A South Korean asset manager has been found dead in the country`s latest apparent suicide linked to the global financial crisis, police said Thursday.

Police found the body of the 55-year-old head of a small asset management firm, identified only as Choi, in a Seoul hotel room on Wednesday afternoon.

`Having been under pressure from the cash crunch since August last year from the US subprime mortgage crisis, I worked hard to have my investors at least recover their principal,` Yonhap news agency quoted a note he left as saying.

`I feel sorry to my friends for failing to achieve that. I`d like to pay my debt back by death.`

Choi had checked in on Sunday afternoon. Sleeping pills and liquor were found in his room along with the note, said officer Choi Yeong-guk of Gangnam police station in southern Seoul.

The extent of Choi`s losses and the number of investors involved was not known. He established the asset firm in 2000 with funds from about a dozen people he knew from college, Yonhap said.

Several other recent suicides or suicide attempts in South Korea have been blamed on the grim economic climate, according to media reports.