A gang of eight people, four Philippines police officers and one former policeman among them, were involved in kidnapping a South Korean citizen Ji Ick-joo from his house last October, according to the investigation, Seoul authorities revealed on Wednesday, AFP reported.
Ji’s wife reportedly sent the suspects a PHP 5 million ransom ($100,000) two weeks after he was kidnapped in the city of Angeles, not far from Manila. However, according to the results of investigation provided to the South Korean government by the Philippines’ National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), the man in his 50s was already dead.
The businessman had been working in the Philippines since 2008 for a recruitment company, according to local media. He was murdered the same or the next day he was seized, and his body was burned to ashes in a crematorium, whose owner was a former police officer, a member of the gang, a Seoul official told AFP.
On October 30, 12 days after Ji’s death, the abductors demanded a ransom of PHP 8 million ($161,000) from his wife, but the woman couldn’t raise the whole amount, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, which was first to report the news.
