Hwaseong serial murders

Overview

Between September 15, 1986, and April 3, 1991, a series of rapes and murders occurred in and around Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. Ten murders were originally attributed to this string of crimes, which became the largest criminal investigation in South Korean history, involving more than 2 million man-days of police work and over 21,000 investigated suspects. Victims were found bound, gagged, raped, and in most cases strangled to death with their own clothing, such as pantyhose or socks.

The Crimes

The first known victim, Lee Wan-im, 71, disappeared on September 13, 1986, while returning home from visiting her daughter; her body was found in a pasture six days later. Subsequent victims included Park Hyun-sook, 25, found in a canal in October 1986, and Kwon Jung-bon, 25, found on an embankment months after her December 1986 disappearance. The final murder attributed to the case took place around 9 p.m. on April 3, 1991, when Kwon Soon-sang, 69, was found raped and strangled with pantyhose on a hill.

Investigation and a Wrongful Conviction

Investigators created a suspect sketch based on descriptions from a bus driver and conductor who saw a man shortly after the seventh murder in 1988, alongside descriptions from surviving assault victims. Police also for years believed the perpetrator had blood type B, which was later found to be inaccurate. In 1989, Yoon Sung-yeo was arrested and convicted for the murder of the eighth victim, 14-year-old Park Sang-hee, a case determined at the time to be a "copycat crime." Yoon was sentenced to life imprisonment and served over nineteen years before being paroled in 2009.

Identification of Lee Choon-jae

The case remained unsolved for thirty years. Lee Choon-jae had separately been convicted and sentenced to death, later reduced to life imprisonment with parole eligibility after twenty years, for drugging, raping, and killing his eighteen-year-old sister-in-law in January 1994. In September 2019, police announced that DNA from a victim's underwear had been matched to Lee, and further testing linked him to additional unsolved murders. On October 2, 2019, police announced Lee had confessed to fourteen murders, including all ten original serial-murder victims — among them the case for which Yoon had been convicted — plus four previously unattributed killings, along with more than thirty rapes and attempted rapes. Because the statute of limitations for the murders had expired and was not applied retroactively, Lee could not be prosecuted for these additional killings.

Yoon Sung-yeo's Exoneration

Following Lee's confession, Yoon Sung-yeo filed for a retrial. Prosecutors confirmed Yoon had endured abusive treatment by police at the time of his arrest and that a forensic report used to convict him had been fraudulently written. Eight of the original investigators were charged with abuse of power and illegal detention. At a November 2, 2020 retrial hearing, Lee testified as a witness, confessing to the crime and describing the scene. On December 17, 2020, Yoon was formally acquitted of the murder after the court found him innocent and found Lee responsible, despite the expired statute of limitations barring prosecution.