A South Korean man has been arrested after confessing to murdering his girlfriend 16 years ago and burying her body on his balcony beneath a layer of cement, police told AFP on Tuesday.
The man, now in his fifties, was accused of murdering the wife during an altercation in October 2008, according to Gyeongnam Provincial Police and Geoje Police Station.
He fatally struck the woman with a blunt object before placing her body in a huge luggage bag, according to authorities.
He then covered the body on his balcony by stacking bricks and applying a 10-centimetre (four-inch) coating of cement.
The woman was not reported missing until three years later since she was not in contact with her own family.
During a 2011 missing person investigation, the South Korean told authorities that they had “broken up,” and the case went unsolved owing to a lack of evidence.
A police officer told reporters that the body was not discovered earlier because it was squeezed into the narrow balcony space, adding that the room had been “virtually empty since 2016.”
That year, the culprit was arrested on drug charges, and the landlord said the property was utilised for storage.
The body was discovered last month when a worker looking for water leaks came across the travel bag.
Police discovered the woman’s remains to be “preserved to some extent” after an assessment.
“The body hadn’t completely decomposed to bones, allowing us to identify her using fingerprints,” police said.
The South Korean was hauled in for questioning and later confessed to the crime.
According to a police official from Gyeongnam Provincial Police, the investigation and interrogation are nearly complete, and the individual would be “sent to prosecution soon.”.
