A mother who beat her 7-year-old daughter to death and buried her in a mountain may be charged with murder, the police said Friday.

Goseong police said a 42-year-old woman surnamed Park was sent to the prosecutor’s office on charges of child abuse, accidental homicide and abandonment of a corpse.

She is suspected of tying her daughter to a chair and hitting her with a stick for damaging home furniture in October 2011. Park left the child tied up overnight, which led to her death. Prior to that, she also allegedly provided only one meal a day for a fortnight, the police said.

Investigators are considered adding murder charges, but have not yet made a decision due to the arrest time constraint. The charges will be determined during the prosecutorial probe, officials said.

Three accomplices who allegedly helped bury Park’s daughter in a mountain in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province, have also been arrested.

One of the accomplices, surnamed Lee, who was her landlady, was also charged with accidental homicide as she had purportedly pressured Park to abuse the child for “disciplinary purposes.”

Park and her accomplices lived together from January 2009 along with their respective children after she fled her previous home over domestic troubles.

The investigators found Park following a nationwide search into the whereabouts of students who had been reported absent from school for a long time, or those who were never admitted to school.

The move came as part of the government’s efforts to curb child abuse amid growing public concerns over a recent series of high-profile crimes.

The police questioned Park as they found that her second daughter, now 9 years old, was never registered to school, while the first child was missing, but never reported.

Park initially claimed that she lost her daughter at a playground in 2009.

By Lee Hyun-jeong (rene@heraldcorp.com)