The state audit agency says over two-thousand babies born between 2015 and 2022 were never registered in the state system and their whereabouts are therefore unknown.

An official of the Board of Audit and Inspection(BAI) said that the agency found the discrepancy while collecting data to investigate cases of children who are falling in the cracks in welfare blindspots that render them ineligible for state benefits, part of a regular audit of the health ministry conducted since March.

Of the two-thousand plus cases of unregistered births, the BAI requested more than ten local governments to look into around 20 of them.

The investigation has led to the police in Gyeonggi Province to discover that a mother in the provincial city of Suwon allegedly killed two of her newborns in 2018 and in 2019 and stored their bodies in a refrigerator in her home.

The agency is looking to request investigation into the remaining cases and considering asking the ministry to prepare preventive measures.