Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency - Woori Bank, MOU for Missing Children Prevention... Preferential Savings for Fingerprint Pre-Registration

[Asia Economy Reporter Seongpil Cho] The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency announced on the 15th that it has signed a business agreement with Woori Bank to prevent missing children and others.

Through the agreement, the two organizations agreed to cooperate in promotion and prevention activities to activate the 'Fingerprint Pre-registration System,' which is effective for the early detection and prevention of missing children and others. Woori Bank also launched a regular savings account (interest rate 4.1%) for those who have pre-registered fingerprints (children under 18, intellectually disabled persons, and dementia patients). Additionally, the two organizations plan to jointly produce missing children prevention content (Pinkfong, Baby Shark, etc.) and release it on SNS and other platforms.

The business agreement between the two organizations comes as the number of missing person reports has sharply increased due to the rise in face-to-face activities following the decline of the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of missing person reports in the Seoul area increased by 7.1%, from 7,918 cases in 2020 to 8,479 cases last year. As of August this year, there were 7,797 cases, a 42.5% increase compared to the same period last year.

On the other hand, the number of fingerprint pre-registrations in the Seoul area decreased from 75,769 cases in 2019 to 28,827 cases in 2020. Although it rebounded to 46,615 cases last year and is on a recovery trend with 40,507 cases as of August this year, a 58.3% increase compared to the same period last year, the police explained that the fingerprint pre-registration rate is only 58.5%. According to police statistics, the discovery time for missing children under 8 years old who had pre-registered fingerprints was 35 minutes, whereas it took 81 hours for unregistered children.

Kim Kwang-ho, Commissioner of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, stated, "There are limits to the efforts of any single government agency to systematically protect socially vulnerable groups such as missing children," adding, "Through this agreement, Seoul Police and Woori Bank will do their best to prevent missing children and others with the heart of parents who have lost their children through civil-police cooperation."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.