That image of trust and safety is now being shaken as a botched missing-person investigation, revelations of falsified police case records and a wave of crime fears raise concern that the resort island's reputation could begin to hurt its tourism industry.
South Korea's resort island of Jeju is facing growing concern that a scandal over a falsely closed missing-person case and mounting fears about crime could inflict fresh damage on its tourism industry, as travelers post about canceling trips and the island struggles to defend its long-cultivated image as a safe holiday destination.
The anxiety has intensified since the case of Jang Mi-ran, a 37-year-old woman who disappeared from Hallim-eup in Jeju City in May and was found dead 104 days later after the police officer initially assigned to her disappearance falsely closed the case.
Jang left the accommodation where she had been staying at about 10:15 p.m. on May 12. Her boyfriend reported her missing three days later.
But the officer handling the case told the boyfriend that he had contacted Jang and that she was safe but did not want her location disclosed. Investigators later found that no such call had taken place. The officer closed the case about 2 1/2 hours after the report and deleted Jang from the police missing-person profiling system.
When Jang's boyfriend tried to report her missing again in July, the earlier record hindered a new report. Her family subsequently filed another report, triggering a renewed search, but by then much of the nearby CCTV footage that could have reconstructed her movements had been automatically erased.
Her body was eventually found Aug. 24 at a palm-tree farm roughly 1 kilometer from the accommodation. Police formally confirmed her identity the following day. Investigators have said they consider the possibility of foul play low and believe she may have died shortly after disappearing, with evidence suggesting death by hanging.
The scandal became more serious after police found that Jang's case was not an isolated instance of improper handling.
The same officer was accused of falsely closing the disappearance of a man in his 60s, who was also later found dead. A review of 298 missing-person cases handled by the officer uncovered 25 additional suspicious cases, according to the Jeju Provincial Police Agency. In 10, the officer allegedly closed cases without actually confirming the missing person's whereabouts. In another 15, police said false reasons for closure were entered into the system. The officer was sent to prosecutors in custody on Sept. 1 on charges including dereliction of duty, falsifying official electronic records and obstruction of official duties.
The revelations landed particularly hard on Jeju because tourism depends not only on beaches, volcanic landscapes and resort infrastructure, but also on perceptions of personal safety.
Korean media monitoring social networks and online communities found users saying they were reconsidering or canceling planned trips. One post said the writer intended to cancel a September family trip, while others said they would avoid isolated volcanic cones, coastal roads and sparsely populated areas and would stay inside their accommodations after dark. A pension in Hallim reportedly received more than 10 cancellations in about a week after the Jang case drew widespread attention.
Some of the reaction has gone much further.
An AI-generated Instagram video portraying Jeju as a crime-filled version of the video game "Grand Theft Auto" drew more than 200,000 views, while the term "Gyulbodia" began circulating online, combining gyul, the Korean word for mandarin orange, with Cambodia in an apparent reference to recent crime fears associated with that country.
Unsubstantiated claims have also spread that about 1,000 adults disappear on Jeju each year or that an organ-trafficking organization operates on the island. Authorities and media fact checks have found no evidence supporting such claims.
The distinction is important because the official numbers present a more complicated picture than either side of the online debate suggests.
Jeju does, in fact, record the highest crime rate among South Korea's 17 provinces and metropolitan cities under the government's standard population-based measure.
In 2024, Jeju recorded 4,539.6 crimes per 100,000 people, according to government statistics based on prosecution crime data. That was about 36 percent above the national average of 3,342.9 and substantially higher than South Jeolla Province, the second-highest region at 3,859.8. Busan recorded 3,845.8, while Ulsan had the lowest figure at 1,727.4.
Yet that calculation divides crimes committed on the island by its resident population, without adding the millions of tourists who visit each year to the denominator.
That matters in Jeju more than almost anywhere else in South Korea. The island has fewer than 700,000 residents but receives well over 10 million visitors annually, meaning tourists contribute both to the population exposed to crime and potentially to the number of crimes recorded, without being counted as residents when the crime rate is calculated.
A recent SBS analysis of 2024 police data also found that the picture changed when crime was examined at a more granular local level. Jeju remained relatively high overall but ranked 27th for serious offenses such as murder, robbery and rape, while fraud and offenses including assault, threats and property damage were major contributors to its overall crime figures.
That does not erase the island's crime problem, but it complicates social-media descriptions of Jeju as exceptionally dangerous to visitors.
The immediate economic concern is whether perception overtakes that nuance.
That timeline means the downturn cannot simply be attributed to the missing-person scandal. Reduced airline capacity, higher travel costs and growing demand for overseas travel had already been weighing on Jeju.
Still, the pattern late in August has attracted attention. Domestic arrivals were lower than a year earlier for seven consecutive days from Aug. 25 through the end of the month, with declines widening to about 12 to 13 percent over the final three days, shortly after Jang's body was discovered and the police scandal dominated national news. There is not yet enough evidence to establish a causal relationship.
Tourism officials have therefore warned against interpreting the latest decline solely as a crime-driven flight from Jeju. Figures for Aug. 1-29 showed total tourist arrivals still up 1.1 percent year on year as foreign arrivals offset a 1.9 percent decline among domestic travelers. Industry officials also said there had been no evidence of mass cancellations across the island.
But the risk to Jeju is less about a single month's visitor count than about its reputation.
Jeju authorities have begun monitoring online discussion of crime and safety and announced measures aimed at improving protection for visitors, including faster reporting systems involving lodging and rental-car businesses and expanded emergency and location information at tourist destinations.
The task is complicated by the fact that authorities are fighting two problems at once: a genuine failure of police oversight that has damaged public trust, and an expanding body of online rumors that exaggerate unrelated deaths or unverified claims into a narrative of an island overrun by crime.
For an economy heavily dependent on visitors, even an inaccurate perception can carry a real price. The question for Jeju is whether it can restore trust in its policing quickly enough to prevent its safety problem from becoming a tourism problem.
AJP Takeaways
- Jeju's tourism industry faces fresh reputational risks as recent disappearance cases, allegations of police misconduct and viral crime-related content fuel perceptions that the island has become less safe.
- Despite the growing public anxiety, official crime statistics do not show Jeju as exceptionally dangerous compared with other major regions of South Korea.
- Tourism officials and local authorities face pressure to restore confidence in Jeju, whose image as a peaceful "Sammoo" island has long been central to its tourism brand.
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