Suwon police said the 27-year-old student identified as Kim was found dead in his studio apartment in Suwon's Jangan-gu on Tuesday at around noon, having hanged himself with a leather belt from a gas pipe on the ceiling.

Kim's girlfriend, a 27-year-old identified as Yang who was studying in the U.K., informed a friend living in Seoul, who in turn called the police.

Police said Kim and Yang had been fighting while video chatting at around 10:00 a.m. when Kim suddenly got up and killed himself.

"Even when I was in Korea, my boyfriend normally used to say extreme and unsettling thing when we fought, like he was going to kill himself,” police quoted Yang as saying. “At first, I though he was just trying to scare me, but I was shocked when I saw his body suddenly drop."

(englishnews@chosun.com )