South Korea's serial killer Lee Chun-jae confesses to 14 murders after 30-year investigation

In September 2019, a 57-year-old man walked into a police station in Gyeonggi Province, south of Seoul, and confessed to murders that had haunted South Korea for three decades. Lee Chun-jae told investigators he had killed 14 women and girls between 1986 and 1991, and sexually assaulted 34 others. His confession closed what became the country's most extensive criminal investigation—one that had examined 20,000 suspects, consumed enormous resources, and destroyed an innocent man's life.

The crimes, known as the Hwaseong murders, had terrorized a region for seven years. Women in the district lived in constant fear. Lee, dressed in black with his face covered, would hunt alone women in the early morning hours. When he found a victim isolated, he would attack violently, gag her with her own clothing, rape her, mutilate her with sharp objects, and strangle her. Between 1986 and 1991, he killed methodically and without capture.

What made the case extraordinary was not just the scale of violence, but the machinery of failure that surrounded it. Lee had been stopped by police during the investigation. They did not interrogate him because he was not carrying his identification card. He had a criminal record for robbery—a detail that apparently seemed unremarkable to the investigators leading the hunt. He lived in the area where the murders occurred. He fit no profile that made him stand out. "The crimes occurred around me and I didn't make an effort to hide things, so I thought they would catch me easily," Lee said in court years later. "I still don't understand why I wasn't considered a suspect."

Instead, police arrested and tortured a man named Yoon into confessing to a crime he did not commit. In 1989, Yoon was forced to admit to the rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl. He spent 20 years in prison before his release in 2008. When Lee's confession emerged, Yoon sued for torture and sought reparations. In court, Lee offered a public apology. "I came, I testified, and I described the crimes hoping that the victims and their families would find some comfort when the truth was revealed," he said. "I will live the rest of my life with regret." When asked about the murder of the 13-year-old girl, he described it coldly as "an impulsive act."

Lee's own capture had come through a different crime. In 1992, he married. Two years later, his wife left him. He blamed his sister-in-law. On January 13, 1994, he went to her home, drugged her, tied her up, raped her, and strangled her with a stocking. He placed a bag over her head, bound her hands with her own underwear, wrapped her body in blue fabric, and buried her. When her family reported her missing, Lee volunteered to help search. Her father assumed she had been kidnapped. Two days later, melting snow exposed the body.

Police interrogated all family members, including Lee. Without knowing that the victim had been sexually assaulted—information police had not released publicly—Lee asked a question that betrayed him: "How many years in prison for rape and murder?" The investigators had their answer. Lee was convicted and initially sentenced to death, later reduced to life imprisonment with possibility of parole after 20 years.

When Lee confessed to the Hwaseong murders in 2019, the statute of limitations had already expired. He could not be prosecuted for any of them. The law saw him only as the man who killed his sister-in-law. The 14 women and girls remained officially unsolved in the eyes of the criminal code, their killer already imprisoned for a different murder, beyond the reach of new justice. The case that had consumed three decades of investigation, that had examined thousands of suspects and ruined an innocent man, closed not with conviction but with confession to crimes the law could no longer touch.