Park Received-soon’s physique was discovered on a mountain in northern Seoul, police mentioned (Reuters)
Seoul:
Seoul’s outspoken mayor Park Received-soon, lengthy seen as a possible South Korean presidential candidate, was discovered lifeless, police mentioned Friday. He was 64.
A former Seoul Metropolis worker filed a police criticism — allegedly involving sexual harassment — in opposition to him on Wednesday.
Park’s physique was discovered on a mountain in northern Seoul, police mentioned, hours after a whole bunch of officers began looking for him.
If Park does show to have killed himself he can be the highest-profile South Korean politician to take action since former president Roh Moo-hyun, who jumped off a cliff in 2009 after being questioned over corruption allegations involving members of the family.
Park’s daughter reported him lacking on Thursday afternoon, saying her father had been unreachable for a number of hours, police mentioned.
He left a message that gave the impression of “final phrases” and his cellphone had been turned off, she informed police.
A heavyweight determine within the ruling centre-left Democratic occasion, Park ran South Korea’s sprawling capital — dwelling to nearly a fifth of the nationwide inhabitants — for almost a decade.
He has constantly been spoken of as a possible candidate within the race to succeed President Moon Jae-in, and didn’t deny ambitions on that entrance when requested by AFP earlier this 12 months.
Park had the same background to Moon as a pupil activist within the days of South Korea’s navy dictatorship and later a human rights lawyer.
He was kicked out of Seoul Nationwide College in 1975, barely a month after getting into the celebrated faculty, for collaborating in a rally in opposition to then president Park Chung-hee, and jailed for 4 months.
– Jailhouse to courthouse –
However he described his time in jail as a contented and productive interval that allowed him to formulate his life objectives.
After finishing his research, Park went into legislation and defended many political activists within the 1980s and 1990s.
He helped launch the Folks’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, an influential NGO pushing to reform the conglomerates that dominate South Korean enterprise.
Park additionally based the Stunning Basis — a philanthropic group that promotes volunteerism and group service — within the hopes of giving individuals the power “to really feel great and exquisite” by donating to its trigger.
It grew into one of many largest non-profit organisations in South Korea and launched the Stunning Shops, a sequence of charity outlets modelled after Britain’s Oxfam outlets.
Bespectacled and soft-featured, Park was thought of a political novice when he first entered the Seoul mayoral race as an impartial candidate in 2011 however he defeated Na Kyung-won, essentially the most outstanding feminine lawmaker for the then ruling conservative occasion.
He subsequently joined the Democratic occasion and made a reputation for himself as a three-term mayor of the South Korean capital — his remaining victory coming in a 2018 landslide when he took greater than 50 % of the vote.
Throughout his marketing campaign, Park — recognized for his hardworking and down-to-earth character — pledged to create a cleaner metropolis that ensured gender equality, and to result in peace between North and South Korea.
On his official Twitter account, Park launched himself as a “Social Designer”, saying: “Lately, I… dream of making Seoul that places the individuals first. Please be a part of me on this dream.”
However he additionally earned a repute as a workaholic boss, with studies saying a handful of civil servants on the Seoul metropolis authorities had dedicated suicide resulting from work-related stress beneath him.
Earlier this week he courted controversy by being considered one of a number of senior Democratic occasion politicians to attend the funeral of the mom of Ahn Hee-jung, a former provincial governor convicted of sexual offences final 12 months.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Source link
