3rd Sokor man in Cavite slays a hired gun?

SILANG, Cavite — How to erase a huge debt without losing so much?

Simple: hire a killer.

Probers here now believe that the slaying of three South Koreans on Aguinaldo Highway last Friday night was a liquidation job after all.

Chief Inspector Conrado Gongon Jr., this town’s police chief, said investigators, with the help of South Korean embassy officials, have ascertained the identity of the third Korean, leading authorities to believe that it was an assassination rather than a debt collection gone wrong.

Gongon said Choon Sik Hwang, who died from a gunshot wound in the back, was an alleged hired killer from South Korea who had long been residing in the country.

Choon, he said, was allegedly hired by a woman to kill Jeong Kyu Shin, alias Richard Shin, to clean her $30,000 debt. Jeong was said to be a money changer, casino financier and nightclub operator.

Jeong’s companion, Lee Cuk Keun, who arrived in the country last Aug. 4, was the third fatality.

Gongon did not name the woman who allegedly hired Choon, but recalled that Jeong called his wife at about 8:20 p.m. last Friday to inform her that he was on his way to Tagaytay City to meet a woman who owed him a huge amount.

Police theorized that Jeong, who was found with a caliber .45 pistol in his clutch bag while undergoing treatment at the Estrella Hospital here, might have been able to return fire at Choon and hit him in the back.