[That person] 'Those who read the mind of evil', there is Kwon Il-yong

1. One who saw the abyss of evil

In 2004, after an interview with Yoo Young-cheol, a serial killer who took the lives of 20 innocent people, it started to rain as we came out of the detention center.

As I stopped the car and listened to the rain, I thought that I had now crossed a deep river of no return.

It felt like I was immersed in a completely different world.

It expresses the loneliness that only those who have seen the world of evil that cannot be conveyed to others can feel.

“Even when I heard these words, I wondered if I would be able to treat humans the same as before. Before that, there was a belief in humans that, no matter how evil they did, they would still be edified, and it felt like it was completely destroyed. Before I heard it, I thought that I could no longer have the emotion to judge people.”

I have spent over 17 years meeting demons that get goosebumps just by hearing names such as Yoo Young-cheol, Jeong Nam-gyu, Lee Chun-jae, and Kang Ho-soon.

Until his retirement in April 2017, he said that 960 people had profiling interviews, had seen more than 2,000 corpses with their own eyes, and were involved in about 3,000 cases.

Will you get used to meeting demons?

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"Now, my life is just soaking my feet in their muddy water. With that thought, it's somehow more natural now."

A person who has seen the abyss of darkness, has lived by seeing the faces of demons almost every day and examining the hearts of demons.

He wanted to ask, “Were you not afraid of meeting such demons, or, how did you not go crazy even after meeting such demons?”

He said that he had posted pictures of the victim's body on his computer desktop for six months to find one clue, and looked at it from morning to night whenever he had time.

I also wondered if it was normal for a person to behave like this.

He wondered if he might have been tainted with evil, or at least the smell of evil would permeate this person in some corner.

“I think if I met those people because I was curious about them, because I was curious about their narrative, I could have resembled them. I try to understand them because of the goal of 'When someone like you comes out again, I'll catch it quickly without making a mistake'."

It has been 5 years since he retired from the police, and he is neither a celebrity nor a politician, but articles about this person are pouring out every day.

He was able to see a few articles even on the day he was interviewed.

He has become so famous that he feels uncomfortable with his actions because of people who look for this person everywhere and now recognize him even if he takes the train or goes to a restaurant.

In particular, it is difficult to find a media that did not include an interview with this person after the drama <Readers of Evil Minds>, ​​which was modeled on this person, was aired.

There are three TV programs that appear regularly, and now I am hearing that I am a broadcaster from a profiler, and I am active enough that even ten of my body is not enough for lectures, writings, and YouTube activities.

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It is a remarkable story of a human victory that started as a junior police officer with a doctorate degree and became a criminal expert with a doctorate, but the interest that is pouring into this person these days goes beyond that.

'A warrior and a genius and sometimes a hero who protects us from psycho-criminal' - This is the image of the profiler reflected in the media.

as a decoration and instills such an image in the public.

If this man, who had looked into the abyss of evil, made up his mind and unpacked the story, there seemed to be many stories worth listening to.

The story I experienced as a profiler can, of course, show a unique insight into evil.

On April 11th, I met Il-Yong Kwon, an adjunct professor at Dongguk University’s Department of Police Administration, at a studio near Misari.

2. The police chosen to make a living

He did not become a police officer because he had a unique sense of duty or sense of justice.

When I had to do something to make a living, the choice given to me was a policeman.

After he was discharged from the military, he prepared for the police officer exam and passed the police officer recruitment in six months.

He received six months of training at the Police Comprehensive Academy in 1989 and was assigned to the Criminal Guard.

It was a time when Lim Jong-seok, a classmate of Yongmun High School, was a newcomer to the Jeon Dae-hyeop and was playing around with the police's wanted network.

“Why did I become a police officer? I started to get a job to make a living. That’s how I started. It was a very politically turbulent time. I couldn't be mobilized to suppress the protests, so I was assigned to the Criminal Task Force in charge of violent crimes."

It seems that there were many things that I felt and learned from watching the victims of crime.

I thought I would talk about anger, hatred, and justice for the perpetrators, but I talked about sympathy and compassion for the victims first.

There were few words of anger or hatred towards the perpetrators.

