The state-run forensics service Tuesday carried out an autopsy on the body of a 7-year-old girl who was beaten to death by her mother five years ago.

Police officials from South Gyeongsang Province, who have been investigating the case, requested late Monday that the National Forensics Service check the body for the exact cause of death.

The girl’s body was found earlier in the day, after her 42-year-old mother, surnamed Park, had confessed to tying up her then 7-year-old child and beating her to death in October 2011.
 
Police exhumed the body in a mountain in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province, where the woman had buried her daughter with the help of three accomplices.
 

Two of them have been arrested on the charge of helping to discard the body. The third was booked without detention.

Investigators expect that determining the cause of death could take from three weeks up to a month. Police will conduct an on-the-spot inspection of the scene at the mountain where the body was buried and at the crime scene of Park’s apartment in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province.

Officials will hold a briefing on the case at Goseong Police Station on Thursday.

The investigators found Park in the midst of a nationwide search for the whereabouts and statuses of students who have been reported absent from school for a long time, or those who have never been admitted to school. The move was launched as part of the government’s efforts to curb child abuse amid a series of high-profile cases involving children.

(khnews@heraldcorp.com)