Lee Choon-jae

Lee Chun-jae (born 31 January 1963) is a South Korean serial killer known for committing the Hwaseong serial murders.

Lee Chun-jae was born in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, on 31 January 1963.

According to his mother, Lee had a good education and worked well with others.

He had a younger brother who drowned in his childhood, an incident which purportedly traumatized him.

After graduating from high school in February 1983, Lee joined the Republic of Korea Army and served as a tank driver; he was discharged in January 1986.

Between 1986 and 1994, Lee murdered fifteen women and girls in addition to committing numerous sexual assaults, predominantly in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, and the surrounding areas.

For a period of four years and seven months, between September 15, 1986, and April 3, 1991, Lee Chun-jae, then in his twenties, committed the Hwaseong serial murders, which were a series of rapes and murders that occurred in the rural city of Hwaseong in Gyeonggi Province.

The victims, all women, were found bound, gagged, raped, and in most cases strangled to death with their own clothes, such as pantyhose or socks.

The murders sparked the largest criminal case in South Korea with over 2million man-days spent on investigation and over 21,000 suspects investigated.

The case began with the disappearance of Lee Wan-im (71) on September 15, 1986, while returning home after visiting her daughter.

Her body was found in a pasture on September 19, 1986, at 14:00, four days following the murder.

A month later, on October 20, 1986, Park Hyun-sook (25) disappeared after getting off the bus while returning home from Songtan.

Her body was found on October 23, 1986, at 14:50 in a canal.

Two months later on December 12, 1986, Gwon Jung-bon (25) disappeared from in front of her house.

Her body was found four months later on April 23, 1987, at 14:00, in an embankment.

Seven more murders followed over the next years.

A suspect sketch was drawn based on the memory of a bus driver, surname Kang, and bus conductor, surname Uhm, who saw a man get on the bus shortly after the seventh murder on September 7, 1988.

The characteristics of the suspect, which were described by the bus driver, were similar to the descriptions given by survivors who were sexually assaulted.

According to the victims, the culprit at the time of the incident was a thin-framed man in his mid-20s, with a height of 165 to 170 centimeters, short cut sporty-type hair, no double eyelids, and a sharp nose.

On 26 September 1989, Lee broke into a house in Suwon and was discovered by the landlord.

In 1990 he began working as an unlicensed crane operator at a construction company in Cheongpa-dong, Yongsan District, Seoul.

He was sentenced by the Suwon District Court to one year and six months' imprisonment in the first trial in February 1990 for the charges of robbery and violence.

After the first trial, Lee filed an appeal, claiming that he was beaten by an unknown young man and entered the victim's house while being chased.

In the second trial, the court suspended Lee's sentence to two years' probation.

He was released in April 1990.

The last murder was estimated to have taken place around 21:00 on April 3, 1991.

Gwon Soon-sang (69) was discovered dead, raped, and strangled with pantyhose on a hill.

The Hwaseong serial murders are infamous within South Korea for being the first truly identifiable string of murders with a similar modus operandi.

The police officers involved spent 2million man-days on the case.

The total number of suspects also grew, eventually reaching a total count of 21,280 individuals.

In addition, 40,116 individuals had their fingerprints taken, and 570 DNA samples and 180 hair samples were analyzed.

The first five murders happened within a 6 km (3.7 mile) radius of Hwaseong, prompting police to spread out in teams of two, positioned every 100 meters (328 feet), but the next killing happened where there was no police presence.

During the investigation, rumors that the killer targeted women wearing red clothes on rainy days spread, leading some female police officers to wear red clothes in an attempt to lure the killer into a trap.

In April 1992, Lee married a bookkeeper and had a son with her.

However, Lee was a violent alcoholic who often physically abused his wife and child.

The following year, he was employed as a crane driver for a company in Cheongwon, North Chungcheong Province, which he ultimately quit in March 1993.

Lee was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after twenty years for killing his sister-in-law in 1994, but despite DNA evidence and his confession to the other murders in 2019, he could not be prosecuted for them because the statute of limitations had expired.

The murders, which remained unsolved for thirty years, are considered to be the most infamous in modern South Korean history and were the inspiration for the 2003 film Memories of Murder.

The cases remained unsolved for 30 years, until Lee was identified as a suspect in 2019.

He confessed to 4 undisclosed murders not originally included in the original list of crimes and all 10 serial murders, including a case previously determined to be a copycat crime (for which a man named Yoon Sung-yeo was sentenced to life in prison).