InfoSearched
A missing-persons alert in Seoul ended in the worst possible way just after midnight.
Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon, 64, was found dead near Sukjeongmun on Mount Bugak in the hills of northern Seoul in the early hours of Friday, July 10, following a seven-hour search that mobilized hundreds of police officers, rescue dogs, and drones. His disappearance came less than 48 hours after a former secretary filed a criminal complaint accusing him of years of sexual harassment. Guards and journalists poured into the streets outside his residence, City Hall, and Seoul National University Hospital as word spread that the search had ended in tragedy.
- Park’s daughter contacted police at 5:17 p.m. Thursday after he left home with a verbal “will-like” message and did not return.
- Security cameras showed Park entering the wooded hills at 10:53 a.m. Thursday after canceling his full schedule at City Hall, including a meeting with a presidential official.
- A former secretary lodged a sexual harassment complaint against Park with police on the night of Wednesday, July 8, alleging unwanted physical contact and inappropriate messages over multiple years.
The Search Through the Night
Police say Park’s cellphone signal was last tracked to Seongbuk District, in Seoul’s northern hills, before it went dark. With no trace of him at his official residence or City Hall, investigators treated the disappearance as urgent from the moment his daughter reported him missing. Search-and-rescue dogs, drones, and roughly 300 to 400 officers combed the wooded terrain around Mount Bugak through the evening and overnight hours.
Choi Ik-su, an officer with the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, told reporters that search dogs eventually located Park’s body along with his bag, phone, and business cards near Sukjeongmun, one of the historic gates along Seoul’s old fortress wall. Choi said there were no immediate signs of foul play.
A Day That Started With Canceled Meetings
The alarm bells started earlier than most accounts initially suggested. Kim Ji-hyeong, a Seoul Metropolitan Government official, said Park never showed up to work Thursday and scrapped his entire schedule, including a sit-down with a presidential official at his City Hall office. Security footage placed him entering the hills shortly before 11 a.m., hours before anyone outside his household realized something was wrong.
The Allegation That Preceded the Disappearance
South Korean broadcaster SBS reported that the secretary who filed the complaint told investigators her ordeal began in 2017 and that other female employees at Seoul City Hall had experienced similar treatment. Neither the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency nor Park’s office would confirm the specifics of the SBS report at the time.
Search dogs located Park’s body alongside his bag, phone, and business cards, with no immediate signs of foul play, according to police officer Choi Ik-su.
The timing was jarring for a politician who had built his legal career on the opposite side of that issue — Park was a former human rights lawyer credited with winning South Korea’s first major sexual harassment conviction before he ever entered politics.
A Three-Term Mayor and Presidential Contender
Park had governed Seoul since 2011 and became the capital’s first mayor elected to a third term when he won again in June 2019. As a member of President Moon Jae-in’s Democratic Party, he was frequently mentioned as a possible contender for the 2022 presidential race. He first rose to national prominence as a civic activist and rights lawyer, later becoming an outspoken critic of conservative President Park Geun-hye and a visible presence among the crowds that called for her removal during the 2016-2017 corruption scandal that eventually put her behind bars.
The sudden collision of a harassment complaint, a canceled schedule, and an overnight search left City Hall staff, police, and reporters converging on the same three locations — his residence, the hospital, and City Hall — waiting for official word that never came with any good news.
What happens next in Seoul falls to whoever the Democratic Party and the city council move to install as acting mayor, with a byelection now expected to follow — the kind of leadership vacuum South Korea’s capital hasn’t faced mid-term in nearly a decade.
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