After three years of life in the Criminal Guard, he worked for 10 months at the police box located in the Eastern Seoul Police Station.

When he was at the police box, he felt the weight and power of the uniform for the first time.

"I wore plain clothes in the Criminal Guards, so it's actually the first time I wore a uniform after 3 years of becoming a police officer. Before that, after working for a few years and saving money, I was going to quit the police and study further, which I wanted to do, but I started to change my mind.

While working in the Investigation Division of the Eastern Police Station, a senior police officer suggested that he try forensics, and what started as a thought changed his life.

At the crime scene, it became a task to print the fingerprints of criminals and check their tracks.

One week of forensic agent training, and two weeks of intensive training later, was all about education.

I didn't learn it properly, but I added fun to catching criminals through fingerprinting.

I learned that it is very meaningful not only to catch the criminal by jumping on his feet, but also to use the power of science to catch the criminal.

He said he wasn't strong enough to win, but he didn't seem to know that he had the tenacity to see the end when he got stuck in something.

Wherever I could learn something related to the forensics business, I learned on my own feet.

"On my off-duty days, I went to relevant conferences and seminars. If I said it was done in the countryside, I would wash my face all night and in the morning and then ride the train. At first, I was thinking of going to see what they were doing, but gradually it became fun. You know, this is happening more and more. And when you go out on the field, you gradually become more confident.”

It was only natural that these efforts would yield results.

For three years from 1994, the number of criminals arrested by this person's fingerprints was the highest in the country.

He was recognized for his work and he was promoted to lieutenant general.

As he was recognized for his fingerprinting ability, he began to be called to the eastern police station as well as to the crime scene within the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency.

Thanks to that, he had more experience at the scene than anyone else.

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3. Became Korea's No. 1 Profiler

In December 1999, a few days before the new millennium, I received a call from Yoon Oe-chul, chief of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's forensics department.

Yoon Oe-chul thought that crime patterns in Korea would change in the 2000s, and that it was necessary to create an organization in the police to respond to this.

He determined that in order to wash away the disgrace of the Mars serial murder case, which was not resolved even after mobilizing more than 2 million police personnel, it was necessary to study the behavior and psychology of criminals and adapt to the scene.

Yoon Oe-chul recommended Kwon Il-yong to work as a profiler.

"I looked at the data of 2,500 detectives in downtown Seoul, and Kwon Il-yong, who is still in his mid-30s, has a lot of experience at the scene. Forensics agents are called to all the scenes. Fire scene, murder, rape scene. After 2 years, he goes out as an off-duty detective who catches criminals again, and Kwon Il-yong has already worked as a forensic agent for 7-8 years at a young age. He already has various field experiences, so here are psychopathic criminals such as serial murder and arson, which are the targets of profiling crimes. I just wanted to focus on interviewing them.”

Police Officer Yoon Oe-chul/Director of Investigation Department, Gyeongnam Police Agency

It was my dream to catch a lot of criminals, get promoted quickly and become a detective chief.

Unfamiliar words like profiling and profiler did not come to my ears.

He refused by saying, "I can't even speak English", but Yoon's persuasion did not end with just one go.

I know where the criminal leaves fingerprints, but I was curious about the psychology of criminals why they chose this house as a crime target and moved along this line at the crime scene.

I decided to believe the saying that profiling is about researching and investigating such things to prevent crime and catch criminals.

In February 2000, he joined the criminal analysis team of the Seoul National Police Agency's forensic division.

The team consisted of four people including this person, and the other three were data analysts.

There was only one profiler who did the actual crime analysis.

He was the only profiler in the police organization until the formal hiring of 16 professional profilers at the end of 2005.

"It's been five years as a one-man team with no other team members. The prospect and insight that profiling is necessary was suggested by Yun Oe-chul, but Il-yong Kwon is responsible for implementing it in the field. There are people who are unfamiliar with people who are unfamiliar with people who say, 'What are you doing, are you able to catch the culprits by doing that?' or even people with a sense of resistance. Over the years, profiling has been established.”

