TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The body of a Penghu County fisherman who went missing in July 2021 finally returned home last week from Japan thanks to the identification of a piece of metal inside his right leg.
After an unidentified body was found on a beach in Nagasaki Prefecture in Nov. 2021, an autopsy found the man had been dead for several months, and turned up an intramedullary nail used to address long-bone fractures inside his leg. The rod was made by Johnson & Johnson, but according to its serial number, it was only sold in China, India, South Korea, and Taiwan, the Liberty Times reported Wednesday (Nov. 23).
As a result, after a search in Japanese DNA databanks did not turn up any corresponding missing persons, police contacted their counterparts in South Korea, but to no avail.
In August, Japan sent over the results of its research to Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB). After failing to find a DNA match, the CIB consulted the Institute of Forensic Medicine, which searched a list of missing persons. The institute found that a fisherman from Penghu named Chang (章), who had gone missing in 2021, also had an intramedullary nail inside his right leg.
Chang had left the island of Xiyu alone in his boat in the early morning of July 27, 2021, to go fishing. Around noon, another fishing trawler found his ship drifting without anyone on board. A Coast Guard search operation failed to find any sign of Chang, per the Liberty Times.
His relatives, who had provided DNA samples to the authorities shortly after he went missing, traveled to Japan and brought his body back to Penghu last week.
