South Korean man who spent 20 years in prison for murder another man later confessed to will be tried again
Yoon was convicted of raping and murdering a 13-year-old girl and sentenced to life in prison, though his sentence was later reduced on appeal. He was released after 20 years in prison. The crime would have been shocking anywhere else, but in Hwaseong, then a rural area near South Korea's capital Seoul, murders like this were happening with disturbing regularity. She was the eighth female to be murdered there in two years.
Yoon told police that on the night of the murder, he had gone for a walk to get some air, according to records of his confession obtained from his attorney. During the walk, he had to stop several times to rest -- his childhood polio had left him with a limp so bad that he had been exempted from compulsory military service. Around midnight, Yoon saw a house with a light on and felt a sudden "urge for rape," he told police, according to transcripts of his confession.
Hong, the Taean-eup resident, remembers that men were afraid of being questioned by police. The village became quiet and eerie, he said. "We were worried for being mistaken as criminals, so we didn't go out drinking either. Even if we hadn't done anything, things could get out of our hands."When the first victim was murdered, the responsibility fell to local police to investigate.
Some female police officers wore red and tried to lure the killer into a trap, others went to a clairvoyant who told them to find a man with a missing finger, and some became so frustrated that they performed a shamanistic ritual on a voodoo scarecrow, Ha said. But the murders didn't leave Hwaseong's collective memory, even as the villages eventually incorporated into a small city. And the police didn't give up their search.
He had given a detailed confession, even drawing on a piece of paper to explain the locations of the killings, an official from Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency said. Lee's confession alone wasn't enough to clear Yoon's name. In the eyes of the law, he was still a convicted murderer.These days, Yoon is a gregarious man in his 50s. He works at a leather processing factory in North Chungcheong Province, a few hours' train ride from Seoul, and he still walks with a limp. On the surface, he is cheerful and sociable, a man who speaks loudly and laughs freely.As a child, Yoon's family moved around, Yoon says.
"Those times were much like a nightmare," he said. "When you don't get sleep for three days, you don't know what you said. You don't remember what you did. You can't think properly.Nowadays, Yoon thinks that he was mistreated, but at the time, Yoon didn't know anything about law -- he hadn't even finished elementary school.
Yoon's experience wasn't totally unusual for the time. In the 1980s, it was common for suspected criminals in South Korea to be kept awake for long periods to extract a confession, according to Lee Soo-jung, a forensic psychology professor at Kyonggi University. A tiny fraction of applications for retrials are accepted and they generally require new evidence, according to lawyer Heo Yoon, who specializes in providing retrial legal advice.
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