(08.03.2020)

His lonely death in the early hours of Feb. 19 became a matter of urgent public interest when he was posthumously confirmed to have the novel coronavirus, becoming the first killed by the illness in South Korea. Six others who’d been housed alongside him at the psych ward at the private Cheongdo Daenam Hospital in the country’s southeast, all in their 50s and 60s, also died within days. Of 102 patients in the psych ward, 100 had contracted the deadly virus.

Authorities haven’t determined how the virus made its way into the locked ward,