Police will again summon the chief of a Seoul hospital that performed an abdominal operation on late pop singer Shin Hae-chul for questioning about allegations that medical negligence led to his death, a police source said Monday.
  
The 46-year-old rock singer was pronounced dead at a general hospital in southern Seoul last month after being transferred from a hospital, identified only by its initial "S," where he received surgery for abdominal adhesions on Oct. 17. He had been in a coma for five days after the surgery.
   
The National Forensic Service later conducted an autopsy on his body and handed over the final results to the police on Friday, suggesting that medical malpractice may have caused his death.
  
"The Seongpa Police Station in charge of the case is going to call in the (hospital) chief as a suspect this weekend and investigate whether there was medical negligence in the operation based on the autopsy result," the source said.
   
The source, however, did not give the date for the additional questioning.
   
The final autopsy result was no different from an interim result released earlier by the service that said a 0.3-centimeter-long hole was found in his pericardium, a sac surrounding the heart, possibly as a result of the abdominal surgery.
   
The hospital has denied the autopsy report, saying that the hole found in Shin's pericardium has nothing to do with the hospital. As for a hole found in his small intestine, the hospital has blamed Shin's negligence in following the hospital's instructions on fasting right after the surgery. (Yonhap)