SEOUL– A woman in her 20s was put under emergency arrest in the southeastern city of Ulsan on Friday on suspicion of leaving her 3-year-old daughter to starve to death, police said.

The woman, whose identity was withheld, called the Ulsan Fire Department on Thursday evening to report that her daughter was not breathing, according to the Ulsan Metropolitan Police Agency in Ulsan, 414 kilometers southeast of Seoul.

Fire authorities rushed to the woman’s home and transported the child to a hospital but she was declared dead there, the police agency said.

There was no major external injury on the child’s body but it was confirmed that she weighed only 7 kilograms, half the normal weight of her peers. The hospital assumed that she apparently died of starvation, according to police.

Police urgently apprehended the mother on charges of fatal child abuse, and her common-law husband was also booked on the same charges.

The deceased child had a 17-month-old younger brother, but he was also found to be in very bad health, such as not reaching a normal weight, and was handed over to a child protection agency.

Police said the deceased child was born from her mother’s relationship with another man and the boy was born from her current live-in partner.

Police suspect that the couple had neglected their children by not feeding them and leaving them at home alone. Police plan to conduct an autopsy on the child’s body to determine the exact cause of her death.

Source: Yonhap News Agency