Since September last year, the prototype of "Memories of Killing" and the news of the breaking of the "Hwaseong Serial Murder Case" in South Korea have spread one after another.
Photos of Lee Chun-jae High School (first from left) and mock portrait (second from left)
On July 2 this year, according to Yonhap News Agency, South Korean police announced the results of the investigation, and the murderer Lee Chun-jae committed 23 crimes, killing 14 women and raping and robbing 9 women. However, because 34 years have passed since the first case, Lee Chun-jae's crime has been retroactively dated. (Mr. Lee is currently in prison for raping and killing his wife and sister, but 20 years later, at the age of 77, he can still be released on parole.) ）
Hwaseong serial killings are known as the three major unsolved cases in South Korea, the murderer's brutal and skillful modus operandi, the police's delay in solving the case, coupled with the closed and backward social environment at that time led to the continuous fermentation of public opinion, resulting in this serial murder case becoming a common blood-colored horror memory of Koreans in the 1980s.
Hwaseong blood horror
In the 1980s, the situation in South Korea was chaotic, the whole country was in a state of emergency martial law, curfews were gradually imposed everywhere, and under military dictatorship and violent rule, everyone was depressed and endangered.
Map of the scene where the murder occurred Figure | Yonhap News Agency
Located about 80 kilometers southwest of Seoul, South Korea, Hwaseong is a small town with a population of 230,000 and a total area of 688 square kilometers. In the 1980s, Hwaseong was full of fields and wastelands, sparsely populated and indifferent, creating fertile ground for all kinds of criminal incidents.
On September 15, 1986, a female corpse was found in a field in Hwaseong-gun, South Korea, a 71-year-old woman who was found naked at the time, bound in an "x" shape on all fours, and strangled to death.
From then on, five years later, until 1991, there were successive cases of female murder in Hwaseong County, and almost all the victims were strangled to death after being sexually assaulted on their limbs.
Narration of the sole survivor
In the ten serial killings, only one woman escaped during the killer's search for money.
In the three later cases, the murderer stuffed various foreign objects into the victim's genitals, peaches, ballpoint pens, forks, spoons and socks... The murderer's modus operandi has become more and more brutal and arrogant.
Before this, there had never been such a heinous serial killing in South Korea, so once the case was exposed, it caused a sensation across the country. In a violent and closed social environment, various legends about the demons of Hwaseong have become a nightmare in the hearts of every Korean.
The scene of the Hwaseong serial murder case is | Yonhap News Agency
In order to solve the case, South Korean officials mobilized 2.05 million police and military personnel, investigated 21,280 suspects, and identified 570 groups of DNA, 180 hairs, and 40,116 fingerprints, but found nothing.
According to South Korean law, the prosecution period for cases that occurred before 2005 was 15 years, so until 2006, the last 15-year criminal prosecution period in the last of the 10 cases officially ended, which means that even if the murderer is found in the future, no legal prosecution can be made against him.
Originally thought that this vicious incident would become a historical unsolved case and gradually forgotten, who thought that in September 2019, the South Korean police suddenly announced that there was a major breakthrough in the case.
Li Chunzai Figure | East Asia Daily
South Korea's National Academy of Scientific Search and Search compared a 56-year-old man, Lee Chun-jae, from a crime database a month ago, confirming that his DNA matched the DNA of the killers in the fifth, seventh and ninth serial murders of that year.
The truth gradually surfaced, and although the legal prosecution period had expired, the police still organized an independent investigation team of 57 people to restart the investigation.
According to reports, during the reopening of the investigation of the case, the police conducted a total of 9 face-to-face interrogations of Li Chunzai, and 9 senior psychological analysts participated in the investigation, gradually breaking through the psychological defense line of the criminals, and at the same time hypnotizing the witness drivers, which became an important reason for Li Chunzai's final confession.
Memories of Killings with
"Hwaseong Serial Murder Case"
Based on this case, Bong Joon-ho filmed the film "Memories of Killing", which is an important film in the history of Korean cinema.
At the beginning of the film, Officer Park finds a female corpse and underwear scattered around in the sewers of the field. It was a typical rape and murder case, but after investigating several suspects, the police still had no clue.
It wasn't long before the second rape and murder case occurred, and the method was very similar to the first. But the only footprint evidence was ruthlessly crushed by the tractor.
