By Hong Soon-do, Beijing correspondent, AsiaToday - Chinese police authorities believe that Cho Hee-pal, a notorious swindler who fled to China in December 2008, is still alive, anonymous Chinese police officials claimed on Thursday. The officials stressed that there is no reason for China to reject if Korea actively requests cooperation investigation, and that China has the ability to solve the case in a short period of time.

According to the officials, Chinese police authorities have considerable data on Korea's largest-ever fraud case and they are doubtful of Korean police's announcement that Cho Hee-pal suddenly died of a heart attack in December 2011 in China, where he lived under a fake identity of a dead ethnic Korean Cho Young-bok. The officials added, "Chinese police believe that Cho's death might have been fabricated. It seems they have launched an internal probe into local hospitals and crematorium in relation to Cho's fabricated death."

The officials said, "It wouldn't have been too hard to solve the case if Korean police actively requested China for cooperation, but strangely enough, they didn't." They claimed that China is still ready to cooperate for the case. A dispatched police officer of the Korean Embassy in China said, "The headquarter may have requested Chinese authorities for cooperation in the past, but I'm not sure about now. I'm not in a position to talk about it anymore."

A picture of Cho Hee-pal published on an article of The Global Times on October 15. Chinese netizens are spreading this picture through Weibo. It seems Chinese netizens are more active in finding the man than Korean police./ Source from The Global Times.

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In fact, Korean community in China is skeptical, suggesting that Korean authorities are not willing to solve the case. Mr. K, a Korean who lives in China, said, "The ability of the Chinese police is great. They will catch anyone if they really try. If Korean authorities were determined enough to catch Cho Hee-pal, then they should have actively requested the Chinese police for cooperation. It's not too late yet." As the Chinese authorities began to take some action over the case, it seems hard for the Korean police not to catch him anymore.