• Tweeter

  • republish

The identified man is already in prison for the rape and murder of his sister-in-law in 1994. Getty Images

South Korea has just identified, 30 years after the fact, the worst serial killer in its history. Between 1986 and 1991, 10 women were raped and murdered in a small town south of Seoul. The case had inspired one of the masterpieces of Korean cinema, " Memories of Murder " by Bong Joon-ho.

From our correspondent in Seoul , Frédéric Ojardias

In his masterpiece Memories of Murder, released in 2003, the filmmaker Bong Jong-ho, awarded this year at the Cannes Film Festival , told the huge manhunt organized to find this serial killer, in a Korea South which had just emerged from the military dictatorship at the end of the 1980s.

For 5 years, victims were found dead, hands and feet bound by their own clothes, around the same city. Tens of thousands of police had been mobilized and nearly 20,000 suspects had been investigated. Without success.

It will take three decades for new technologies to extract DNA samples from clothing, and finally identify the culprit. He is a 56-year-old man who is already in prison for the rape and murder of his sister-in-law in 1994.

The man denies being the killer and he can not be tried, the limitation period in Korea being 30 years. The police apologized and condolences to the families of the victims.