The police record

Every point below comes from one of four places: the Gyeongsan police file as translated into English, my own statement of events written in May 2008, the second pathology opinion from Seoul National University, or my correspondence from 2008 and 2009. Nothing here is new. It is the record, set out in one list.

Police officers, doctors and officials are named as they appear in the file. Sauna staff and customers are described by their role.

A. The timeline does not hold together

1. When Mike was first seen in the water. The police settled on 23:20 as the time he was found. The sauna worker who found him gave at least four different times: 11:02 (told to Officer Ryu Chang Hyo at 01:10 on 11 May, and repeated to me by Inspector Park on 19 May 2008), then 23:05–23:10 in the police summary, then “about 23:30” in his first written statement, with a further change in his second statement on 22 May 2008.
2. The supervisor was called before the “discovery”. The sauna supervisor states that he received the emergency call on his mobile at 23:00. That is twenty minutes before the police discovery time, and half an hour before the time in the worker’s written statement. The staff member who made that call places it after 23:20.
3. Two calls to 119. A police officer told me there were two calls to 119: one just before 11 pm, and the “official” one for Mike at 11:28. When I asked for copies of the calls I was told I would need a lawyer.
4. The hour from 22:00 to 23:00 was never examined. Mike went into the men’s side at about 22:00. The only witness who was not sauna staff, a customer, says he arrived at 23:00 and left at 23:40. Allowing for paying, the shoe locker, the clothes locker and undressing, he could not have been in the bathing area before the time the worker first reported seeing Mike in the water. His evidence that “nobody was fighting” covers only the time after the event. He refused to give contact details or an ID number; his statement carries only a thumbprint.
5. “I didn’t see him before that.” The worker states that he never saw Mike until he found him face down, although Mike was 180 cm tall and had been in the wet area for well over an hour while the man worked there. In the same statement he mentions that another person had died in the hot bath during his three months at the sauna.
6. No record of who was there. The police told me they did not take the names of the male customers, and that questions about the CCTV cameras also required a lawyer.

B. The description of Mike’s body does not match the photographs

7. “Two round electroshock traces on the upper chest” at the scene. The ambulance crew gave no shocks. The police file’s own rescue log says the automatic defibrillator was “unsuitable”, and the ambulance worker’s statement says the patches were put on but could not be used. Mike had no defibrillator marks when he came into the emergency room. The marks came from the three shocks given there.
8. “Stretch marks” and “no external wounds at all”. The police summary describes marks at both armpits as stretch marks and says there were no external wounds. This is repeated in the ambulance worker’s statement and twice in the police opinion. The photographs taken by the Gyeongsan police that same night show bruising on the face and right bicep, and marks across the shoulder and under the arm.
9. The photographs were withheld in usable form. The pictures supplied with the police file were black squares. Clear colour photographs were not provided until April 2009, after the court had inspected the sauna.
10. “No traces of vomiting”, “no bleeding”. I recorded a strong smell of vomit at his mouth, bloody foam at his mouth when I got into the ambulance, and close to three litres of blood drained from his lungs in the emergency room. I also recorded a strong smell of chlorine in the hair on top of his head, which the police did not look into.

C. The emergency response described in the file did not happen that way

11. The treatment the ambulance crew claims. The ambulance worker’s statement lists CPR, an artificial breathing machine, mouth-to-mouth, a pocket mask, and further CPR at the hospital. My record: the crew were certified for chest compressions only, as the Korean press reported on 22 May 2008; nobody gave mouth-to-mouth, and I was stopped when I began to; the pocket mask was thrown to me only as the ambulance entered the hospital car park; and the emergency room doctor took over on arrival. Nobody checked his mouth.
12. The call was treated as a body pick-up. I was told in the emergency room that the hospital was not ready because the 119 call had been understood as a death on arrival, and that the crew were not prepared for a rescue.
13. The emergency room “doctor” was a dentist. The police file itself gives the examiner at the hospital as “Examiner, Dentist, Oriental Doctor”.
14. The elevator. The customer says he saw Mike being taken out on the stretcher by the elevator. Mike stayed on the same gurney throughout, and it was longer than he was. The sauna blueprints inside the police file give the elevator’s dimensions, and the gurney does not fit.

D. My own account was misrecorded

15. “The mother heard the announcement and approached the counter.” I never went to the counter at any point. Staff came and found me at about 23:45. The friend who was with me told the police that only a faint announcement was heard, with nothing to suggest an emergency or that I was being called; her bilingual daughter heard nothing of the kind. The error is repeated in later parts of the file.
16. My police statement. Much of what I told the police was not translated or written down. I signed “under protest” because I wanted a different interpreter.

E. The autopsy

17. Who examined, and who wrote the report. The police summary credits the autopsy to “Lee Sang Yeong” of Busan University. The examination was done on 13 May 2008 at Ulsan by Dr Lee Sang Yong. The report filed on 3 June 2008 was written by Dr Hur of Busan, who was not at the autopsy and who had already given quotes to the press on 22 May 2008. The English translation of the report carries both names.
18. What the examiner said on the day. The police file has the examiner saying it was clearly a drowning, with nothing to worry about and the heart suspected. Dr Lee told me in person that he was recommending the police investigate the events leading up to Mike’s death.
19. The stated cause is not supported by the second opinion. The police opinion gives heart-enlargement arrhythmia, liver-cell damage, or both, as the reason he lost consciousness. The second opinion from Seoul National University, dated 19 August 2008, says there is no evident cause for the sudden loss of consciousness, that a fatal arrhythmia can be neither proven nor disproved, and that the liver explanations in the autopsy report cannot be agreed with; the liver finding is one often seen when a long time passes between death and autopsy.
20. Nobody looked for criminal evidence. The second-opinion pathologist told me at the outset that he would not look at criminal forensics, because only the National Institute of Scientific Investigation could do that.

F. The case was closed without the questions being asked

21. The police timeline ends on 17 July 2008. The second opinion did not exist until 19 August 2008. From 19 to 28 August 2008 the US Embassy and my lawyer repeatedly asked the Gyeongsan chief of police to request an examination by the National Institute of Scientific Investigation. The police record does not acknowledge any of those requests.
22. “No evidence suggesting that the cause of death is criminal.” No investigation of the hour before he was found, no customer names, no CCTV, no forensic examination. A lack of investigation is not a lack of evidence.
23. It was never a criminal investigation. The police summary sent to the Daegu prosecutor on 18 July 2008 is headed “내사요지”, a summary of an internal inquiry. The death was handled only as a preliminary inquiry and closed in the tenth week. For the first six weeks I was told that no case number had been assigned. The number that was finally produced carries the date of the death.
24. The CCTV existed, was watched by the sauna, and was never collected. A sauna employee told the police that cameras covered the lobby, the elevator, the locker room and the jimjilbang rooms, and that staff had watched the footage from 10 May 2008 and seen no fight. The sauna did not hand the footage to the police, and the police did not take it.
25. The same CCTV was offered as proof against me. On 2 June 2008 a sauna employee filed an assault complaint against me at the police station and cited the CCTV as her proof.
26. The court would not take the footage. In March 2009 my lawyer wrote to me that Korean courts by long tradition do not accept video, only ordinary photographs, because they have too many cases and no means of preserving video records. The civil court ruled the CCTV inadmissible. The hearings were then held in a courtroom with full video equipment.