South Korea arrests man sought by FBI for 10 years

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean police said on Wednesday they have arrested a Korean-American suspected of murder and wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation after he fled the United States 10 years ago and went to South Korea.

U.S.-born David Nam, 29 was apprehended in suburban Seoul, where he had been teaching English, police said.

According to the FBI, Nam was freed on bond pending trial in Pennsylvania and then fled to South Korea in 1998.

He was arrested about a year later but released from custody because there was no formal extradition treaty between the two countries at that time. This led to one being reached a few months later, the FBI said in a Web posting.

Nam, who uses the alias "Solid", is suspected of shooting to death an elderly man during a home robbery in Philadelphia in 1996, the FBI said.

South Korean police said they tracked him down by looking for areas where he had relatives in South Korea and then following up investigations in those neighborhoods.

"As a native English speaker it would have been very easy for Nam to get a job as a teacher and make a living," a police investigator said by telephone.

Nam will be handed over to U.S. authorities after a Seoul court rules on the date of his extradition, a decision likely to be made in the next few days, the investigator said.

(Reporting by Lee Jiyeon and Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)