The Jongno District Does, alternatively referred to as the Seoul Does, were individuals whose remains were found in a mass grave alongside 18 other unidentified decedents in the Jongno district of Seoul, South Korea. They are the only decedents whose sex could not be determined, with 4 being classified as adults and 6 being classified as minors. Their remains are suspected to have been in the area for 50 to 100 years and were originally theorized to have been victims of either the Korean War or the Japanese Imperial Army. These theories have since been dismissed.
Case[]
On the 28th of November, 2008, excavation workers demolishing the former Korea International Cooperation Agency office found a pile of bones in the building's basement. Excavation work was immediately halted, with police being dispatched and beginning a homicide investigation under the impression that the pile of bones was a single dismembered body. Though, the investigation soon changed when detectives found more bones and identified them as belonging to 10 to 15 different people alongside assorted animal bones. Police quickly classified the case as strange deaths instead of a criminal matter and shortened their investigation once told the remains were 50 to 100 years old. They then suspected that the mass grave they had discovered may have been one of many mass graves from the Korean War that was used to dump the bodies of deceased Korean soldiers. In addition, the building whose basement the remains were found in had once been the site of a bloody battle between North and South Korean forces during the war.
After communicating this information to the South Korean army, they sent a force specializing in soldiers killed in action to recover the discovered remains, as well as thoroughly excavate the basement where they were found and attempt to identify the remains. Their investigation lasted for 14 days before reporting to police that the remains likely did not belong to soldiers and lacked any sort of artifacts to prove that they had served in any army. All of the remains lacked gunshot wounds and the only items found in the excavation site were a Japanese ink bottle and the sole of a single boot. Police then suspected that the remains belonged to civilians that were murdered by North Korean forces or political opposition and prisoners that were murdered by South Korean forces during the time it was ruled as a dictatorship. The Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission was then called to investigate the scene, though they also dismissed the theory due to a lack of evidence.
Shortly after the investigation, The South Korean military and KTRC believed that these remains were medical cadavers used by The Seoul National University that were disposed of and did not require the involvement of either organization. Though, it was discovered that SNU cremated all remains they had used, leading police to then suspect that the remains may have been victims of biological experiments conducted by the Imperial Japanese Army during its occupation of South Korea or cadavers used by the Keijō Imperial University, often occasionally referred to as the Kyungsung Imperial University. Detectives found this theory to be promising, but came to a dead end yet again when surviving records from Japanese forces recorded the burial of experimentation victims at the location nor did the remains show any sign of disease or biological testing. Surviving records from KIU also did not list that they had tested on the remains of children and after Korea was liberated from Japan, all remains in the university's possession were cremated and given a proper funeral.
With a lack of leads or further theories, police finally transferred the remains to the National Forensic Service in the country. In 2009, the NFS reported that the remains showed signs of being cut apart with a medical saw, thus experts at NFS believed the cadavers were indeed from Keijō Imperial University. The area where the remains were found had not been where they were killed, and the final count of bodies in the mass grave was found to be exactly 28 instead of 10 to 15. The bodies were determined to not have been related to each other and were reported to show no signs of being victims of homicide. Thus, police officially closed the case and categorized the remains as being one of the many cadavers experimented on by Keijō Imperial University. Though, in 2021, a TV program aired in South Korea describing the case and noting it to be unsolved, reporting that the NFS' conclusion had been dismissed. Yet, the police's district office in Seoul lists the case as closed with no report of a clear conclusion as of 2022. Due to Korean traditions, the remains are suspected to have been cremated in 2019. It is unknown if any DNA samples from the bodies currently exist.
Sources[]
- Keijō Imperial University on Wikipedia
- SBS News (Korean)
- Viengna (Korean)