JEJU, South Korea — A police officer suspected of closing a missing person case without confirming the missing woman's safety has been placed under emergency arrest, police said Sunday.

The officer was detained without a warrant a day earlier on suspicion of dereliction of duty, falsifying official electronic records, and obstruction of official duties through deceptive means, according to the Jeju Provincial Police Agency. The electronic-records charge is South Korea's digital counterpart to forging public documents, and it is significant in a police context because case files and closure records are kept in official electronic systems.

Under South Korean criminal procedure, an emergency arrest permits police to detain a suspect without a court-issued warrant in limited circumstances, such as when there is reason to fear flight or the destruction of evidence; authorities must then promptly seek a formal detention warrant from a court or release the detainee.

The emergency arrest came after it was found that the officer had closed another missing person case prematurely — a fact brought to light by the discovery of the man's body on Saturday. Once a missing-person report is recorded as resolved, active searching is typically wound down, which is what makes verifying a missing person's safety the decisive check before a file is closed.

The woman, identified as 37-year-old Jang Mi-ran, remains missing more than three months after her family first reported her disappearance in May. In South Korea, missing-person reports are filed with and initially investigated by local police stations, while the National Police Agency maintains nationwide missing-person records used to track open cases.

In both cases, the officer is suspected of arbitrarily closing the files after telling the families that the missing people were safe.

The officer has claimed that he closed Jang's case after reporting to his supervisors that he had spoken with her, but a recent investigation found no call records between the two, according to police.

Police and the Coast Guard launched a full-scale search for Jang on Thursday, with operations concentrated at Hallim Harbor on Jeju. Jeju is South Korea's largest island, located off the southern coast of the Korean Peninsula, and maritime search operations there are typically carried out by the Korea Coast Guard in coordination with the National Police Agency.

Source: The Korea Times