Pastor suspected of killing daughter

By Jhoo Dong-chan

A pastor was detained Wednesday by police for allegedly beating his 13-year-old daughter to death. The body of the teenager, who is estimated to have died almost a year ago, was almost mummified when officers found it. His wife was also detained for allegedly helping to conceal her daughter’s corpse.

According to Sosa Police Station in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province, Wednesday, they detained the pastor surnamed Lee, 47, and his wife, Baek, 40, for allegedly killing their youngest daughter. Lee married Baek in 2012 after his first wife died.

Lee reportedly told police that he beat his daughter on March 17 last year because she returned home late at night. He said he and his wife “beat her with brooms for five hours for habitually returning home late and found her dead the following morning.”

The couple then allegedly covered the girl’s dead body with a blanket in her room and left it there for nearly a year, frequently spraying air freshener to cover the smell of decomposition.

Then on March 31, the couple reported to the police that their daughter was missing after running away from home.

Police noticed the case in January while investigating long-term missing cases, as one of the girl’s friends testified that the victim had a number of bruises on her body when they had met in March last year.

When police officers questioned the couple about the girl, they showed an uncooperative and indifferent attitude, and officers decided to raid Lee’s house and found the body there.

Lee reportedly serves as a professor teaching Greek at a theological college after receiving his doctoral degree in Germany. He also regularly organizes academic seminars on the history of Christianity at the college and preaches at a church in Bucheon.

His other daughter is currently studying in Germany and his son attends high school.

Police asked the National Forensic Service to carry out a postmortem to determine the exact cause of her death.

Lee was detained on suspicion of manslaughter, but he may face charges of murder and abandonment of a corpse without notifying the authorities if his assault or other forms of abuse are proven to have directly caused her death.

The case comes only weeks after a similar occurrence was brought to light in Bucheon, in which another couple was arrested for allegedly beating their seven-year-old son to death in November 2012. They admitted to having dismembered their son’s body and storing the remains in a fridge for more than three years.

This case resulted in domestic violence becoming a major social issue, while the education ministry has yet to introduce measures for identifying other such cases and dealing with them.