By Kim Bo-eun
An 87-year-old relative of President Lee Myung-bak was found dead a week after she was reported missing, police said Tuesday.
The body of Lee Geun-i, a granddaughter of a brother of the President’s great-grandfather, was found Tuesday morning floating in a stream nearby the hut she and her family had been staying in a mountain in Cheongsong, North Gyeongsang Province.
Police said that there were no signs of foul play. They suspect that Lee, who had been known to have suffered from dementia, got lost while wandering in the mountains and fell.
She and her family members had together been gathering wild mushrooms for a number of days. Lee went missing on Oct. 15 when the others had gone to a village to get water.
Surveillance cameras installed at nearby villages showed Lee walking alone with a cane one day before she was reported missing. More than 1,000 police officers and rescue workers, and sniffer dogs were mobilized to search for her.
Lee who lived in Pohang had come with her eldest son, two granddaughters and a grandson-in-law to the rural mountain area last month to collect wild mushrooms.
However, police have not ruled out the possibility that she might have been subject to a crime, and are investigating the incident through surveillance camera footage.