SUWON, South Korea (Yonhap) -- Police on Saturday sought a court-issued warrant to formally detain a 55-year-old Chinese man of Korean ethnicity on charges of murdering a woman whose chopped upper body was found in this city just south of Seoul last week.

The suspected, identified as Park Chun-bong, is accused of killing the woman believed to be his ex-girlfriend, also of Korean-Chinese origin, and brutally butchering her body before abandoning it, police said.

The upper body of the woman without its head, arms, internal organs, except for both kidneys, was found in a black plastic bag on a hiking trail in Suwon, 46 kilometers south of Seoul, last week, sending a shock wave across the country.

Police say they requested an arrest warrant for him as he admitted to the charges against him during an overnight questioning. They were searching for the remaining other body pieces.

Following the confession, police released the suspect's photo to the media based on a law permitting this when there is sufficient evidence that the suspect of a certain brutal and grave crime committed it.