A newborn girl has been found abandoned in a restroom at a shopping center in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, with the mother identified as a 19-year-old Vietnamese student.
South Korean police announced on Thursday the arrest of the Vietnamese student, accused of leaving her newborn daughter in a bag in a restroom, Korea Times reported.
The baby was discovered around 5 p.m. on Wednesday at a shopping center in Uijeongbu City, Gyeonggi Province. Found in good health with her umbilical cord still intact, the infant was taken to a nearby hospital for medical care.
Using security camera footage from the mall and surrounding areas, police tracked down and arrested the mother at her residence, also in Uijeongbu.
The woman is reportedly in South Korea on a language training visa, not a work visa. The motive for the abandonment remains unclear, and police plan to continue their investigation with the assistance of an interpreter, according to The Korea Herald.
A report from South Korea’s Ministry of Health and Welfare in August revealed that nearly 100 children are abandoned annually by their legal guardians. Additionally, the National Police Agency recorded 1,185 newborn abandonment cases in the country between 2013 and 2022.
As of March, there were 43,361 Vietnamese students in South Korea, making Vietnam the second-largest source of foreign students in the country, according to South Korean Ministry of Education.
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