Police have arrested the owner of a cafe in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, after a woman in her 60s was found dead in the cafe's freezer storage.
The body of the woman, identified only as A, was found frozen in the freezer storage of a cafe in Munsan-eup, Paju, at about 2:36 p.m. on the 4th, police said on the 7th. A missing person report had been filed for her in Seoul's Yeongdeungpo district at about midnight that same day, roughly 14 hours earlier.
Police identified a man in his 30s, the cafe's owner and referred to as B, as a suspect. He had been with the woman when she went missing. Officers arrested him without a warrant in Yeongdeungpo shortly before the body was found.
The two met for the first time the day before the incident to discuss a gift certificate deal, police said. The woman is believed to have met the man to talk about gift certificates, as he was engaged in so-called "sangpumkwon-kkang" — buying and selling gift certificates to convert them into cash.
Police confirmed that the man told the woman the certificates were in the storage room, took her to the freezer storage and then came out alone.
Counterfeit department store gift certificates with a face value of tens of billions of won were also found in the freezer storage. Police are investigating whether the counterfeit certificates are linked to the crime and whether accomplices were involved.
The Goyang branch of the Uijeongbu District Court issued an arrest warrant on the 6th, and the man was taken into custody on charges of murdering a person he had lured. He has admitted to the allegations during police questioning, according to police.
Police are expanding the investigation to trace the origin of the counterfeit certificates and determine whether they were circulated, whether any accomplices were involved and what motivated the crime.
The man had told his employees not to come to work starting on the 3rd and had closed the cafe, according to police.
