Father searches for his missing daughter for more than 2 decades, dies and her wish is still unfulfilled

Spending 25 years of his life searching for his missing daughter, until he closed his eyes, Mr. Song Gil-yong still could not fulfill his wish. Perseverance for a long time is like a river falling apart.

Last Monday (August 26), Song Gil-yong (71 years old) passed away forever after a traffic accident. The strong collision with a truck traveling in the opposite direction claimed his life, ending a journey of more than 25 years of relentless search for the whereabouts of his daughter Song Hye-hee, in silence and tragedy.

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Na Ju-bong, president of the National Association of Missing Children and Families, who has known Song Gil-yong for 20 years, said that in recent years, Mr. Song's health has deteriorated, and there are even signs of dementia.

For Na, Song Gil-yong is the one who shows him what the true love of the born for his children is. Song had told Na to help continue searching for her daughter when he died, according to the Korea Herald.

Perhaps this heartbreaking incident left even more regret when it was learned that Mr. Song's daughter Hye-hee disappeared without a trace when she was just 17 years old on February 13, 1999, after getting off at a bus stop near her home in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province (around 10:15 p.m.).

Since then, the father has frantically searched for his son's whereabouts. South Korean police looked into the possibility of kidnapping and other crimes, but found no clues about the girl. This caused them to be heavily criticized for being reprimanded for their slow response after receiving a report of the crime.

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Specifically, Mr. Song reported his daughter missing immediately after the incident occurred within 1 hour with full location, time and description of the suspect as a man with a smell of alcohol getting off the bus at the same time as Song Hye-hee. However, the police ignored the information from him and after 3 days opened an investigation into the case because it was the Lunar New Year, which made many people angry.

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The bus driver then testified and said that a suspicious man also got off the station at the same time as Mr. Song's daughter. The suspect was described as about 30 years old, wearing a hat that covered most of his face, his body smelled of alcohol and did not appear to be a person in the area.

Worth mentioning, the police still could not find the suspect despite conducting a large-scale search. They raised the possibility that the girl had voluntarily left home, but the family denied it, and said that Hye-hee was an exemplary student, studied well and had no friction with relatives.

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In February 2014, the case was officially closed after the expiration of the 15-year investigation period. However, Mr. Song still did not give up, during the long search, the old father did not mind the difficulties, doing everything to see his son again.

Every time someone said he had seen Hye-hee, Mr. Song would quickly run over in the hope of getting some news about him, but then again and again he had to leave in disappointment. The father then traveled all over the country hanging banners, distributing leaflets looking for his daughter, to the point of spending all his savings and even falling into debt.

Mr. Song also did not change his phone number because he was worried that his daughter might call one day. However, all efforts were not rewarded. Previously, his wife suffered from depression and alcoholism since Hye-hee went missing. In the end, she decided to end her life in 2006, while still holding a leaflet about her child.

In a 2020 interview, he once expressed, "After my wife died, I gave up thinking about death and just focused on finding Hye-hee. Even if I try to forget, I can't. If I hadn't met Hye-hee while I was alive, I wouldn't have been able to continue, even after I died. I will look for her, even if it becomes a ghost." To this day, Hye-hee's whereabouts are still a mystery. If she is alive, she is currently 43 years old and is described as 1m63 tall, with a round face and rather dark skin.