A suspect believed to have killed a Chinese graduate student in her 20s is escorted to Gyeongsan Police Station in North Gyeongsang Province at around 11:50 p.m. Tuesday. [Yonhap]
A suspect believed to have killed a Chinese graduate student in her 20s is escorted to Gyeongsan Police Station in North Gyeongsang Province at around 11:50 p.m. Tuesday. [Yonhap]

A Chinese woman in her 20s enrolled at a graduate school in Gyeongsan, North Gyeongsang Province, had returned to South Korea to attend her graduation ceremony before she was found dead five days after going missing, authorities said.

According to investigators and Yonhap, the victim, identified only as A, had been enrolled in a rehabilitation therapy program at a graduate school in Gyeongsan.

During her studies, she had been spending school breaks with her family in China. She returned to South Korea on Aug. 14 to attend her degree conferral ceremony.

A lost contact with her family on the night of Thursday, when the ceremony was held. A missing persons report was filed the following day, Friday, at 7 p.m. with North Gyeongsang police.

Investigators analyzed her mobile phone location data and traced her movements on the day she disappeared to two locations: a convenience store near her graduate school and the area around Dongdaegu Station.

North Gyeongsang police requested assistance from the Daegu Metropolitan Police Agency at around 7:30 p.m. Friday, based on her last known movements. Officers from local precinct units were deployed to search the area, but her whereabouts could not be determined.

Five days after she went missing, A was found dead Wednesday afternoon at the residence of B, a Chinese man in his 30s, in Hayang-eup, Gyeongsan.

Police found that B was the first person to report A missing to authorities — on Friday.

At the time, B told police he was the victim's boyfriend and that she had said she was heading to Daegu but had stopped responding to messages.

As police questioned B as a reference witness, they detected inconsistencies in his account. What had begun as a routine missing persons case was reclassified as a potential homicide, and police ultimately arrested B on charges of murdering A.

Police are now focused on pinpointing the exact time of A's death to determine whether B had already killed her before filing the missing persons report a day later — a possible attempt to mislead the investigation.

An autopsy will be conducted to establish the cause of death, and police plan to search B's residence and other locations to gather additional evidence.

"We are investigating B's motive and the specific circumstances of the case," a police official said.


bbo@heraldcorp.com