'Guro District body-dumping case' victim identified; autopsy says cause of death difficult to determine (2nd update)

[Financial News] Police have identified the body found abandoned in a residential neighborhood in Seoul’s Guro District. However, an autopsy found that decomposition made it difficult to determine the cause of death.
According to police on the 28th, Seoul’s Guro Police Station has identified the deceased found in a residential neighborhood in Guro District the previous day and is investigating the person’s movements and the circumstances surrounding the death.
A police official said, “As this is an ongoing investigation, it is difficult to disclose how the deceased was identified or information about their identity.” Police had earlier estimated that the deceased was a man in his 50s to 80s.
The National Forensic Service conducted an autopsy this morning and gave police a verbal opinion that decomposition and other factors made it difficult to determine the cause and date of death. It plans to send its final autopsy findings later.
Police plan to seek arrest warrants later today for a man in his 60s, identified as A, suspected of abandoning a body, and a man in his 80s, identified as B, suspected of instigating the abandonment.
Police identified the two men through nearby CCTV footage and inquiries, then arrested them one after the other at their respective homes the previous afternoon. They have completed initial questioning of the suspects.
During questioning, B claimed that he had instructed that an object resembling a mannequin in a building he owned be thrown away, and that he had not known it was a body.
A said he suspected during the disposal that it might be a body, but had only followed B’s instructions.
Police believe A disposed of the body alone on the morning of the 22nd, acting on B’s instructions. It has not been established whether B also specified the exact location where the body was to be abandoned.
B owns a multi-unit residential building in Guro District, and A was formerly a tenant there. Investigators found that A regularly helped B with tasks such as taking out the trash and followed him as he would a father. The two now live in different buildings.
At around 11 a.m. the previous day, a sanitation worker employed by the Guro District Office found the body at a garbage disposal site in a residential neighborhood in Guro District and reported it to police.
The body, wrapped in plastic and newspaper, had been left in the same place for five days. By the time it was found, some decomposition and drying had occurred, but there were no obvious external signs of homicide.
Other sanitation workers also visited the site during this period, but the specific reason the body was not collected has not been established. Investigators found that the wrapping around the body had no separate marking indicating that it had been put out for disposal.
Police plan to investigate the specific circumstances of the crime and whether the suspects were involved in the death, based on the final autopsy findings and further investigation.
[email protected] Seong-hyun Park Reporter