President Lee Jae-myung on the 1st urged officials to make clear who bears ultimate responsibility in connection with the missing-person case.
Presiding over a Cabinet meeting that morning, Lee said, "Don't we deliberately call ourselves a 'government that saves lives'?"
Referring to the Jeju missing-person case, Lee said, "There are cases where people do not live out their natural life span, such as accidental death, industrial accidents, suicide, and lonely death, and we have statistics and systems for them." He added, "How about including missing persons in this 'category'? (A missing-person case is also) a type of abnormal death where one does not live out the natural life span."
Lee stressed, "Let's make the ultimate responsibility clear, compile numerical statistics, and turn them into graphs to check items like 'deaths within one year after going missing' or 'case closed after a disappearance,' and pay special attention to missing-person cases."