By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter
A self-proclaimed exorcist and his followers were arrested Thursday for beating to death a high school student during shamanism treatment of the teen four years ago.
Jeonnam provincial police arrested 42-year-old Park and his wife, Lee, as well as a 32-year-old Song, for suspected murder. They are searching for a 52-year-old coworker, Choi.
According to police, Park and his fellows beat a 17-year-old boy, also identified as Park, to death, during an exorcism on Feb. 13 2005 at his office in Damyang, South Jeolla Province.
They moved the victim's body to Jindo, also in south Jeolla Province, by car the next day and secretly buried it on a hillside and reported the boy missing to conceal their crime, the police said. They retrieved his corpse a month later and burned it and even tried to manipulate telephone records to create alibis, investigators said.
The victim had reportedly been staying at the exorcist's house for several weeks to cure mental illness.