The Seoul city mayor who was found dead after going missing left behind a final message saying he felt “sorry to all people”.
Park Won-soon was found dead at Mount Bugak, an area wooded hills in northern Seoul, on Thursday following a seven-hour search.
His daughter had alerted police to “a will-like” verbal message in the morning before leaving home.
It emerged that a female employee had filed a sexual harassment claim against the 64-year-old in the hours before he vanished.
Police declined to disclose his cause of death, but said there were no signs of foul play.
A note left by the mayor at his residence, shown on Korean TV, said: “I feel sorry to all people. I thank everyone who has been with me in my life.
“I am always sorry to my family because I’ve given them only pains. Please cremate my body and scatter around the graves of my parents."
Some 600 police and fire officers, drones and tracking dogs were deployed to search for Mr Park in the hills, where his mobile phone signal was last detected.
He was a longtime civic activist and human rights lawyer and elected Seoul mayor in 2011, later becoming the city’s first mayor to be voted to a third term in June 2018.
A member of President Moon Jae-in’s liberal Democratic Party, he had been considered a potential presidential candidate in 2022 elections.
