The residents began to fear for their safety. Their bodies would be found days later, strangled with their clothes. The next few victims were younger women who disappeared while walking home late at night. There were very few personnel left, and the three detectives, he added, could not actively track the suspect.īut as the months went by, more women disappeared. “The majority of police departments around the country were deployed to beef up security in Seoul, due to threats from North Korea,” said Professor Yeom of the Korean Institute of Criminology. Only three policemen were assigned to the case as it had happened near the “most important national event at that time”, the opening of the 1986 Asian Games, said criminologist Yeom Keon-Ryeong. Her body was found a few days later.Īt the time, not much attention was paid to the crime. She had gone out one morning in September 1986 to pick some cabbage and disappeared. The first to die was a 71-year-old woman.
Korea serial killer full#
It was only a full decade later, in 2019, that an incredible breakthrough led to him walking out of court a truly free man, innocent in the eyes of the world.ĬNA’s two-part special, Catching a Killer: The Hwaseong Murders, traces the mistakes that robbed him of his freedom.
A shadow continued to hang over him even after he was released on parole in 2009. When he was sentenced to life imprisonment, no one believed he was innocent, he recalled. Yet, after a three-day interrogation where he was deprived of sleep and assaulted, Yoon confessed. Under pressure to make headway in investigations, the police had nothing conclusive to link Yoon to the crime. The case, which sent shockwaves through the country, was the eighth in two years. The killer had become more brazen, entering a victim’s home for the first time. Unlike the previous cases where the victims were killed outdoors, the 14-year-old student was found in her bed, sexually assaulted and strangled with her own clothes.
Then in September 1988, teenager Park Sang-hee was murdered. All were sexually assaulted and strangled with their own clothing – garments such as stockings and underwear – in what came to be known as the killer’s signature.
The victims, all women, ranged from their teens to 70s. Hwaseong, a rural area just south of Seoul, had been rocked by a string of murders from 1986. “If you are found with a clock in prison, you would be punished,” he said. Time stopped when he was arrested and thrown into prison in 1989 for a murder he did not commit. A tale spanning 30 years, in fact, about the staggering miscarriage of justice against one man. HWASEONG, SOUTH KOREA: There is a story behind why Yoon Sung-Yeo hangs two clocks in his home.
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