Korea's forensic agency reaches 1,000 family matches through DNA

The National Forensic Service said Tuesday it has confirmed 1,000 family relationships through DNA testing, a milestone reached 22 years after the system was introduced to reunite missing children with their relatives.

The agency, which operates under the interior ministry, said the 1,000 cases cover parent-child relationships and matches between siblings. The program began in 2004, initially limited to missing children, and amendments to the law have since widened eligibility to include people with intellectual disabilities and elderly people with dementia.

When a person seeking family or a relative of a missing child visits a police station, or when police collect a buccal swab from a subject at a care facility, the National Center for the Rights of the Child assigns an encrypted identification code and manages personal information separately. The sample is sent to the forensic service, which searches the Missing Children DNA Information System for family relationships in real time.

The forensic service introduced new testing techniques this year to address the limits of existing genetic tests, and now runs cross-validation between different analytical systems to raise the reliability of the results.

"This achievement of 1,000 cases was possible because steady efforts over 22 years were supported by advances in genetic analysis technology and the database," said Lee Bong-woo, director of the National Forensic Service. "We will not settle for numerical results but will mobilize our full professional capabilities based on cooperation with related agencies to find missing children and others quickly and return them to their families."