The former president of the company that operates the South Korean airport where a Jeju Air jet crash-landed last month has been found dead in his home, the police said on Wednesday.
Son Chang-wan, who was the president of Korea Airports Corporation from 2018 to 2022, was found in his residence in Gunpo, a city about 14 miles south of Seoul, on Tuesday evening. The police said there was no evidence of murder or intrusion into his home and called his death an apparent suicide.
Mr. Son was in office when a renovation of the Muan International Airport, the site of the Dec. 29 Jeju Air disaster in which 179 people were killed, began in 2020. But he was not a subject of an investigation into the crash being conducted by the Jeonnam Provincial Police, according to an agency spokesperson.
Korea Airports Corporation is a government-owned company that operates more than a dozen airports, including Muan. The company said that because Mr. Son’s death was a personal matter, it did not have an official statement on it.
One particular subject of investigations into the crash, which involved a Boeing 737-800, is a concrete wall at the Muan airport that contained an antenna array used to guide planes during landing. Jeju Air’s Flight 7C2216 skidded into the wall at high speed and exploded, killing all but two of the plane’s passenger and crew.
It was the worst aviation disaster on South Korean soil and the deadliest worldwide since that of Lion Air Flight 610 in 2018, when all 189 people onboard died.
Korea Airports Corporation’s safety standards have come into question, with critics arguing that if the antenna array had been installed on a more easily breakable mount, as in many other airports, the disaster might have been less severe.
Government officials have said that the structure was built in accordance with safety regulations. But an inspection by the transportation ministry revealed that seven of the nation’s airports, including the one in Muan, did not meet safety standards and needed to upgrade their runway facilities.
On Wednesday, the transportation ministry said it would replace the existing concrete structure in Muan with one that is more easy to break. The ministry also said that plans were underway to upgrade localizers at airports to be made of lighter, steel structures and extend safety zones at the end of some runways to a minimum of almost 790 feet. The Muan runway is due to remain closed until mid-April.
A team of aviation officials from South Korea, the United States and Boeing are investigating the accident. Their efforts have already been hindered by the failure of a flight recorder that stopped working minutes before the crash.
The police are conducting a separate investigation and have barred Jeju Air’s chief executive from leaving the country.