Gonamoo/Fact Story Representative and Report Writer

Profiling is an investigative technique that narrows the scope of suspects to be investigated by estimating the group of potential criminals who are most likely to have committed a crime through evidence, witnesses, and victims left at the crime scene.

The profiler does not directly catch the culprit.

It is the job of a profiler to provide systematically analyzed information to the investigation team and provide advice.

If that's the case, I can do it a hundred times better than you, and when I had time to talk like that, I went out and told them to catch at least one more criminal, and I built up my profile as a profiler.

It is thanks to this person who established the term profiler in our society as well as in the police organization.

Currently, a total of 31 profiler agents are active in local police agencies across the country.

“There are people who have been rigorously trained academically, but I think there are very few people who have implemented profiling theory like this one in the field. As a profiler, Il-Yong Kwon’s strength is the strength of the field and the strength of experience. You can say that he is a clinician who directly holds a knife and treats patients.”

Gonamoo/Fact Story Representative and Report Writer

Although Oe-Chul Yun proposed the concept of a profiler and created a hierarchy, no one could teach him profiling.

Until then, criminal behavior analysis was unknown in the country.

Although a related department was established in the US FBI in 1972, criminal psychology was not even offered as an official subject in domestic universities.

At first, I went through an English dictionary and studied the case of the US FBI as a reference.

The case in the United States, where guns are allowed and living patterns are very different from ours, did not fit us.

The data that Yoon Oe-chul made about major violent incidents since the 1960s was rather helpful.

As he looked at the data, he became acquainted with the characteristics of a violent crime.

When a violent incident broke out, he ran to the scene, not only in Seoul, but also in the provinces, and began to meet the main criminals who were arrested.

He has been wearing suits since then.

Wearing a suit helps interview criminals whether they feel they are treated fairly, he said.

“It makes them talk. Investigators question them. Profilers ask questions. They ask what they want to say. . The question is different, 'Why did you do that, what was the reason you couldn't do it like that?' At first, we start with comfortable stories and talk for three or four hours."

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Nam-gyu Jeong, who serially killed 13 people in the southwestern part of Seoul from 2004 to 2006, wrote to this person several times after being arrested.

The content of his letter, stating that he was crazy about wanting to kill someone, was terrifying, but it was interesting that he poured his heart out to this man.

"Kwon Il-yong is a person who has the pain of life melted in his body. That's why he's such a warm friend. Only when he's warm can he empathize with the other person and lead a conversation. This is an important virtue for a profiler. It's a crime victim and family The same is true in relationships with the perpetrators. If you don't have a warm eye for people, you can't form a consensus."

Police Officer Yoon Oe-chul / Gyeongnam Police Agency Investigation Department

I started studying rather late to systematically understand what I experienced at a crime scene.

He received his bachelor's degree from Seoul Cyber ​​University, master's degree from Yonsei University, and his doctorate degree in 2018, the year following his retirement from the police.

He served as a professor at the Police Investigation Research Institute for two years, giving more than one thousand lectures so far.

He teaches graduate courses at Dongguk University with over 70 students.

He was more persuasive in words than in writing.

“No. I am a very introverted person by nature. I never studied or worked hard to become a good speaker, but I think I learned it after becoming a profiler. First, I had to understand criminals and persuade them to speak. Next time, when we brief the investigation team, we have to persuade them, because it is important to analyze the criminal and deliver the results so that the investigation team can accept it.”

4. A wife who knew what her husband was doing by smell

The wife, who did not know what the husband was doing, apparently knew what this man was doing by the smell.

She had to see and touch her body several times a day, many times a day.

The smell permeated her body and her clothes.

She would go home with that smell on her.

"For example, when a body is in water, the water temperature prevents it from decomposing to a certain extent. However, when it is salvaged, it quickly decomposes within 20-30 minutes and emits a terrific smell. Fingerprints and photos taken, that's it. Clothes can't smell. Running through the sewers to find a body is a lot of work... It's just a job. It's a job for me. "

It was an extreme event that could not avoid extreme mental stress and trauma.

This is how she described what she was doing.

