A Vietnamese woman was arrested on Friday for disposing the body of her dead newborn at a subway station in Uijeongbu, Gyeonggi Province.

“I thought if I leave the body in a subway station, one of many passing people would find him and give him a funeral,” said the 19-year-old mother in her testimony to the Uijeongbu police.

The woman enrolled at a university in Korea in January as a language school student. At the time of her arrival, she was six months pregnant by her boyfriend.

She kept silent about the pregnancy, fearing it would hamper her relationship with her parents and cause problems at the Korean school.

On Wednesday, a month before her expected due date, she suddenly started having labor pains and gave birth to a baby boy in her dormitory bathroom. The newborn, however, did not breathe for long.

In her testimony the mother said, “(The baby) was not in a healthy state. I tried giving him some powdered milk but he died in three hours.”

Four-and-a-half hours after giving birth, she disposed the shopping bag containing her dead child’s body on the staircase of Uijeongbu station’s underground shopping mall. A Vietnamese female friend, who is also 19, helped her carry out the deed.

The police arrested the two women under charges of illegal disposal of a body.

Relevant authorities will run an autopsy on the baby to verify the cause of death.

By Lim Jeong-yeo (kaylalim@heraldcorp.com)