[단독] Children’s institution missed by Jung In, last year’s appreciation letter “Judging as abuse”

“Actually, our agency judged this as abusive.”
This is part of the position revealed by the Gangseo Child Protection Agency (Gangseo Abojeon), which was in charge of the 16-month-old Jung In-yang case, who died from the abuse of her adoptive parents. It was at the administrative audit of the Seoul City Council held about a month after the death of In-yang Jung.

At the audit of the Seoul City Council held on November 10 last year, criticism was poured out for Kangseo-Abojeon, who failed to prevent Jeong In-yang’s death. According to the minutes obtained by the JoongAng Ilbo on the 8th, director Jeong Wook-jae, director of Kang Seo-Abojeon, explained, “Because this is the third report at the time of the pediatric treatment (after the third report, Jeong In-i), we tried to separate the child.” He added, “We were unable to separate strongly because our parents said,’Because they are adoptive parents, they were acquitted twice by the police. On what grounds are you trying to take the child?’

Gangseo-Abojeon, established by Good Neighbors, a social welfare corporation in 2004, was in charge of three reports of suspected abuse and responding to it before In-yang Jung died on October 13 last year. With the death of Jeong In-yang, he received an administrative audit for the first time in 16 years since the establishment of the institution.

“If I felt seriousness in the process of being handed over to the police at first, would I have been able to observe, approach, and interfere more?” Chung said, “In fact, our agency judged this as abuse. We established a monitoring system for Korea and kept in touch with daycare centers.” It means that they only responded at the level of contact while judging it as abuse.

“It wasn’t a situation where we could provide services in a situation where parents refused to visit us,” said Jeong. “The child was adopted, so we need to continuously manage and monitor it there.” Insisted.

At that time, Gangseo-Abojeon also received criticism about the submission of audit data. The chairman of the Welfare Committee criticized, “Before I received the (face-to-face) work report, I was amazed to see the real work report,” and criticized, “The main business is this one, but are you submitting administrative affairs audit data like this?” The chairman also criticized, “Looking at the data, the Gangseo Child Protection Agency has done nothing.” In response, Director Jung explained, “I was not familiar with the instructions for preparing the administrative audit data for the first time.”

In spite of the chairman’s request for the contents of counseling for abused children, Chung replied, “We do not have a counseling card,” and “it is recorded on the computer of the national information system.” In response, the chairman said, “I can’t know how to care for children because I have to print out the data.” “I have nothing to thank today. If it is not managed in such detail, why is there a protection center?” Regarding the accountability theory of Kangseo-Abojeon, Jeong replied, “I personally have nothing to say as a child protection agency because the child died, and I am very sorry for the child.”

Lee Young-sil, chairman of the Health and Welfare Committee of the Seoul City Council, who conducted the administrative audit at the time, said, “After Jung-in had the case, the Seoul Metropolitan Government immediately audited, but the management status of the institution for abused children was quite insufficient.” “I couldn’t understand how they were taking care of the children, so I couldn’t do the audit properly.” He said, “Still, the Gangseo-Abojeon side is passive in submitting data,” he said. “The Seoul City Council is planning to urge the Seoul Metropolitan Government to investigate about the conservation of Gangseo-a so that tragic things do not happen again.”

Reporter Garam Lee [email protected]