Blowfish Poison Linked to Mysterious Death
By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter
Police have found some evidence that might lead to the solution of the mystery surrounding the deaths of two middle aged men in a car parked on the shoulder of an expressway at the end of last month. Blowfish poison was found in the body of one of them.
Police said Thursday that the National Institute of Scientific Investigation found tetrodotoxin in the body of a 48-year-old identified as Park. The other victim, a 50-year-old Kim, however, did not have the poison in his body.
``The poison was found in Park's stomach. It was also in the syringe and red ginseng drink bottles found at the scene,'' a police officer at Gwangju Police Office, Gyeonggi Province said at a press briefing Thursday.
Tetrodotoxin is in blowfish poison and is deadly ― its toxicity is 1,000 times that of potassium cyanide and only 1 milligram of it can kill an adult. A diluted version of the poison is used as a painkiller for terminal cancer patients instead of morphine.
Police confirmed that Kim, a doctor, bought the poison three days earlier from a Korean-Chinese pharmacist who works at a Chinese pharmaceutical firm.
Kim purchased the poison when he visited China in 2006 as well, telling firm employees that he would use it as a painkiller and anesthetic. He may have bought it from the Chinese company as he could not buy tetrodotoxin in Korea for purposes other than experiments according to the law, police said.
``We have not found any evidence of murder, so we suspect the two put the poison in the ginseng drinks together and drank them. But we haven't found the poison in Kim's body,'' the officer said.
The two high school alumni were found dead in Park's car, which was parked on the side of the highway in Gwangju around 7:40 a.m. on April 27.
According to highway CCTV recordings, they visited a convenience shop at an expressway rest stop at 6:12 a.m. near Gyeongsan interchange, and Kim got out of the car holding a plastic bag. In a dustbin in the restroom, a plastic bag was found with two bottles of ginseng drink and a syringe. Another two bottles of the same drink were found in Kim's golf bag.
Around 6:30 a.m., Park called an emergency center, saying that he could not breathe and mentioned being poisoned.