SEOUL (AFP): The mayor of South Korea’s capital Seoul Park Won-soon was found dead hours after he was reported missing, police confirmed on Thursday.
According to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, the mayor’s body was found on a mountain in northern Seoul, near where his phone signal had last been detected. However, the agency did not give a cause of death.
The police further informed that Park Won-soon was reported missing by his daughter on Thursday evening, saying her father had been unreachable for several hours.
He left a message that sounded like “last words” and his phone had been turned off, she told police. Nearly 600 police officers and firefighters, along with three rescue dogs, were deployed to search for the mayor.
Earlier on Wednesday, a former Seoul City female employee filed a police complaint — allegedly involving sexual harassment — against him.
A Seoul Metropolitan Government official said that the mayor had not shown up for work today (Thursday) for unspecified reasons and had cancelled everything on his schedule, including a meeting with a presidential official at his Seoul City Hall office.
Crowds gathered outside the Seoul National University hospital amid unconfirmed reports that Park had been found and taken there.
Park, a longtime civic activist, and human rights lawyer was elected as the mayor of Seoul in 2011. As a member of President Moon Jae-in’s liberal Democratic Party, Park was reportedly under consideration as a potential presidential hopeful in the 2022 elections.
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