The former chairman of the company that operates the South Korean airport where a Jeju Air plane crashed last month was found dead in his home, police said Wednesday.

Son Chang-wan, who served as chairman of the Korea Airports Corporation from 2018 to 2022, was found at his residence in Gunpo, a city about 14 miles south of Seoul, on Tuesday night. Police said there was no evidence of a murder or home invasion and called his death an apparent suicide.

Mr. Son was on duty when the reconstruction of Muan International Airport was underway, at the scene on December 29 Jeju Air disaster in which 179 people diedbegan in 2020. But he was not the subject of an accident investigation by Jeonnam provincial police, according to a spokesman for the agency.

Korea Airports Corporation is a state-owned company that operates more than a dozen airports, including Muan. The company said that because Mr. Son’s death was a personal matter, it had no official statement on the matter.

One particular subject of investigation into the accident, which involved a Boeing 737-800, is a concrete wall at Muan Airport that contained an antenna array used to guide the aircraft during landing. Jeju Air Flight 7C2216 skidded into a wall at high speed and exploded, killing all but two passengers and crew members.

It was the worst plane crash on South Korean soil and the deadliest in the world since the one of Lion Air Flight 610 2018when all 189 people on board died.

Korea Airports Corporation’s safety standards have been called into question, with critics claiming that the disaster would have been less serious if the antenna array had been mounted on a more fragile support, as in many other airports.

Government officials said the structure was built in accordance with safety regulations. But inspection The Ministry of Transport revealed that seven airports in the country, including the one in Muan, did not meet safety standards and needed to upgrade their runway facilities.

On Wednesday, the transport ministry announced that it will replace the existing concrete structure in Muan with one that is easier to break. The ministry also said plans are underway to upgrade localizers at airports to be made of lighter, steel construction and to extend safety zones at the end of some runways to at least nearly 790 feet. The Muan runway is scheduled to remain closed until mid-April.

A team of aviation officials from South Korea, the United States and Boeing is investigating the crash. Their efforts had already been hampered by failure flight recorder which stopped working minutes before the crash.

Police are conducting a separate investigation and have banned Jeju Air’s CEO from leaving the country.