By Chae Hee-mook
A man and a woman who were having an affair have been found dead at the man’s apartment in Suwon, south of Seoul, apparently from suicide, police said Sunday.
They were identified as a 54-year-old man, surnamed Kim, and a 44-year-old woman, surnamed Choe.
Kim’s 24-year-old daughter said that her father was found hanging to death from a gas pipe above the entrance door to the restroom and the woman, suffocated under a blanket in the main bed room at 12:42 p.m. Saturday, according to the Jungbu Police Station in Suwon.
However, police have been under fire for neglecting to enter the home despite a report that the female was a suicide risk. This is the second time they ignored a call _ the first being the murder of a lady in her 20s by a Korean-Chinese man in early April. Both cases took place in the region under the same jurisdiction by the police station.
Choi’s husband reported his wife missing at 8:18 p.m. Thursday. “My wife seemed to have left home to hang out with Kim. It’s highly probable that she could commit suicide,” he said.
Police investigators arrived at Kim’s home at 1:42 a.m. the next day, after tracing the location of the mobile phone signals on GPS. But Kim claimed she was not there, refusing to allow them to search his house, according to them.
“I have not met with her recently although we exchanged phone calls,” Kim was quoted as saying. “What would my daughter think of me if I accepted investigators into my home while she was sleeping in her room?”
He claimed that the couple killed themselves shortly after police officers left Kim’s flat.
Kim left a suicide note in the room. “We leave together as we love each other so much,” Kim said in the note found later by the police.
Choi insisted that the investigators had to search the home.
“If investigators entered his apartment, they could have saved their lives,” Choi said. “Police ignored me although I emphasized her suicidal intentions.”
However, an investigator said that the report from Choi’s husband was regarded as a simple runaway case. And it was hard to judge as a kidnapping or a detainment because the husband said that he has seen his wife and the Kim together.
“Especially, we couldn’t expect that Choi was in the room as Kim acted so naturally when we met him at the door of his apartment,” the investigator said.