A Vietnamese bride is suspected to have been killed after South Korean police found her body in a valley in the southwestern province of Chollanam-do on Tuesday.

>> Young Vietnamese bride killed by Korean husband

Do Thi My Tien, a 27-year-old woman, left Vietnam for Korea in 2004 after marrying a South Korean man, a correspondent of the Vietnam News Agency in South Korea cited a source from the Vietnamese community in the province as saying.

The woman, who was born in the southern Vietnamese province of Tay Ninh, obtained South Korean nationality and had an 8-year-old boy, the source said.   It is believed that the woman was killed as many as five days before and the murderer put her body and a motorbike in the valley in order to make it appear she had had an accident, local police said on Tuesday. After examining the scene, police summoned her 47-year-old husband for questioning. A number of Vietnamese women married to South Korean men in the area said that Tien and her husband had been fighting before she disappeared from their house.

Tien’s mother has arrived in the province from Vietnam to attend her daughter’s funeral ceremony conducted by the family of Tien’s husband.

Local police are investigating the cause of her mysterious death. Previously there have been many cases in which Vietnamese brides were killed in South Korea by their husbands. One such heartbreaking case occurred earlier this year when Ngo Thi Nga, 21, a native of the northern Vietnamese city of Hai Phong, was killed by her South Korean husband Own Chon on January 14.  The victim’s body was found in the bedroom of the house where she and her South Korean family had lived in Hongchon District of Kangwon Province. The murderer killed himself shortly after. By 2013, nearly 52,000 Vietnamese women were married to Korean men. After China, Korea is the second most common source of foreign husbands for Vietnamese women, according to the statistics of the South Korean Ministry of Security and Public Administration. Over the past years, the South Korean government has given priority to assisting foreign brides, including Vietnamese ones, in integrating into their husbands’ families as well as local culture and customs, the ministry said.   Vietnamese brides should contact the Vietnamese Embassy in Seoul to receive immediate support if they suffer maltreatment by their husbands, the ministry added. The Vietnamese Embassy in South Korea also said it has set up a mechanism to support Vietnamese brides in the country. Accordingly, when they receive domestic violence reports from Vietnamese brides, the embassy refers them to the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the local authorities and police for help, the embassy said.    The embassy also coordinates with humanitarian organizations that offer support to foreign women in South Korea to seek help for Vietnamese women when necessary.