Case after case occurred, and every rainy night, the doors and windows of the town were closed, and no girl dared to wear a red shirt to go out. The murderer is lurking in a place where everyone can't see it.
At this time, the murderer was even more rampant, did not take the rape and killing seriously at all, and continued to commit crimes, and the methods became more and more brutal.
Soon, the case seemed to have a new development, and the clues all pointed to a small-town youth.
At the critical moment when everyone thought the case had been successfully solved, dna test results showed that the suspect was not the target of the police arrest. (In the real case, the suspect who was investigated that year included the currently confirmed murderer Li Chunzai, but because the blood type did not match the evidence at the time, it was speculated that the blood samples may be contaminated with each other, and Li did not have any bad background at that time. ）
The case, once again, fell into an endless fog.
In the movie, we see backward investigative methods, there is no surveillance video, DNA needs to be sent to the United States for examination, and even the crime scene can be easily damaged.
Although a large amount of police force was used, everyone was completely like a headless fly, and as long as they caught suspicious people who "looked like", they were severely tortured.
This crude and primitive approach to criminal investigation was a microcosm of the turbulent society in South Korea at that time.
At that time, at the same time as South Korean society was developing rapidly, various democratization movements and protests were quietly taking place, and people's daily routines were filled with radio broadcasts of presidential elections and air defense sirens.
At that time, South Korea seemed to be a period of rapid development, but for the people, it experienced the pain of the times.
Just like the murderer in the movie who never shows his true face, the invisible hand of the times also chokes the throat of the people.
Bong Joon-ho said in an interview that at that time, the country focused on external activities and had no time to take care of people's livelihood and security.
In one scene in the film, the police officer asks the superior to send more police forces to deter the murderer from committing the crime again, but the superior only gives a cold reply: the police force is transferred to the city to suppress the student movement.
This was the crux of the Korean social context at that time.
So the last victim we saw was a high school girl in her youth, who died a cruel death and failed to be blinded. The fall of life in a flower season is like the small dust of a turbulent era, and with a single flick, it disappears into the world.
This is not just a simple suspense movie, the details about the turmoil of the times are always present in the movie.
Officer Park comes from the countryside, grows up savagely, handles cases roughly, and trusts his intuition more than evidence. Officer Su is a returning college student from Seoul, speaks English, pays attention to logic, and values evidence.
In the passage where the two drink together, Officer Park once said to Officer Su, "You are such a smart person, you should go to the United States, go to the FBI, why are you here?" ”
In a word, it tells the problems behind Korean society, the brain drain, the chaos, especially the small town, more like an "extralegal land".
This sense of disorder throughout was not only the tone of the film, but also the tone of Korean society at that time.
Frequent air defense exercises, endless resistance marches, mournful songs on the radio... The symbols of the times seem to tell the powerlessness of catching the murderer, and everyone is suffering from the uneasiness brought about by the transformation of the times.
Later in the story, the murderer is still a mystery, and Officer Park resigns to become a businessman and raise a family, no longer associated with this appalling case.
More than ten years later, he returned to the countryside, and the wheat waves in the field were still quiet and peaceful.
After the turmoil faded, South Korea ushered in a brighter future, and the fear of those rainy nights was buried deep in the past, as if it had never happened.
When the case that shocked South Korea was solved, the photo of the murderer was made public, as the little girl in the film said: "He is an ordinary person."
Faced with the final outcome, Bong Joon-ho said: "After learning the news, my heart is very complicated. These serial killings in South Korea are very brutal and have caused great trauma to our entire society. "This trauma is not only in the victims themselves, but also in the era when the whole society has experienced a disorder in the haze.
The English translation of "Memories of Killing" is "memories of murder", and behind the lack of a subject, this memory does not belong only to the murderer, the police officer, and the victim, but to every person who experienced the times.
The "Hwaseong Serial Murder Case" is a horrible memory of a generation of Koreans. The police officer in charge of the case, Ho Shing-kwan, published a letter to the murderer:
……
You (the murderer) know, I still live in Hwaseong, and I plan to hunt you down until the day I leave office. Even if I'm gone, my descendants will surely arrest you. We're always improving. Please don't die before me. We're going to meet, right.
Reference: Hwaseong Serial Murders Wikipedia "Worldly" News
Edited ✎ the Pine cone newsroom
Pictures of ✎ the Internet
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