Deep-Freeze, take 2
Suspected infanticide in South Korea: investigation opened in France
PARIS (AP) - [French] Ministry of Justice asked last week Tours’ [Indre et Loire] prosecutors to open a preliminary investigation on a French couple living in Seoul [South Korea], the husband, aged 40, having reported on July 23 the presence of two babies in their freezer.
Alerted by Korean authorities, via France’s State Department, the Ministry of Justice expects to receive an official request for mutual judicial assistance, although nothing has arrived yet, the office of the Secretary of Justice confirmed.
Meanwhile, the preliminary investigation is expected to yield basic information on this expat couple, presently on vacation in France, in the region of Tours.
Of particular notice is the fact that the husband himself, only identified as “C”, informed himself the Seoul police of the discovery of two babies in a freezer in his appartment, in the southern part of Seoul, where many French expats reside.
According to the south-korean police, the husband had come back from France on his own, where he had gone to earlier with his family. Preliminary DNA tests showed that he was the father of the babies, which he consistently denied. However, the results of these tests were only made public on July 28, after he’d left back for France.
Last Monday, the police declared that further DNA tests showed that it was highly probable that “V”, “C”’s wife, was the mother of these babies. Meanwhile, the couple refused to return to Seoul, where they had been living since 2002, before August 2002. Inbetween, the Korean authorities asked France to gather more information.
Yonhap news agency reported that “V” had undergone surgery in 2003, and had her uterus removed. Thus, babies would have been born before that date. The couple has two other children. AP