Public Rage Erupts over Attempted Abduction Probe

○ Police bombarded with angry calls

Police in the northern Seoul suburb of Goyang are under fire for allegedly mishandling an attempted kidnapping of a schoolgirl last week.

In the Goyang district of Ilsan, angry citizens made an avalanche of phone calls to the district police station, crying negligence and mishandling of the case.

Officers failed to secure surveillance video of an unidentified man beating and threatening the 10-year-old girl in an apartment building. Police also reported the case as simple assault, indicating flaws in their initial investigation.

An Ilsan Police Station source said, “We have received hundreds of telephone complaints and responding to them has almost paralyzed other work at our station. Many people said all involved in the investigation should be fired because of their slack initial response.”

Many of the callers were housewives.

One of them who has a daughter in elementary school said, “It seems like the only thing police ever do nowadays is retrieving dead bodies. Do they take action only after a crime or accident takes place?”

A resident of the apartment complex where the attempted abduction took place said, “Any parent who has a daughter is sensitive to incidents of kidnapping or sexual abuse. Policemen also have daughters. I’m sure they wouldn’t want to put the safety of our girls at risk after seeing what happened to Hye-jin and Ye-seul (two schoolgirls who went missing last year and were later found murdered).”

An Ilsan police source said, “Most of the callers simply phoned to cuss at police. We have no one but ourselves to blame since the incident occurred from our complacency.”

○ Pres. Lee blasts Ilsan police

President Lee Myung-bak visited Ilsan Police Station Monday afternoon to receive a report on the incident from Ilsan police chief Lee Ki-tae.

Lee Ki-tae said, “Some in the frontlines of the investigation confused the incident as an assault case, which delayed the initial investigation.”

This did not appease the president, who responded, “It is simply absurd that police treated the incident as an assault case even when the victim was a young girl. Police also tried to cover up the case out of complacency.”

President Lee also criticized policemen on duty for failing to remember how precious life is, saying, “Police take action only after the crime takes its toll on the victims. This ‘doctor after death’ mentality reflects police complacency and I came here to personally urge you to break free from such a mindset.”

“Parents will always live in fear if you keep showing negligence in cases like this.”

With a stern look on his face during his visit, the president continued to slam Ilsan police for mishandling the case. He ordered them to find the suspect as soon as possible.

Ilsan Police Chief Lee later apologized to President Lee.

○ Investigation at deadlock

Korea National Police Agency Commissioner General Eo Cheong-soo also visited the investigation’s headquarters in the afternoon, but no progress was made.

Three hundred officers at Ilsan Police Station are searching for the suspect by perusing criminal records to identify him.

Police said it had difficulty in the identification process as the fingerprints collected by forensics at the site were unclear.

They secured a witness, however, who said she saw someone resembling the suspect Wednesday.

The witness, a female teacher who lives in an apartment building five minutes away from the scene, said, “Around 9 p.m. Wednesday, someone who resembled the suspect on the video approached me in a threatening way at the entrance of the apartment building.

“I was able to take off with the help of neighbors. I was all the more surprised when the man in the picture I’d seen on TV had similar clothing and hairstyle to the person I saw [Wednesday evening].”

Police have also launched an internal investigation into the mishandling of the case and the slack response.