S Korea ‘serial killer’ identified after 33 years

SEOUL: South Korean police have identified a suspect in one of the country’s most notorious serial murder cases more than 30 years after the first of the 10 killings, they said on Thursday.

Between 1986 and 1991 a record number of police officers for a single case were mobilised to try to find the person who raped and murdered women in rural parts of Hwaseong, south of Seoul.

They investigated some 21,000 individuals and compared the fingerprints of around 20,000 more without success, and the case inspired South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho’s 2003 box office hit "Memories of Murder".

But using the latest forensic techniques to retrieve DNA from long-past crimes officers have identified Lee Chun-jae, 56, as a suspect in at least three of the killings, said Ban Gi-soo of the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency.