Female Army officer found dead with gunshot wound

A female Army captain was found dead Friday inside her own vehicle parked in her unit, with a gunshot wound in the neck. The military authorities began investigation to find the exact cause of the incident.

According to the Army, the 30-year-old Army captain, surnamed Hong, was found dead by her colleagues at around 8:10 a.m. in her unit in Anyang, Gyeonggi Province. The car doors were locked when she was found and investigators discovered a K-1 rifle and a bullet shell inside the car.

An Army official said that her colleagues found her body as they were looking for her because she failed to show up at a morning meeting. The official added that no suicide note had been found.

The Army tentatively leans toward a suicide as there was no sign of forced entry from the outside, but it is investigating the case without ruling out the possibility of a murder. According to military investigators, Hong had a telephone conversation with her husband, who is also an Army captain, at around 6:30 a.m. The parking lot where her body was found was about 150 meters away from her unit. Reportedly, no one heard a gunshot.

Asked whether she had been treated unreasonably in the unit, the Army said that she had led a normal life in the military and that there had no problem in the unit.

Some raised questions about whether the unit was not careful enough in munitions control. The bullet shell found in Hong’s vehicle is said to be for the unit’s quick response duty. The Army said that there was nothing wrong about Hong’s possession of firearms because she was in charge of quick response duty. “It is presumed that she had taken the bullet when she was putting ammunitions for the quick response team into an ammo box,” an Army official said. “We are investigating exactly how she possessed one bullet by checking the closed-circuit television cameras.”