Mutilated Body Part Found in Songdo, Incheon... Police Suspect Medical Waste

Police: "Verifying Whether the Body Part Belongs to a Hospitalized Patient"

Incheon Southern Area Resource Recovery Center. Yonhap News Agency

The police have determined that the leg recently found at a public recycling facility in Incheon is highly likely to be medical waste, and it has been confirmed that a nursing hospital reported this information to the authorities.

According to the police and other sources on June 18, a representative from a nursing hospital in Incheon informed the police that "the human leg discovered at the Songdo-dong Resource Recovery Center in Incheon on June 10 is presumed to have been discharged from our hospital."

Based on the hospital staff's testimony and other evidence, the police are expected to investigate the specific circumstances of how the leg was disposed of. Under the current Waste Control Act, medical waste, including human tissue, must be collected and transported separately from other waste in designated containers.

Accordingly, the police believe that the discovered leg is highly likely to be part of the body of a patient currently being treated at the hospital, and have requested an urgent DNA analysis from the National Forensic Service.

A police official stated, "We plan to compare the DNA from the discovered body part with the patient's genetic information," adding, "We cannot disclose the specific circumstances that led to the DNA comparison."

Previously, at around 2:28 p.m. on June 10, an employee sorting recyclables at the Southern Region Resource Recovery Center in Songdo-dong, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, discovered a human leg.

The body part found was a left human leg, measuring 41 cm from below the knee to the heel, with a foot size of 210 mm. The police explained that these measurements were taken by the forensic team at the time of discovery and may differ from the measurements when the person was alive.

Based on the National Forensic Service's analysis, the police have determined that the leg likely belonged to an adult between 161 and 165 cm in height, and have been conducting an investigation accordingly. On June 15, 38 additional officers from the Incheon Metropolitan Police Agency's Major Crime Investigation Unit were added to the existing task force of 64, to further trace the route by which the body part entered the facility.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.