A man plunged to his death from Seoul’s recently opened overpass-turned-park around midnight Monday, in an apparent suicide, police said Tuesday.



According to police, a 32-year-old man from Kazakhstan threw himself from Seoullo 7017, near Cheongpa-ro, west of Seoul Station. The elevated park, which opened May 20, has 1.4-meter high safety walls erected on both sides.





According to police, the park had other visitors at the time of the incident. Citizens and the police sought to dissuade the man from jumping, but to no avail.He was taken to a nearby hospital immediately but died the next morning.Police said they are investigating the details of the accident.Seoul Metropolitan Government held an emergency meeting on Tuesday to discuss safety measures, including increasing the number of guards from the current five.“The man seems to have committed suicide, although further investigation should be conducted,” a Seoul City official said. “There won’t be any restrictions on entry to the park since the incident was not caused by its facilities.”Some citizens demanded additional safety measures saying that any fall from the park could lead to secondary accidents as roads and streets underneath it are among the busiest in Seoul.Seoullo 7017 was a project involving the renovation of a 40-year-old highway into a pedestrian-friendly park modelled after High Line Park in New York. A total of 835,200 citizens visited the park as of Monday.By Byun Hee-jin ( hjbandi9@heraldcorp.com