Jeon Jang-pyo (right) receives a certificate of appreciation from Bin Jun-gyu, the chief of Ansan Sangrok Police Station, Tuesday. (Ansan Sangrok Police Station)
A 68-year-old man who returned a pile of cash he had found inside a discarded treadmill was commended Tuesday by local police.
Ansan Sangrok Police Station presented a certificate of appreciation to Jeon Jang-pyo, a resident of Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, who found 48.7 million won ($36,000) in cash inside the broken machine at around 3:51 p.m. on Sunday. He reported his discovery to the police, who checked the surveillance footage to find that a woman in her 60s and another man had thrown away the treadmill.
It was found that the money belonged to the woman's father, who is in his 90s and suffers from dementia. He had a habit of putting his savings -- the money from his pension for distinguished service to the state -- inside the treadmill, which his daughter had not been aware of at the time.
The family decided to give 10 percent of the money to Jeon. South Korean law states that a person who has recovered a lost item must pay between 5 and 20 percent of the item's value to the person who helped him or her recover that item.
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