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Seoul:
Seoul’s outspoken mayor Park Won-soon, lengthy seen as a possible South Korean presidential candidate, was discovered lifeless, police stated Friday. He was 64.
A former Seoul City worker filed a police grievance — allegedly involving sexual harassment — in opposition to him on Wednesday.
Park’s physique was discovered on a mountain in northern Seoul, police stated, hours after a whole bunch of officers began looking for him.
If Park does show to have killed himself he could be the highest-profile South Korean politician to take action since former president Roh Moo-hyun, who jumped off a cliff in 2009 after being questioned over corruption allegations involving relations.
Park’s daughter reported him lacking on Thursday afternoon, saying her father had been unreachable for a number of hours, police stated.
He left a message that seemed like “last words” and his cellphone had been turned off, she informed police.
A heavyweight determine within the ruling centre-left Democratic get together, Park ran South Korea’s sprawling capital — dwelling to virtually a fifth of the nationwide inhabitants — for almost a decade.
He has constantly been spoken of as a possible candidate within the race to succeed President Moon Jae-in, and didn’t deny ambitions on that entrance when requested by AFP earlier this 12 months.
Park had an identical background to Moon as a scholar activist within the days of South Korea’s army dictatorship and later a human rights lawyer.
He was kicked out of Seoul National University in 1975, barely a month after getting into the celebrated college, for collaborating in a rally in opposition to then president Park Chung-hee, and jailed for 4 months.
– Jailhouse to courthouse –
But he described his time in jail as a cheerful and productive interval that allowed him to formulate his life targets.
After finishing his research, Park went into regulation and defended many political activists within the 1980s and 1990s.
He helped launch the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, an influential NGO pushing to reform the conglomerates that dominate South Korean enterprise.
Park additionally based the Beautiful Foundation — a philanthropic group that promotes volunteerism and group service — within the hopes of giving folks the flexibility “to feel wonderful and beautiful” by donating to its trigger.
It grew into one of many largest non-profit organisations in South Korea and launched the Beautiful Stores, a sequence of charity outlets modelled after Britain’s Oxfam outlets.
Bespectacled and soft-featured, Park was thought-about a political novice when he first entered the Seoul mayoral race as an impartial candidate in 2011 however he defeated Na Kyung-won, probably the most distinguished feminine lawmaker for the then ruling conservative get together.
He subsequently joined the Democratic get together and made a reputation for himself as a three-term mayor of the South Korean capital — his ultimate victory coming in a 2018 landslide when he took greater than 50 p.c of the vote.
During his marketing campaign, Park — identified for his hardworking and down-to-earth character — pledged to create a cleaner metropolis that ensured gender equality, and to result in peace between North and South Korea.
On his official Twitter account, Park launched himself as a “Social Designer”, saying: “These days, I… dream of creating Seoul that puts the people first. Please join me in this dream.”
But he additionally earned a repute as a workaholic boss, with stories saying a handful of civil servants on the Seoul metropolis authorities had dedicated suicide resulting from work-related stress underneath him.
Earlier this week he courted controversy by being certainly one of a number of senior Democratic get together politicians to attend the funeral of the mom of Ahn Hee-jung, a former provincial governor convicted of sexual offences final 12 months.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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