September 9, 2025
SEOUL – South Korea reported its first case of artificial intelligence being used to analyze security camera footage to locate a missing person within hours, local media said Sunday.
According to the Anyang Dongan Police Station in Gyeonggi Province, police received a report at around 1:24 a.m. on June 25 that a man had disappeared after sending his girlfriend a text message and turning off his phone.
Officers were dispatched to the last pinged location of the man’s phone and found him at home with his family. However, shortly after, the family reported that he had gone missing again.
Police then began tracking him using the Advanced Integrated Intelligence for Identification system, a pilot program that allows AI to analyze public security camera footage when given a person’s photo and description of their clothing.
Officers entered the man’s photo along with details of his outfit that day — a gray T-shirt and black pants — and limited the search area to his neighborhood. The system identified him in a nearby park, allowing police to locate him within three hours of the report.
It marked the first case in South Korea where an AI-based system successfully found a missing person.
Police said that if humans had searched manually, it could have taken more than 10 hours. The man was found safely in much less time.
