Tag: murder

Fortunately they caught her before anyone else was killed:

A criminal behavior expert says the first attack in the Gangbuk District serial murder case appears to have functioned as a test of sedatives before later killings, pointing to a pattern of escalation rather than isolated acts.

The suspect, a woman in her 20s identified by authorities as X, is accused of poisoning three men with drug-laced drinks, leaving two dead and one injured. She was handed over to prosecutors on Feb. 19 on charges including murder, causing injury and violating narcotics control laws.

Oh Yun-seong, a professor of police administration at Soonchunhyang University, said in a radio interview Tuesday that the first incident involving the suspect’s boyfriend appears to have been an experiment to confirm the effects of benzodiazepine-based sleeping pills prescribed by a psychiatric clinic.

“It was essentially testing the method,” he said, explaining that the suspect appeared to have observed that the drugged victim was unable to move for about four hours before moving on to more serious crimes.

The boyfriend lost consciousness after drinking the beverage but later recovered after being taken to a hospital. Police identified two additional attacks using a similar method that left two dead.

Oh said the suspect targeted men lured by her messages, making them particularly vulnerable. Regarding the third attack, carried out while she was already under police suspicion, he said the possibility that she acted while fully aware she had been identified as a suspect cannot be ruled out.

On the question of motive, he described the crimes as an extreme manifestation of a desire to manipulate and control interpersonal relationships. Citing accounts from X’s acquaintances that she left middle school, was later expelled from high school and had a history of theft and stoking tensions among acquaintances, the possibility of an impulse disorder should also be considered.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

I had not heard of this criminal case before, but it is really terrible. How can a pregnant woman kidnap and kill an 8-year old girl?:

Police drag Jeon Hyeon-ju, the kidnapper and killer of Park Na-ri, 8, to Seocho Police Station in southern Seoul on Sept. 12, 1997.[JOONANG ILBO]

On the evening of Aug. 30, 1997, a telephone rang inside an apartment in Seocho District, an affluent neighborhood in southern Seoul. 
  
The voice on the line was calm. 
  
“Is this Na-ri’s house?” the woman asked. “Na-ri is doing fine.”

The next day, the phone rang again. 
  
“Bring a bank card with 20 million won [$14,000] in it,” the woman said. 
  
“I only have cash,” the mother replied, her voice shaking. 
  
“Then you will not be able to see your child,” the caller said and hung up. 
  
Only later would the family learn that this was not a negotiation. Another call that night was traced to a cafe in Myeong-dong, central Seoul. 
  
With no leads, police made the investigation public on Sept. 3. The missing child was Park Na-ri, a second-grade student at a nearby elementary school. Her full name was Park Chorong Chorong Bitnari.  (……………..)

The day after her father came forward, police arrested Jeon at an inn in Sillim-dong, in Gwanak District, southern Seoul. Pesticides were found at the scene. Jeon later told police she had intended to kill herself. Her parents, according to reports, had urged her to do so before her arrest. 
  
She was about a month from giving birth. 
  
Based on Jeon’s testimony, police were dispatched to the basement office of her husband in Sadang-dong, Dongjak District. Her husband worked as a director of children’s theatrical productions. 
  
An officer at the scene later said he nearly slipped on the floor because it was covered in blood. 
  
Na-ri’s body was found inside a hiking backpack.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read the rest at the link, but Jeon was sentenced to life in prison and after giving birth her daughter was put up for adoption to the United States.

It is pretty clear that this woman must be completely crazy and unsafe to return to society:

A local court on Monday sentenced a teacher to life in prison for murdering a 7-year-old student at their school in Daejeon in February.

The Daejeon District Court handed down the sentence to Myeong Jae-wan, 48, after convicting her of stabbing the girl, Kim Ha-neul, to death.

“Murder is a crime that takes away the life of a human being, and an unprecedented case occurred where an elementary school teacher brutally murdered a victim aged only seven at the school where she worked,” the bench said.

“She committed a cruel case of a child not being protected at school, where she should have been safest, even though as an elementary school teacher she was in a position to protect the victim.”

Myeong is accused of luring Ha-neul to a classroom in the afternoon of Feb. 5, when the girl was leaving an afterschool care program, by offering her a book and then stabbing her there with a weapon she had prepared in advance.

Myeong was also charged with kicking and damaging a school computer and assaulting another teacher who had asked to leave work together, several days before the murder.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

There is a reason the police generally look at relatives first during a murder investigation because the statistics show a reletative is the likely culprit:

Nearly half of murders committed in Korea last year targeted family members such as parents, spouses and children, data showed Sunday.

