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Police, Facebook send out amber alert to find lost children

Police, Facebook send out amber alert to find lost children

Posted August. 06, 2015 07:19,   

한국어

A mother living in Gyeonggi Province logged on to Facebook via her smartphone Tuesday afternoon and was surprised to see an alert message. The Facebook’s News Feed section posted a photo of a little girl with a message “Missing child.”

“A girl named Kim Soo-jin, seven years old, was last seen in Jangan District in Suwon City, Gyeonggi Province on Tuesday, August 4, 2015. If you have any information about her please call 182.” There was a button, when clicked, can enable people to report on Facebook. The woman said, “I felt a keen urgency since only a few hours had passed since the child was reported missing. I also have children, and I looked carefully at the face of the missing girl.”

The National Policy Agency and Facebook have jointly started the missing child alert service on Facebook from July 22. Once the missing report is registered, an alert is sent to Facebook users within the 160-kilometer radius after getting consent from the guardian. In the latest alert case, hundreds of thousands of Facebook users living in Seoul and its metropolitan area become agents looking for the lost child. The U.S., Canada and the Netherlands first introduced this system in January this year, and Korea is the fourth country in the world, and the first Asian country, adopting it.

The power of social networking service was huge. People living within the 160-kilometer radius spread the news to their acquaintances. In just four hours, at 6:50 p.m., police found the missing child at a large retail store, 1 kilometer away from the location the child was found missing. A “child found” message appeared at Facebook. A police official said, “Though they were not decisive, many people asked to verify whether the children they saw were the missing child.”

In Korea, around 20,000 children are reported missing every year. The likelihood to find the missing child drops sharply when 24 hours pass. The first 24 hours following the disappearance of a child are the most critical in terms of finding that child. “Given the huge impact of social networking sites, we expect them to play a big role in finding lost child,” said Lee Gwang-seok, an official at the National Police Agency.



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