
A man in South Korea has admitted to killing his girlfriend and putting her body under cement in the balcony of his apartment, 16 years after she went missing.
The 58-year-old man was arrested and charged with murder, media reports said on Tuesday (Sep 24).
The incident happened in 2008. During a heated argument, the man said he hit his then-girlfriend, who was in her 30s, with a blunt object. He concealed her body in a travel suitcase. He then laid the body on the balcony of his flat and put bricks and cement over it. He painted the bricks green, so that it appeared as if it's part of the balcony structure, reported Yonhap news agency.
For years, it remained an unsolved missing person case, until the landlord sent someone to the flat for repair work. A worker who was looking for the source of water leaks found the body in August.
According to the Gyeongnam Provincial Police and Geoje Police Station, the man had put a 10-centimetre layer of cement over the woman's body.
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She was not reported missing until three years after her murder in October 2008, as she had not been in contact with her family, said a report on AFP.
The man was on the radar during the subsequent police inquiry in 2011. At the time, he said he had broken up with her.
The body was not discovered earlier as it had been fitted into the small balcony space, AFP quoted a police officer as saying. The room was "virtually empty since 2016," when the man was arrested in a separate case of drug abuse. His landlord said the area was then being used as storage space.
The body was not completely decomposed, as the cement appears to have helped preserve it. Police then identified the woman through fingerprints and DNA testing.
The man was questioned again, during which he confessed to have killed her.
(With inputs from agencies)