3 sickened by yogurt handed out to residents

Police arrested a 32-year-old man last night who they said injected detergent into 60 containers of yogurt that he handed out to residents of a town in southern Seoul that will be redeveloped.
Three people who ate the yogurt were briefly hospitalized and released this week for nausea and dizziness, police said yesterday.
Between two and four containers of yogurt were each unexpectedly delivered to about 30 households in the town on Tuesday, police said. The residents found a small hole in the containers, which they believed was caused by a needle, and reported it to police.
“I was angry because the residents there are going to make big money on the redevelopment project while my mother has to live on peddling fruit in an outdoor market,” police said the man told them. He is not employed.
The man’s mother lives in a village adjacent to Munjeong 2-dong.
The town consists of 95 households in black vinyl homes near giant apartment complexes, police said. The residents, mostly the elderly and people with low incomes, moved there beginning in the late 1980s.
Recently the town was designated as the new home of the offices of the Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors’ Office and the Seoul Eastern District Court, now both located in Gwangjin District. The move is expected in around 2010.
“Although compensation for the residents has not been set, residents are expecting to receive money to move to other places or the right to live in low-rent apartments,” said an official at Munjeong 2-dong office.
Police said they are analyzing the yogurt. “We collected the yogurt and sent it to the National Institute of Scientific Investigation. No poison was found in the first analysis and the institute has been conducting further analyses,” a police official said.

By Kwon Geun-young, Han Ae-ran JoongAng Ilbo [soejung@joongang.co.kr]