South Korean kills ice hockey defector wife-police

SEOUL, Feb 27 (Reuters) A South Korean man has been arrested on suspicion of killing his wife -- a former North Korean ice hockey star -- keeping her body for five days in their house and then burying her in a suitcase, police said.

The husband, in his late thirties and identified by his family name Kim, had confessed to strangling the woman in a fight over her work as a bar hostess, a police officer from the southern city of Kwangju said by telephone.

''That's what he says, that it was a fight and he didn't like her work,'' the officer said by telephone yesterday. The suspect's lawyer was not immediately available for comment.

The woman, identified only as Lee and in her late twenties, had played for the national ice hockey teams of both South and North Korea, Yonhap news agency said.

She fled the North in 2000 and reached the South four years later, Yonhap said.

REUTERS SBA RN0439