Missing-person reports in South Korea have risen every year, yet the police budget for missing-person work has fallen this year. Roughly 70,000 reports involving adults are filed annually, but because Korean law contains no legal concept of an adult going missing, there is effectively no budget attached to those cases. The death of a woman surnamed Chang after she went missing has exposed blind spots in the current response system, fueling calls for lawmakers to move quickly on legislation such as an adult missing-persons act.
Missing-person reports totaled 227,638 last year, the most in five years, the Korean National Police Agency said on the 27th. That was 29.1% higher than the 176,288 reports filed in 2021. Reports jumped to 210,869 in 2022, then reached 222,867 in 2023 and 216,733 in 2024, staying well above 200,000 for several years.
By contrast, an analysis of the police agency's 2026 budget program documents showed that funding for its missing-person prevention and rapid-discovery program stands at 2.014 billion won this year, down 19.9% from 2.514 billion won a year earlier. Spending on the program to find missing children and runaways fell 44.5% to 635 million won from 1.145 billion won. That money pays for genetic analysis used to locate children missing long-term and adoptees sent overseas, and for operating the Missing Children Center. Meal allowances for officers deployed to lengthy field searches also fell 15.5%, to 109 million won from 129 million won.
General adult cases are effectively excluded from this budget structure. The law that provides the legal basis for these programs, the Act on the Protection and Support of Missing Children, limits its definition of missing children to those under 18, people with disabilities including intellectual disabilities, and dementia patients. Adults are not covered. Korean law also has no separate concept of an adult going missing. Police handle reports involving those 18 and over as runaways, under internal agency rules. With no legal basis, it is structurally difficult to assign a dedicated investigation team or allocate a budget solely for adult cases. That institutional gap surfaced in the handling of Chang's case. Police belatedly tried to send out a missing-person alert text message to help find her, but adults are not eligible recipients under the system.
About 70,000 reports involving missing adults are filed each year, and roughly 1,000 of those people are found dead. Through July of this year, 41,894 reports had been filed, leaving open the possibility that the total will exceed last year's level if the pace continues. With Chang's case highlighting the limits of the response system for adults, the National Assembly is also moving faster on legislation. Han Byeong-do, floor leader of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, said the same day that "the need to address a long-standing legislative task, the absence of an adult missing-persons law, is being brought back into focus," adding, "We will move quickly to take up the relevant bills in this regular session."
Controversy over the police response to Chang's case has continued. Ko Pyung-ki, commissioner of the Jeju Provincial Police Agency, apologized at a morning meeting of senior officers the same day, saying, "Not only did police, who are responsible for the lives and safety of the public, abandon that duty, we inflicted indelible wounds on the family through false words and actions." The commissioner said the agency would review missing-person cases across Jeju. The apology came 13 days after a senior officer surnamed Boo was booked on suspicion of falsely closing Chang's case.
Separately, an autopsy examination by the National Forensic Service found no unusual fractures that would suggest homicide. A fracture was identified in the hyoid bone, but the service said the possibility that it occurred during post-mortem decomposition could not be ruled out. On the cause of death, the service offered the opinion that "hanging can be considered a possibility."
