(LEAD) Jeju police officer suspected of falsely closing 25 more missing person cases

Jeju police officer arrested for falsely closing two missing person cases may have been responsible for 25 additional instances of false closures, authorities confirmed on Tuesday. The corporal, whose name has not been disclosed, faces charges of dereliction of duty and forgery after being referred to prosecutors.

During a media briefing, the Jeju Provincial Police Agency revealed that the officer admitted to closing these cases to avoid a heavier workload. He claimed that the missing persons were ordinary adults, and the cases were burdensome to handle if they remained open.

The officer is accused of closing the case of a missing woman, identified only as Jang, in May without confirming her safety and erasing her details from the police's missing persons profiling system. Her body was discovered on Jeju Island on August 24th. Another case of premature closure occurred in July, concerning a man in his 60s whose body was found on August 22nd.

Initially, the officer claimed he had contacted the missing persons but later admitted to lying when the police investigation commenced. The investigation has uncovered 25 additional suspected cases of false closures among 298 cases handled by the officer from March last year to July this year while serving at the Jeju Seobu Police Station's missing persons team.

In 10 of these cases, the officer is suspected of closing the cases without verifying the missing persons' whereabouts, though all were eventually found safe. The remaining 15 cases involved the officer deleting records after entering reasons such as death by traffic accident or unnatural death.