Korea, discovered corpse "not the Sewol owner"
Seoul (AsiaNews) - A new mystery is shrouding the
death of Yoo Byung-eun, the owner of the Sewol ferry
whose body
was discovered by authorities June 12 but only identified on July 20.
The industrialist, 73, has become the
most wanted fugitive in the country after the tragedy involving his ship, which
killed
more than 300 people. According to some members of the new political alliance for Democracy (NAPD,
opposition), the body is not Yoo.
A delegation from the NAPD yesterday visited the forensic
laboratory where the autopsy and
identification of the body is being carried out. A spokesman for the group, Park Beom-kye, said: "A police official who was present at the scene of the body's identification
told me that judging from appearance, he was 'certain' it was not Yoo. Moreover, the deceased was 159 centimeters
tall, the corpse was only 150 centimeters tall. It's also strange that the authorities were able to identify him via a
fingerprint sample from his right hand in July, when the hand was supposedly so
decayed that it was impossible to obtain a sample in June".
The time discrepancy is explained by the fact that, according to investigators, the body was found June 12, more than a month prior to identification. At first the officials involved had declared that the tissues had expired and were unusable
to identify the corpse, only to declare (July 20) that
they had been taken fingerprints
from the right hand. According to
the deputy Park Jie-won, who cites 5 residents
of the area affected by the
investigation, the body was discovered even before the sinking of the Sewol (which
took place on April 16) and then used to
close the investigation into Yoo.
These suspicions have
prompted responses from some experts. Pyo
Chang-won, a well-known criminologist, said: "The DNA testing shows that the
deceased and Yoo Byung-eun's brother had the same mother, and his fingerprints
matched that on Yoo's ID card. The dental records from the body also match
those of Yoo, who had 10 gold teeth, which is very unusual. There is very
little possibility that it (the body) is not Yoo's, unless it's an avatar clone
of him".
For
Professor Yoo Seong-ho, a professor of forensic medicine at the National University
of Seoul, the question of the "reappearance" of the fingerprints is explained by the conditions in which
the body was found: "When
an initially wet body dries up after time, the ridges in the finger reappear,
allowing forensic officials to obtain a fingerprint sample".
In any case, the issue has divided
Korean civil society even more. According
to a national survey, 57% of
citizens "do not trust the results" or
the authorities proclamations on the
case. The same experts criticize
the behavior of government agencies.
According to Prof. Yoo "I'm just speculating, but the police must have
given up trying to identify the body after one try. The incompetence of the
officials coupled with a misunderstanding (among the public) is presumed to
have led to the conspiracy"
.
For Pyo, the issue is even broader: " Rather than focusing on discovering the truth,
they attempted to cover up the misdeeds by those in power. A lot of the time, the public had
good reason to raise suspicions. The investigators often worked as henchmen for
the ones in power, which has resulted in people losing faith in what the state
agencies or authorities tell them".
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