A father was put under emergency detention Thursday on charges of killing a newborn and abandoning the body in collusion with the baby's maternal grandmother, police said, the latest in a string of child abuse cases involving unregistered babies.
The man in his 40s was first taken into custody in Yongin, south of Seoul, in the wee hours of Thursday on charges of murder and corpse abandonment before the grandmother in her 60s was detained later in the day on the same charges, police said.
The pair allegedly killed the newborn not long after he was born in March 2015 and abandoned his body on a nearby hill. How the baby was killed was not known, but a direct means could have been used as murder charges were brought against them.
They reportedly committed the crime while the baby's mother was recovering after labor, and the husband allegedly lied to his wife, saying the baby was going to die soon as he was born sick.
The police, who made the arrest after investigating reports of undocumented cases from the city government, plan to look into the details of the crime, including the motive.
Earlier, police in Incheon, 27 kilometers west of Seoul, said they had arrested a woman in her 40s on charges of secretly burying the body of her 1-day-old baby girl in a family garden in Gimpo, just north of Incheon, after the newborn died.
The woman told police that she buried the baby without a funeral as the baby died shortly after birth in August 2016. Her arrest came about a month before the expiration of the seven-year statute of limitations for body abandonment.
Police plan to expand their investigation into the exact cause of the baby's death by questioning the suspect and her ex-husband, while considering applying a murder charge against the mother if criminal suspicions are found. The two cases are among a string of child abuse cases that came to light after a nationwide campaign was launched to confirm the well-being of more than 2,000 undocumented babies born since 2015.
Police said Thursday they are investigating a total of 598 unregistered baby cases, up from 400 cases the previous day, with 24 babies confirmed dead so far.
The police warned the number of cases could keep rising, as new findings lead to parents of undocumented babies with criminal suspicions being arrested one after another.
Source: Yonhap News Agency