The body of South Korea’s most wanted man, linked to the sinking of a ferry in April that killed 300 people, was identified more than a month after being found in an orchard, police said on Tuesday, with his book and empty bottles of alcohol nearby.
The police chief in charge of the case in a small city in the south of the country was sacked on Tuesday for not recognising the book, or putting two and two together, and for not identifying the corpse earlier.
Police said that DNA and fingerprint evidence from the heavily decomposed body found on June 12 showed it to be that of Yoo Byung-un, 73, the target of South Korea’s largest manhunt for more than two months.
Beside the body was a book written by Yoo, along with an empty bottle of a shark-liver-oil health tonic, made by a Yoo family company, and three empty bottles of alcohol, police said.
Yoo was a wealthy businessman who headed the family that owned the operator of a ferry that capsized in the country’s worst maritime disaster in 20 years.
Police said they had not determined a cause of death but said it did not appear to have been foul play. Toxicology tests were under way.
The Sewol ferry, travelling too fast on a turn, sank on April 16 on a routine trip from the mainland to the holiday island of Jeju. Of the 476 passengers and crew on board, 339 were children and teachers from the same school on the outskirts of Seoul. Only 172 people were rescued and the remainder are all presumed to have drowned.
Failure of authorities to find Yoo had become a political headache for President Park Geun-hye, whose government came under heavy criticism for its handling of the disaster. The main opposition party on Tuesday used the discovery of Yoo’s body to criticise government investigation authorities as incompetent.
The Sewol’s 15 surviving crew members, including the captain, are on trial on charges ranging from homicide to negligence. The disaster prompted an outpouring of grief and anger after some crew were caught on video abandoning ship while children, following instructions, stayed put in their cabins.
Yoo, also a photographer and co-founder a church which made its own organic ice cream, was accused of embezzlement, negligence and tax evasion. Authorities had offered a reward equivalent to nearly half a million dollars for information leading to his arrest and have detained several family members.
Woo Hyung-ho, police chief in Suncheon, told a televised news conference in the small southern city that a book written by Yoo was found at the site, along with an empty bottle of a shark-liver-oil product.
Woo said police could have conducted forensic tests earlier had they managed to identify the two items.
“We didn’t know at that time it was a book written by Yoo,” said Woo, who later on Tuesday was dismissed from his post, a Korean National Police Agency official said.
“We admit we were not perfect,” Woo said.