"I've never murdered and I've never been sexually assaulted. I've never hit anyone or stolen anything, so how do I get to know them? So, you have to listen to them and be like them. I said to a reporter who came to me knowing that I was retiring. ‘I used to live as a criminal every day, but now I want to live as myself’, and then the title of the article was ‘I want to live as me’.”

It's not the first time I've experienced pain from time to time and my body and mind are drained.

At that time, I went to the church to pray alone, and sometimes I was hospitalized for three or three days.

My maternal family has been passed down for several generations, and I seriously thought about becoming a priest while I was in school.

She had the impression that she would look good even in a priestly uniform.

“There are moments when I wonder why I am in so much pain. Some days I just can’t get up in the morning. That’s when I feel like, ‘Oh, I’m exhausted now. I have the power to go. At times, I know that I am very depressed right now, that I am sensitive right now, so my wife’s anger suddenly rises at every word, and I talk to myself.”

We've talked about the victims several times.

It is said that the victims of crime are the people who hold onto them so that they are not stained by evil, hold their center, and hold on to them.

"I also want to run away and I have fear that I will become like these people. It is the victims who protect me from that. "It's unthinkable to be over-assimilated. The guilt and regret for the victims for not having been able to prevent them from happening quickly takes center stage."

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5. Retirement chosen to live

In April 2017, I quit the police.

He lived for 27 years as a police officer, 17 of them as a profiler.

He was in the midst of the presidential election, so there were rumors that he was quitting to do politics, but he said that he quit purely to live.

He didn't have any spots on his body.

He had a tumor in his rectum and his systolic blood pressure was over 200.

He thought that he might fall down on the road like this and die.

He was excellent at reading the minds of evil, but his ability to detect danger signals from his body was also unique.

“I can’t avoid panic. I am well aware of the situation. When I retire, I think the panic will get worse. At that time, the most common thing I said at that time was ‘I think I will collapse and die for no reason.’ This is one of the typical characteristics of panic disorder. There is one thing. At that time, I thought, 'I need to stop doing this.' So I decided to retire. Before my panic disorder went from mild to severe, I recognized myself, 'I am not normal now, I am trying to leave my job. Let's do it' That's how I protected myself."

"The children haven't finished their studies yet, and I don't have any money saved up, so I worried a lot, but I thought it was better than dying."

After retiring from the police, the first thing I did was visit my father's grave.

He is the one who suggested that his wandering son become a police officer and offered a police application to his son who was wandering about what to do after being discharged from the military, and he was the one who taught him to be a responsible person anytime, anywhere.

" 'As my father always emphasized during his lifetime, he is a necessary person and he has lived well until now.'

Being able to say that was the happiest and most rewarding thing when I retired. I also tell my children to study and go to a good school, but to become the people the world needs.”

He said he didn't have the strength to care and take care of his family while he was in the police.

It's not that he deliberately didn't take care of his family, it's that he couldn't afford it.

Home was just a place to sleep or rest, not a place to share feelings with family and talk with children.

He regrets not having any memories he shares with his family.

Now, he said that time with his family is precious and happy.

“It feels like I had a dream. I used to be a person who lived like this. It’s like this. I don’t have to smile and laugh while interviewing a criminal. The money is still there. It seems like no one makes money. It has become a lot."

After retirement, he became busier, more famous, and more and more sought after.

I didn't say anything, but the reward would have been bigger.

No one has seen as many crime scenes as this one.

With a Ph.D., it's not easy to find someone who can outperform this person in the field of crime analysis.

"You may not like the content of the broadcast you saw. If there is such a thing, the professor should immediately say it. Do not put such a thing in your heart and say, 'I felt bad about that, I don't think this is a thing'. Let's do it right. We liked that. He is someone who makes you feel like a co-worker rather than a relationship between an expert and a PD." Do Jun-woo/SBS <I want to know> PD

He often appears on variety shows, making people laugh and showing his natural breakdown.

When I met him in reality, the somewhat loose and sloppy appearance he showed in the variety shows seemed quite far from reality.

“As a profiler, seeing such a troupe has actually given me a chance to put my life down a little more leisurely. I think about how different the evaluation of people who look at me will be just because I stumble and fall on the air. That's it."

After his retirement, he lost about 15 kg in weight.

