▲ Prime Minister Han Seong-sook (Yonhap)

SEOUL, Aug. 27 (Yonhap) -- Prime Minister Han Seong-sook called for measures Thursday to reform the way police handle missing person cases and to overhaul the agency's "organizational culture" amid public outrage over revelations an officer prematurely closed at least two cases with false reports the victims have been confirmed safe.

Two people -- one of them a woman in her 30s and the other a man in his 60s -- were both found dead over the past week, months after they were reported missing on the southern island of Jeju, and the officer in question has been arrested for falsely closing their cases.

The revelations raised concerns that missing person cases are not investigated seriously and other cases could have been closed in a similar manner, largely because the vast majority of those reported missing return safely. Since the revelations, police have been looking into the handling of all missing person cases across the nation.

Earlier this week, President Lee Jae Myung also called for the establishment of an organization tasked with reforming police as the massive law enforcement agency is set to take over greater roles in the wake of a reform measure stripping prosecutors of the right to conduct investigations on their own.

On Thursday, the prime minister said she has called in the acting national police chief and other senior police officials and asked them to come up with measures to overhaul the missing person investigation system and more fundamentally, the organizational culture within the police.

"There are serious problems with the procedures, sequences and the ways they deal with things and I believe we have to set these straight," Han told reporters, calling the false closing of the missing person cases "very shocking" and "hard to accept."

Han said the envisioned organization for police reform is expected to be established outside the police.

"Would it be possible to carry out reforms on their own? Reform measures should sound acceptable to whoever hears them," she said. "I think it would be difficult for the organization to be within the agency."

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