"Enduring by Drinking Water Flowing in the Mountains"... Missing Dementia Elder Found After Six Days

Visited Family Home in Busan, Got Lost
Conscious but Exhausted... Transported to Hospital

A man in his 70s with dementia symptoms was found exhausted in the mountains six days after going missing.

According to the Busan Metropolitan Police Agency on the 2nd, a report was received via 112 that a man in his 70s, Mr. A, went missing in Dongnae-gu, Busan, on the morning of the 28th of last month. It is known that Mr. A’s wife waited for her husband, who disappeared on the 27th, to return on his own and only reported him missing on the morning of the 28th, a day later.

The appearance of a man in his 70s found exhausted in the mountains six days after going missing
[Photo by Busan Police Agency, Yonhap News]

Mr. A, a resident of the Gyeongnam region, recently showed dementia symptoms and went missing after visiting a family home in Busan to receive a hospital diagnosis. His family was unaware that his symptoms were severe enough that he could not even find his way home, which delayed the report. The police, upon receiving the report, tracked Mr. A’s movements by reviewing 150 public and private CCTV cameras in Dongnae-gu and Geumjeong-gu. As a result, they confirmed that Mr. A was seen walking toward Geumjeongsan Sanseong-ro around 10:15 p.m. on the 27th.

The police mobilized all available personnel, including detectives, mobile patrol units, riot police, and forensic teams, to conduct a search, but Mr. A’s whereabouts remained unknown. Moreover, the weather at the time was a heatwave exceeding 30 degrees Celsius that had lasted over ten days, making the rescue a critical and urgent matter. Traces of Mr. A were found on the morning of the 1st, the sixth day since his disappearance and the fifth day of police search, around 7:40 a.m. on the mid-slope of Geumjeongsan. There, the slippers Mr. A was wearing when he went missing were discovered, and the police deployed search dogs to thoroughly comb the area. This led to finding Mr. A collapsed in an exhausted state far from the hiking trail.

A police official said, "Mr. A was lying deep in the forest, completely off the hiking trail, to the extent that the search team had to pioneer a path to reach him," adding, "He had not eaten anything for six days, and there was a small stream nearby from which he drank water to survive." It was reported that Mr. A could not even remember how he ended up in the mountains. Additionally, Mr. A’s soles were covered with blisters, and although he was conscious, he was in a state of complete exhaustion and was transported to a hospital.

Meanwhile, the number of missing elderly people with dementia is increasing every year. According to data released by the National Police Agency, the number of missing dementia patients was 7,650 in 2012, rising to 14,257 in 2022, and 14,677 in 2023, showing an upward trend annually. To prevent disappearances caused by dementia, it is advisable to obtain a wandering elderly identification tag or use pre-registration systems such as fingerprint registration. Additionally, applying for a wandering detection device that sends alert messages to family members when a dementia patient leaves three designated safe zones set by their caregiver can also be helpful.

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