"Only Missed His Son"... 'Gaeguri Sonyeon' Father Park Geon-seo Passes Away

Receiving Treatment at a Convalescent Hospital for Acute Cerebral Infarction
Still Unable to Catch the Culprit in the 'Gaeguri Boys Case'

One of the fathers of the victims in the long-unsolved 'Gaeguri Sonyeon' (Frog Boys) case, Park Geon-seo, passed away on May 6th at the age of 69.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

According to Yonhap News on the 7th, Park was the father of Park Chan-in (then 10 years old), one of the five Gaeguri Sonyeon, and his family stated, "He passed away still longing for his son."

During his lifetime, he traveled across the country searching for his lost son, but in 2020 he suffered an acute cerebral infarction and had been receiving treatment at a nursing hospital since then.

Naju Bong, president of the National Association of Families Searching for Missing Children and Persons, expressed sorrow, saying, "He was a person who actively worked to solve the case while caring for his elderly mother, who was over 80 years old at the time of the incident."

No Progress in the Reinvestigation of the 'Gaeguri Sonyeon Case'

Min Gap-ryong, then Commissioner General of the National Police Agency, is visiting Sebanggol, Waryongsan, Dalseo-gu, Daegu, the site where the remains of the "Frog Boys" case were discovered in 2019, to pay tribute to the victims.
[Image source=Yonhap News]

The Daegu Gaeguri Sonyeon case involves five boys from the same neighborhood attending the same elementary school: Woo Cheol-won (then 13), Jo Ho-yeon (12), Kim Young-gyu (11), Park Chan-in (10), and Kim Jong-sik (9). On March 26, 1991, after having breakfast, they said they were going to pick up salamander eggs and went up Waryongsan Mountain in Dalseo-gu, Daegu, behind their homes, but disappeared.

The police deployed a total search force of 350,000 people, the largest for a single missing persons case in South Korea, but ultimately failed to identify the perpetrator or the circumstances of the disappearance.

The case shocked the nation when, 11 years later on September 26, 2002, the remains of all the missing children were found in Sebanggol Valley on Waryongsan Mountain.

At that time, the forensic team from Kyungpook National University concluded through bone analysis that the deaths were "clear homicides caused by sharp objects," but the perpetrator was never caught. The statute of limitations expired in 2006, leaving the case unsolved to this day.

In 2019, under the direction of then National Police Agency Commissioner Min Gap-ryong, a reinvestigation was launched, but no significant clues emerged.

In 1996, the fifth year after the disappearance, a well-known university professor claimed that Jong-sik's father had killed the children and buried them at home. The police excavated the bathroom and kitchen floor of Jong-sik's house using heavy machinery but found no evidence.

Kim Cheol-gyu, Jong-sik's father, who was accused as the perpetrator of his son's disappearance, suffered from a psychosomatic illness and died of liver cancer in October 2001.

Young-gyu's father passed away in April last year after a long battle with illness.

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