Evidence has emerged suggesting that the police decision to conduct separate investigations into the Jang Yun-gi case — which involves both murder and sex crimes — was reviewed at or above the working level of the Korean National Police Agency's (KNPA) National Investigation Headquarters.
According to Yonhap, the criminal investigations division of Gwangju's Gwangsan Police Station requested on May 8 that the National Investigation Headquarters consolidate its probes into two crimes committed by Jang Yun-gi (23) — the sexual assault of a woman and the killing of a female high school student — which took place two days apart between May 3 and May 5.
The request was conveyed through communications between working-level officials at the Gwangju Metropolitan Police Agency's violent crimes unit and the National Investigation Headquarters' violent crimes investigation unit.
May 8 was also the day the sexual assault case against Jang was assigned to Gwangsan Station's women and youth division.
The request to consolidate the cases was repeated multiple times over three days, through messenger exchanges between the heads of the Gwangju agency's violent crimes unit and the National Investigation Headquarters' violent crimes investigation unit, as well as three official reports. After reviewing the progress of the sexual assault investigation — which had begun later than the murder investigation due to the time gap between the two incidents — the National Investigation Headquarters ultimately ordered Gwangsan Station to conduct the probes separately. The headquarters determined that completing the sexual assault case within the 10-day detention investigation period would be difficult, given that it had advanced less than the murder case. The relatively limited progress on the sexual assault case made it unlikely the investigation could be wrapped up within that window.
During this process, a National Investigation Headquarters staff member told the criminal investigations division and the women and youth division that "leadership guidelines would need to be obtained," and separately requested updates on the status of each division's investigation.
A police special investigation unit and the Gwangju District Prosecutors' Office, both simultaneously looking into the circumstances of the Jang Yun-gi case, are investigating the precise chain of events behind the decision to split the probe, based on a series of communications in which "National Investigation Headquarters leadership guidelines" were mentioned.
An official from the National Investigation Headquarters' violent crimes investigation division told reporters at the KNPA on Tuesday that the question of whether to separate the investigations "is a procedural matter" and "not unusual."
The two cases were sent to prosecutors separately — the murder charge on May 14 and the sexual assault charge eight days later, on May 22.
yckim6452@heraldcorp.com
