Bodies of missing schoolgirl, parents seem to be found

A car belonging to the family of missing 10-year-old schoolgirl Cho Yoo-na was recovered from waters off the island of Wando, South Jeolla on Wednesday, with bodies suspected to be those of Cho and her parents inside, according to police.

A vehicle belonging to the family of missing child Cho Yoo-na is lifted out of the water near Songgok Harbor in Wando, South Jeolla on Wednesday morning. [YONHAP]

A car belonging to the family of missing 10-year-old schoolgirl Cho Yoo-na was recovered from waters off the island of Wando, South Jeolla on Wednesday, with bodies suspected to be those of Cho and her parents inside, according to police.

The corpse of an adult man believed to be Cho’s 36-year-old father was found in the driver’s seat, while two female corpses believed to be Cho and her 35-year-old mother were found in the back seats when the car was hauled from the water around noon.

The family’s Audi had been found overturned 10 meters (32 feet) underwater at 5:12 p.m. the day before in a location just off the island’s Songgok Harbor. Police were led to the grisly discovery by the car’s radiator, which washed ashore around 3:20 p.m.

To lift the vehicle out of the water, police loaded a 25-ton cargo truck equipped with a crane onto a 55-ton barge, which was then sailed out to a location above the car to lift it straight out of the water “to prevent further damage,” police said.

The recovery operation began at 10:15 a.m. and concluded at 12:20 p.m.

According to police, the car's trunk was smashed open, presumably upon some kind of impact. Police said that in addition to the bodies inside the vehicle, they also recovered suitcases packed with clothing and other personal possessions.

Police plan to send the human remains for autopsies by the National Forensic Service.

The discovery of the vehicle came almost a month after Cho and her parents were last seen alive on CCTV and six days after her school in Gwangju filed a missing person’s report.

Cho’s parents told the school they would be taking her on a month-long trip to Jeju from May 19 to June 15. The school reported the case to the police on June 22 after Cho didn’t return to school and they failed to reach Cho’s parents.

The family was captured on closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage filmed at 11 p.m. in the corridor outside their vacation rental unit near Wando’s Myeongsasimni Beach on May 30.

In the footage, an unconscious young girl believed to be Cho is seen being carried into the hallway on the back of a woman, believed to be her mother, while a man believed to be her father stands next to them holding a white plastic bag.

Roadside CCTV cameras captured an Audi vehicle belonging to the family moving towards Songgok Harbor 9 minutes after they left their accommodation.

Signals from a mobile phone belonging to Cho’s father were last captured by a nearby cell tower around 4 a.m. on May 31, leading police to consider the possibility that the family’s car had crashed into the sea.

The search in the waters around Wando had yielded no leads however until the radiator from the car appeared at Songgok Harbor.

While investigators have yet to issue any conclusions about the case, Cho's parents seem to have had financial woes before they disappeared.

Officials from Cho’s elementary school told the JoongAng Ilbo on condition of anonymity that when police went to the family’s residence, they found their mailbox full of unpaid monthly building management fees, past due notices from utilities, and court letters.

According to an official at the Gwangju Nambu Police Precinct who spoke to the JoongAng Ilbo on condition of anonymity, the police investigation uncovered other clues about the family’s dire financial circumstances.

Cho’s father, who ran a computer shop, closed his business last year. A police search warrant for the parents’ online activity that was approved Wednesday, revealed some of the frequent keywords used by Cho’s parents in their online searches included “Luna coin,” “sleeping pills,” and “ways to make an extreme choice” — a common Korean phrase for suicide.

Luna is a cryptocurrency developed by TerraLabs whose value collapsed dramatically in early May. Whether Cho’s father had invested in the cryptocurrency before its crash is not known.

Another unknown in the family’s case is why they chose to stay in expensive accommodation despite their seemingly troubled financial circumstances.

The owner of their vacation rental — commonly called a “pension” in Korea — refused to comment on the family’s case, except to say that they paid their bill for six nights. The total cost of the family’s stay at the rental unit, which cost 400,000 won ($308) a night, was 2.4 million won.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]