By Shim Jae-yun
Staff Reporter

A Korean national was found dead in Karaganda, some 1,000 kilometers away from northern Almaty, Kazakhstan’s capital on Wednesday, following a similar murder of a female Korean missionary Sept. 13, the Foreign Affairs-Trade Ministry said Thursday.

The body of the victim, identified by the surname Sol, was discovered by an ethnic Korean belonging to an association of Koreans residing in the central Asian nation.

Sol, a member of the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), had been teaching the Korean language to the Kazakh people.

The foreign ministry said the victim had been stabbed in the abdomen and several days had passed since the apparent murder given the body’s degree of decay.

The Korean mission in Kazakhstan has dispatched an official at the site, calling on the local police to arrest the murderer as soon as possible.

The ministry added Kazakh police have been interrogating suspects, tentatively confirming the two murder cases are linked together.

The murders have caught the Seoul government off guard as they occurred just ahead of President Roh Moo-hyun’s visit to the nation beginning on Sept. 19.

jayshim@koreatimes.co.kr