THIS is the woman whose bound-and-gagged body was dumped in a suitcase in a country lane near York.

Detectives have now launched a murder hunt into the death of Hyo Jung Jin, a 21-year-old Korean student who had been studying French at Lyon University in France.

They released pictures of her for the first time today.

Investigators who found her body in the lane near Askham Richard, York, said they were still awaiting the results of pathology tests to establish how she died, but said for the first time that her death was being treated as murder.

Hyo, whose family live in the Junju-Si province of South Korea, had left France to visit the Korean community in London.

Detective Chief Inspector Alan Ankers, who is leading the investigation, travelled to London on Monday with a team of 12 officers, including crime scene experts, to work alongside the Metropolitan Police as part of their investigation.

At a press conference in York today, Det Chief Supt Ian Lynch, the head of North Yorkshire CID, said Hyo's family had been informed and he expected that they would come to the UK at some point in the near future.

Det Chief Supt Lynch said: "Clearly one of our priorities at the moment is to establish Hyo's movements once she arrived in the UK in late October. She intended to visit the Korean community in London and her body has been found in York, so clearly we have got to fill that gap in."

The student, whose parents and brother live in South Korea, was identified from fingerprints after fellow students became concerned that she had not returned to university in France.

One student contacted her mother in Korea and the family contacted the Korean Embassy in Paris.

The Paris Embassy contacted its London equivalent and as a result detectives in York were contacted.

At no time had Hyo been reported as a missing person in the UK.

At the same time Hyo's brother had posted her details on an Internet website and by coincidence a Korean police officer studying at Leeds University saw the site and contacted police in York. He was able to translate the information on the website and is on standby to help police deal with the family if they visit the UK.

Detectives say they are still not linking Hyo's death with the discovery of the body of a man in a suitcase in Basingstoke.

Updated: 14:14 Wednesday, January 09, 2002