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The Jeju Police Agency announced on the 1st that a sergeant arrested for falsely closing missing person reports committed the act due to work-related stress. The sergeant believed the missing individuals were typical adults and thought lightly of the situation, stating that the burden of many tasks to handle if the cases remained open led to the false closures.
During the investigation, police confirmed that out of the 298 cases handled by the sergeant, 25 were falsely closed. Among these, 10 cases were processed in a manner similar to that of the Jang case, while the remaining 15 cases involved confirming the whereabouts of the missing persons but falsely recorded them as 'deceased' to remove them from the list.
The Jeju Police Agency has referred the sergeant to the Jeju District Prosecutor's Office on charges of neglect of duty, forgery and use of public documents, and obstruction of official duties. The sergeant is accused of falsely claiming to have contacted Jang, who was reported missing in May, to close the case and inputting 'traffic accident death' into the profiling system. Police plan to conduct a thorough investigation into additional false closure cases even after the referral to the prosecution.