AN INNOCENT MAN WAS JAILED FOR MURDER CASE AND IT TOOK 30 YEARS TO FIND THE REAL SERIAL KILLER..

an innocent man was jailed for murder case, and it took 30 years to find the real serial killer,

Time stopped when he was arrested and thrown into prison in 1989 for a murder he did not commit. He was then

An innocent man was jailed for murder. It took 30 years to find the real serial killer

HWASEONG, SOUTH KOREA: There is a story behind why Yoon Sung-Yeo hangs two clocks in his home.

 A tale spanning 30 years, in fact, about the staggering miscarriage of justice against one man.

Time stopped when he was arrested and thrown into prison in 1989 for a murder he did not commit. He was then 22.

“If you are found with a clock in prison, you would be punished,” he said. “For 20 years, I didn’t see a clock. That’s why now, I have two clocks.”

Hwaseong, a rural area just south of Seoul, had been rocked by a string of murders from 1986.

 The victims, all women, ranged from their teens to 70s. All were sexually assaulted and strangled with their own clothing – garments such as stockings and underwear – in what came to be known as the killer’s signature.

Then in September 1988, teenager Park Sang-hee was murdered. Unlike the previous cases where the victims were killed outdoors, the 14-year-old student was found in her bed, sexually assaulted and strangled with her own clothes.

The killer had become more brazen, entering a victim’s home for the first time. The case, which sent shockwaves through the country, was the eighth in two years.

Under pressure to make headway in investigations, the police had nothing conclusive to link Yoon to the crime.

Yet, after a three-day interrogation where he was deprived of sleep and assaulted, Yoon confessed. When he was sentenced to life imprisonment, no one believed he was innocent, he recalled. A shadow continued to hang over him even after he was released on parole in 2009.  

It was only a full decade later, in 2019, that an incredible breakthrough led to him walking out of court a truly free man, innocent in the eyes of the world.

CNA’s two-part special, Catching a Killer: The Hwaseong Murders, traces the mistakes that robbed him of his freedom.

The first to die was a 71-year-old woman. She had gone out one morning in September 1986 to pick some cabbage and disappeared. Her body was found a few days later.

At the time, not much attention was paid to the crime. Only three policemen were assigned to the case as it had happened near the “most important national event at that time”, the opening of the 1986 Asian Games, said criminologist Yeom Keon-Ryeong.

The majority of police departments around the country were deployed to beef up security in Seoul, due to threats from North Korea,” said Professor Yeom of the Korean Institute of Criminology.

 There were very few personnel left, and the three detectives, he added, could not actively track the suspect.

But as the months went by, more women disappeared. The next few victims were younger women who disappeared while walking home late at night. Their bodies would be found days later, strangled with their clothes.

The residents began to fear for their safety. At the time, Hwaseong was a rural, mountainous area full of rice paddies, fields and forests. Not many people lived there.

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