15 adults still missing in Jeju as experts warn of legal void for adult disappearances

Adult disappearances in Jeju have outnumbered those involving children by more than two to one over the past three years and seven months, with 15 adults reported missing still unaccounted for, according to authorities.

Experts say adult missing cases fall into a legal void because police treat them as runaways, and are calling for the enactment of a dedicated law covering adult disappearances.

According to the Jeju Provincial Police Agency and Yonhap, missing-person reports involving adults aged 18 or older totaled 944 in 2023, 814 in 2024 and 786 in 2025. Through the end of last month, another 370 cases had been filed this year, bringing the cumulative total since 2023 to 2,914.

That figure is more than double the 1,341 missing-person reports involving children under 18 filed during the same period.

Of those still unlocated since their disappearances were reported, 15 are adults — five times the three children under 18 who remain missing.

Jang Mi-ran, 37, who disappeared in Jeju on the night of May 12, has been missing for more than three months with no trace of her whereabouts.

Lee Geon-su, a professor at Baekseok University's Department of Police Studies and a recognized authority on missing-persons investigations, said in a recent interview that South Korea needs a dedicated adult missing-persons law. "We need to institutionalize how to handle, search for and close cases when an adult goes missing," Lee said.

Under current law — the Act on the Protection of and Support for Missing Children — police handle disappearances involving children under 18, people with intellectual disabilities and dementia patients, but there is no equivalent legal framework for missing adults.

"When an adult is reported missing, police approach the case as a runaway under the 'Runaway Handling Rules,' which makes systematic investigation and timely response difficult," Lee said, adding that countries such as the United States and Canada operate missing-persons laws with no age restrictions.

Lee also pointed to the 2019 case in which Ko Yu-jeong murdered her ex-husband, noting that police initially treated his disappearance as a runaway case and were slow to act.

Profiler Bae Sang-hun cited a disappearance case involving a student named Lee Yun-hui at Jeonbuk National University 20 years ago, in which deleted computer records raised questions about who had erased the data and why. "Unless police disclose the information, there is no way to know — which is why a third-party body needs to be involved in verifying such cases," Bae said.

In the Jeju case, a missing-person report for Jang was filed with police at around 6:43 p.m. on May 15, but the officer in charge, identified only as Officer A, closed the case on his own roughly two and a half hours later at around 9:16 p.m.

Officer A is under investigation on suspicion of closing the case without verifying Jang's safety — including by phone — and without reporting to superiors. He is also suspected of failing to enter the relevant information into the missing-persons profiling system.