He still said that his liver level is higher than normal, but he has no problem with his celebrity-level schedule.

Shortly after he retired from the police, he suddenly had a nosebleed in the bathroom.

Even after he ran out of paper towels, his nosebleeds didn't stop.

He called an ambulance and went to the emergency room until the bleeding stopped.

If his blood vessel had burst inside his head, it would have been a big deal, and the doctor said that it was heavenly that he had a nosebleed.

I also wondered if the bad energy that had accumulated in my body while dealing with the demons had gone out of my body in the form of nosebleeds.

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6. This person's dream of 'self-portrait'

I wondered if it was because he said he wanted to become a priest, or maybe he could see a priest-like figure who treats the wicked with mercy, but he didn't show such a figure during the conversation.

He was skeptical about the possibility of rehabilitating heinous criminals, and said that the reality of innocent victims being angry at criminals being lightly punished is wrong.

He said that the crime itself is changing, the types of criminals are changing, and the motives are changing.

It was the thought of someone who had been fighting crime on the front lines.

"Don't ask me, even if it's just one crime, the whole life of the people in the neighborhood is atrophied. Calling a crime doesn't happen directly to me and I've seen it have a negative impact on many people, even if it's invisible, so even if it's a small number of crimes. I think it should be actively prevented and blocked.”

By the time he entered the police force, the Roh Tae-woo government was declaring war on crime and focused on cracking down on five major crimes, including organized crime, drugs, and human trafficking.

About 30 years later, I asked if Korean society has become safer from crime.

He said that physical safety nets such as CCTV are well established.

He said that he was sorry that the crime was going online and he didn't seem to be able to properly respond to it.

“At the time, I didn’t know whether I was happy, unhappy, good, difficult, or good at this. I was worried about how to do this now, but I didn’t know it was difficult.

"I've been a little busy these days, but it's passing like the wind. I'm not a celebrity or have any special abilities in entertainment... I'm thinking that another year will pass like a dream like this, so I think it's more precious."

“I was doing the job when there was something society demanded, so maybe that need is what makes me so stand out. For example, in the 1970s, if I did profiling, people would pay attention when such crimes did not occur. I wouldn't have it."

Yun Dong-ju said that he liked the poem <Self-Portrait>.

I wanted to see what this person's self-portrait would be like, but he was a bit stingy in showing himself.

He was the eldest of four children from a difficult family.

Neither his failure to go to college nor his giving up on his dream of becoming a priest had anything to do with his family circumstances.

The days before becoming a police officer were expressed in a few words: the days of helplessness and no dreams.

Little was said about his family and brothers.

He once found a newspaper with his interview in the room of serial killer Jung Nam-gyu.

The thought of a serial killer watching you is terrifying.

This person's somewhat defensive attitude was understood as an act of protecting himself and his family from possible harm as a person who had lived with violent criminals.

He met for about 3 hours, and it was difficult to know what kind of person he was after meeting for that long.

He didn't seem to open his heart so easily that he had met for a longer time.

The people acquaintances of this person, such as Go Nammu and Yoon Oe-chul, all said that this person was a simple and warm person, and a person who was good at forming relationships.

He showed affection for the police when he said it was undesirable for the individual to stand out over the organization, and he seemed cold-hearted when he said that if he saw himself as a 'hero' or 'genius' he might suffer another mental exhaustion again.

Although it is true that profilers have contributed to the arrest and prevention of crimes, some view that their role is exaggerated.

It is necessary to listen to those words, but it is undeniable that the profiler work pioneered by this person has taken the police to the next level.

Listening to this person's story, I was able to confirm the existence of people who firmly supported a corner of our society.

He does not know that the interest and love that is pouring into him now will have to be shared with those who are still working silently.

When explaining the production process of the book <Those who read the minds of evil>, he explained in detail the reason for the plural expression of 'those' rather than 'those who read the minds of evil'.

It must have been meant to emphasize that he was only a person who experienced first and retired first, and that there are still many people who are still working in the muddy waters of evil.

I thought that the modifier of Korea's No. 1 profiler was not too much for this person who did not want to emphasize the hard work he had made in making a road that was not in his own footsteps.