SEOUL, August 26 (AJP) - Jeju, long known as South Korea's favorite resort island, has lately been making headlines for grimmer reasons: missing-person cases ending in death, abandoned searches and allegations of police misconduct.
The string of cases has turned a local policing scandal into a broader reckoning over whether South Korea's already powerful police force is ready to take on even greater investigative authority.
With the country set to abolish its current prosecution service on Oct. 2, repeated cases of botched police investigations and alleged manipulation of official records are sharpening concerns over who will keep police power in check once prosecutors lose their supplementary investigation authority.
At the center of the latest controversy is the case of 37-year-old Jang Mi-ran, who disappeared on Jeju in May.
A police officer allegedly closed her missing-person case just hours after it was reported, claiming to have contacted Jang and saying she did not want her location disclosed to her boyfriend.
Investigators later found no record of such a call. The officer also entered "death in a traffic accident" as the reason for closing the case in a police database, effectively removing Jang from the list of people being actively sought.
Jang was later found dead.
Authorities are investigating whether the false entry was intended to conceal the mishandling of the case. The officer was arrested Tuesday on charges including dereliction of duty.
The case became still more troubling after police failed to preserve a recording of the initial emergency call.
The recording was automatically deleted after its three-month retention period expired, even though the officer had already been booked five days earlier, raising questions over why potentially important evidence was not secured.
Jeju's missing-person cases have landed at an especially sensitive moment for South Korea's criminal justice system.
The current prosecution service is due to disappear on Oct. 2 as part of President Lee Jae Myung's prosecution reform drive. Prosecutors will also lose the power to conduct supplementary investigations themselves, leaving them to request further police investigation when they find shortcomings in cases sent for indictment.
The change has revived a long-running debate over whether stripping prosecutors of investigative authority will curb abuses by an institution once criticized for wielding excessive power or simply shift too much authority to the police.
President Lee himself acknowledged the danger Tuesday.
He said problems involving lax police discipline and irresponsibility in public safety had become "serious" and warned that the police could soon wield the greatest power among state agencies.
Lee called for a new government body to oversee police reform, arguing that greater authority must come with greater accountability.
The opposition People Power Party (PPP) seized on the Jeju case to renew its attack on the ruling Democratic Party's decision to eliminate prosecutors' supplementary investigation authority.
"Even with supplementary investigation authority still in place, police have carried out botched investigations into missing-person cases and filed false reports. I am concerned that such problems will become even more serious once prosecutors lose their supplementary investigation authority and can no longer keep the police in check," said Rep. Yoo Sang-bum, a former chief prosecutor.
Rep. Kang Myoung-gu, the PPP secretary on the National Assembly's Public Administration and Security Committee, called the Jeju case "a collapse of Korea's investigative system."
"The police have exposed systemic failures and continue to lose public trust. No matter how much the police try to reform themselves internally, such reforms will have little practical effect without an external system of checks and balances," Kang said.
He said he would scrutinize the issue during the upcoming parliamentary audit and called for the abolition of prosecutors' supplementary investigation authority to be reconsidered "from the ground up."
Rep. Jin Jong-oh, another member of the committee, accused the Democratic Party of trying to repair a problem created by its own prosecution reform.
"The Democratic Party, which pushed through the abolition of prosecutors' supplementary investigation authority, is now engaging in a self-defeating farce by setting up a task force to improve police investigations," Jin said.
"I condemn the Democratic Party for its hasty policymaking, the consequences of which will ultimately be borne entirely by the public," he added.
The ruling party argues that the answer lies not in preserving prosecutors' old powers but in building stronger checks on police.
Rep. Kim Young-bae of the Democratic Party, also a member of the committee, said the Jeju case should be treated as a systemic failure rather than the misconduct of a single officer.
"The Jeju case is not merely a matter of individual misconduct but a problem with the system for handling missing-person cases, and it must be addressed promptly," Kim said.
"We are aware of public concerns that prosecution reform could lead to an excessive concentration of power in the police," he said. "As the president has also called for police reform, we will use the upcoming parliamentary audit to closely examine shortcomings in Korea's criminal justice system and work to address them."
The Jeju cases have therefore opened a difficult second front in South Korea's prosecution reform. The government set out to dismantle a prosecution system long accused of concentrating too much investigative and prosecutorial power in one institution.
The deaths and alleged failures on Jeju are now forcing policymakers to confront the other side of that reform - how to prevent the concentration of power from simply moving elsewhere.
The public-security fallout is adding to worsening sentiment toward the government. Lee's approval rating fell below 40 percent for the first time since he took office in June last year, with a Jowon C&I poll released Wednesday putting support at 38.9 percent and disapproval at 57.9 percent, underscoring the political stakes as concerns grow over police accountability and the government's criminal-justice overhaul.
AJP Takeaways
- Jeju missing-person cases ending in deaths and allegations of falsified police records are intensifying scrutiny of South Korea's police ahead of a major redistribution of investigative power.
- South Korea will abolish its current prosecution service on Oct. 2, while prosecutors will lose supplementary investigation authority and become more dependent on police to correct shortcomings in criminal investigations.
- President Lee Jae Myung has warned that police could become the country's most powerful state agency and called for a new police reform body as concerns grow over accountability and oversight.
Copyright ⓒ Aju Press All rights reserved.
