMPA. “We are in the middle of finding measures to address this.”

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