Mummified body found in Seoul identified as Chinese man, police say

A mummified body found earlier this week in a residential area of Guro District, western Seoul, has been identified as a Chinese man who was staying in Korea illegally, police said.

The man, whose body was found Tuesday, had lived with his wife in a multi-unit house owned by a landlord surnamed Kim, Yonhap News Agency reported Thursday. Police believe the wife fled because she feared that reporting her husband’s death would expose that they were staying in the country illegally.

No signs of foul play have been found so far. Because the body had decomposed and dried out, investigators have also been unable to determine whether the man died of natural causes or illness.

The victim’s landlord is accused of ordering another person, allegedly an acquaintance, to dispose of the body after finding it. The acquaintance then reportedly left at a trash collection area.

The body, wrapped in plastic and newspaper, sat at the trash collection area for five days until a sanitation worker from the Guro District Office found it at around 11 a.m. on Tuesday.

Both suspects admitted to their acts during police investigation. But the landlord claimed to have only asked the acquaintance to throw away what looked like a doll, without realizing it was a body, while the acquaintance told police they had suspected it might be a person's remains.

A judge at the Seoul Southern District Court held pre-detention hearings for the two at 10:30 a.m. Thursday. The landlord faces a charge of abetting the abandonment of a corpse, and the acquaintance faces a charge of abandoning a corpse.

Police are investigating the man’s movements before his death, how he died and the location of his wife.

BY KIM JI-HYE [[email protected]]