'Too shocking, unacceptable way of handling cases … systemic problem within police'

'I don't see it as: prosecutors do it right, police always get it wrong'

Prime Minister Han Seong-sook speaks at a Government Website UI/UX Committee meeting at Government Complex Seoul on Thursday. [Yonhap]
Prime Minister Han Seong-sook speaks at a Government Website UI/UX Committee meeting at Government Complex Seoul on Thursday. [Yonhap]

Prime Minister Han Seong-sook said Thursday that the police's broader organizational culture must undergo sweeping reform in the wake of a scandal over the false closure of a missing-persons case.

Speaking to reporters at Government Complex Seoul, Han said the problems with how the case was handled — the procedures, sequence and methods involved — were serious enough to demand a thorough fix.

She called the entire sequence of events, from the false closure of the missing-persons report to the recent discovery of the victim's body, "too shocking," adding that the way the case was handled was something "even an ordinary citizen would find impossible to accept."

Han said she had directed the police to swiftly improve the systems governing missing-persons cases, revise relevant regulations without delay, and take a more proactive approach to resolving the problems — including separating the personnel responsible for handling cases from those responsible for closing them.

Earlier, Han had instructed the Korean National Police Agency to conduct a thorough review of all missing-persons cases, take strict action against any instances of improper or unlawful handling, and introduce institutional reforms including separating the officers who handle cases from those who close them.

Han also weighed in on the creation of a police reform body — a measure President Lee Jae Myung had directed her office to establish at a Cabinet meeting — saying she believed such a body should be set up outside the police organization itself.

"Can reform really happen from the inside right now? Reform must come in a form that anyone, upon hearing it, would find convincing," she said. "Internal mechanisms, measures and changes are needed, but if the goal is a body that looks at the whole picture, I don't think it can sit inside the organization."

She also noted that the volume of reports was "no small number" and that developing investigative guidelines would likely be necessary, but added that "everyone has now come to understand that handling cases single-handedly is not the right approach."

Han pushed back, however, against attempts to link the scandal to the abolition of prosecutors' supplementary investigative authority, saying the issue was "a systemic problem within the police." "As I said during the National Assembly budget committee session, I don't see it as: prosecutors do everything right and police always get it wrong," she said.


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