Detained during an investigation into such activities, Park refused to confess the whereabouts of one of his fellow activists.

During the interrogation, authorities used waterboarding techniques to torture him in the National Police Headquarters' Anti-Communist Division, leading to his death on 14 January.

[2][3] A doctor from Chung-Ang University Hospital, Oh Yeon-sang, arrived at the scene and performed CPR for 30 minutes before eventually giving up.

Once he told the officers of Park's death, he later recalled that “they rolled his body in a blanket and shoved it in an elevator.

The authorities, later that day, detained and interrogated him for 20 hours; afterwards Oh fled to Seoul outskirts for a week.