By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter

Bedbugs were found in Korea for the first time in 20 years, and experts suspect they came from the United States.

A Yonsei University research team led by professor Yong Tai-soon of the Medical College's parasitology department said Sunday that it confirmed an insect, which a 30-year-old woman caught in her room and brought to them in December 2007, to be a bedbug.

The bedbug, a brown, 6.5-9-millimeter-long nocturnal insect, is best adapted to a human environment and feeds on human or animal blood. As the living environment has gotten cleaner, they have not been found here for the past two decades.

The unidentified woman had bug bites on her hands, feet and other parts of her body when she visited the Severance Hospital. She had not slept properly for weeks because of the irritating bugs, according to the researchers.

The team inspected her home and found dead bedbugs and their larvae in not only her home but also other homes of the building, as the reproducing insects had spread to other parts of the building.

The researchers concluded that the species is from the U.S.

``The woman started living in the house about nine months before the biting incident after coming back from a long-term stay in New Jersey. Other rooms where the bugs were found have also been rented mainly to foreigners or Korean-Americans,'' Yong said.

Epidemic prevention measures were taken on the building, but the woman and other tenants moved out immediately after learning that the insects were bedbugs, according to the team.

``We suspect that it was not a Korean bedbug, which disappeared here over 20 years, but that an American bedbug that penetrated through the quarantine system. It indicates the importance of preventive measures against not only infectious disease but also vermin,'' Yong said.

The study result was published in the December edition of the journal of the Korean Society for Parasitology.

rahnita@koreatimes.co.kr