According to the National Police Agency’s 2024 crime statistics, 131 of the 276 people apprehended for murder last year, or 47.5 percent, had killed a spouse, parent, child or other relative.

The share hovered around 30 percent between 2020 and 2022, but in 2023, it surged to 55.1 percent, or 160 out of 290 murder suspects. The apparent sharp rise was partly due to a change in methodology that year, when cases involving former spouses or common-law partners began to be counted. The proportion has since remained close to half.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link. What I find interesting about this stat is that in all of Korea last year there was 276 murders. For comparison in 2023 in Washington, DC there was 273 murders. Yet the Democrats and the media want people believe there is not a crime problem in Washington DC when that one city has nearly the same total number of murders as an entire major country.

This is a bizarre murder that happened recently in Incheon:

A man shot and killed his son with a homemade gun during a birthday party he threw for his father, police said Monday.

The 63-year-old shooter was detained without a warrant early Monday after police were alerted to a shooting at an apartment in Incheon, west of Seoul, at 9:31 p.m. Sunday.

The man is suspected of firing two shots at his son in his 30s during the party, which was also attended by his daughter-in-law, his two grandchildren and friends, police said. The motive behind the suspect’s shooting was not known.

The gun was in pipe-form and the bullets hit the son’s chest. He was moved to a hospital but later pronounced dead.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It sounds like this guy might of walked out of mental hospital to commit this stabbing attack in a Seoul supermarket which tragically led to one woman being killed:

A woman was killed and another wounded Tuesday after a man went on a stabbing rampage in Seoul, police said.

The suspect in his 30s stabbed the two women while wielding a knife at a supermarket near Mia Station in northern Seoul at around 6:20 p.m., according to the police.

One of the victims in her 60s was transported to a nearby hospital in cardiac arrest but later pronounced dead.

The second victim in her 40s is receiving treatment at a hospital, and she is not in critical condition.

The suspect was detained shortly after the incident and is currently under investigation.

The motive behind the attack was not immediately known, and the suspect and the victims were not acquainted, according to the police officials.

The suspect reportedly opened a package containing the weapon inside the supermarket before launching the attack. He was wearing a hospital gown at that time, they added.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This is a pretty sick guy to not only kill his girlfriend, but continue to live in an apartment where he hid her body in cement on his balcony:

A 58-year-old man has been arrested for the murder of his girlfriend 16 years ago, after her remains were discovered during construction work.

Geoje Police and the Gyeongnam Provincial Police Agency said Monday they had arrested the man on suspicion of killing his live-in girlfriend in 2008. The man is accused of fatally striking the victim, who was in her 30s at the time, with a blunt object during an argument on Oct. 10 that year, at their residence in Geoje, South Gyeongsang Province.

The suspect then put the body inside a suitcase and hid it on the outdoor balcony next to the rooftop of the building. He then covered the luggage with bricks and poured cement over it to evade discovery.

The crime was uncovered 16 years later when the landlord of the building found the suitcase containing the body while conducting demolition work to prevent water leaks.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

This is a horrible incident over in Daejeon:

 A female teacher in her 40s stabbed an eight-year-old student to death at an elementary school in the central city of Daejeon on Monday and inflicted stab wounds on herself, authorities said.

Earlier, police found the two with stab wounds on the second floor of an elementary school building in Daejeon, 160 kilometers south of Seoul, at around 6 p.m. after the student’s parent reported her missing from an after-school art class.

Rescuers transported the girl to a hospital in an unconscious state, but she later died. The teacher, who sustained stab wounds to the neck and arm, reportedly remained conscious. 

Police later said the teacher admitted to the crime during a subsequent investigation, with officials determining that she might have inflicted the injuries on herself afterward.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the female teacher had a history of depression before the incident and survived the suicide attempt.

I had no idea that Korea has never exonerated and released someone while in prison before:

When Kim Shin-hye was put behind bars after being found guilty of killing her father in 2000, she was only 23 years old. After spending 24 years in prison, she was declared innocent in a court ruling.

Judges at the Gwangju District Court on Monday overturned her conviction in her retrial and ordered the Jangheung Correctional Institution to release Kim, who is now 47.

“This should never be repeated,” Kim said as she exited the facility. “It could’ve been corrected (earlier). But it took 25 years. (In prison,) I thought a lot about why it should take such a long time … I’ll do my part to prevent a recurrence of such tragedy.”

It is the first case of a prisoner being exonerated and released for a wrongful conviction while still serving time in prison in Korea.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link that explains how a false confession and misinformation by the prosecutors caused her to be convicted.