Murder House: The Korean Cannibal Gang and the Woman Who Escaped Them
Rule #1: We Hate The Rich. Rule #2: Death is the only thing that awaits he who betrays this group. Rule #3: Never trust a woman, not even your own mother. This is the story of the Chijon Family, South Korea's most infamous gang, and the woman they kidnapped who lead to their undoing.
TW: Death, Torture, Animal Death
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SOURCES
Debate Over Death Penalty Heats Up - The Korea Times
[Korean Criminal Case Ep.4] Murder Plant - Korea's Crime Organization 'Jijonpa' Real Story - YouTube
koreanfilm.or.kr/view/news.jsp?category=INTERVIEW&seq=77&blbdComCd=601019
[TURNING 20] Beyond the evidence — how profilers help solve crimes (joins.com)
Jiri-san, Exquisite-Wisdom Mountain (san-shin.net)
[Korean Criminal Case Ep.4] Murder Plant - Korea's Crime Organization 'Jijonpa' Real Story - YouTube
September 25, 1994 Chosun Ilbo :: Naver News Library
TRANSCRIPT
On September 11th, 1994, a police car pulls up to the scene of a car crash in the southwest part of the country.
There, they see A hyundai grandeur, with it’s front and sides caved in and windshield smashed sitting at the bottom of a short but steep cliff. It doesn’t take much for them to figure that the car most likely took a nose dive off the side sometime in the last few days.
One officer goes up to the top of the cliff and confirms that there’s tread marks leading off the side directly above where the car lay.
The other officer is still looking at the vehicle. Through the spiderweb cracks in the windshield, he can see the outline of someone slumped over the steering wheel. He needs to figure out who this man is, and why exactly he went off the cliff.
The first thing he notices when he pops open the car door is the overwhelming smell of alcohol. Ok, well we probably have our why. The officer checks the ID that the guy has on him and learns that he’s Lee Jong-won, a 36 year old musician from outside of Seol, over 4 hours away.
The officer calls the station to report what he’s found, and he does, a different police precinct in South Korea gets another phone call.
This call is from the family of a woman named Ms. Lee, the secret 27-year old mistress of Lee Jong Won. They’re calling to report her missing. Ms. Lee’s family hadn’t heard from her in 2 days despite trying to get in touch with her, causing them to worry.
The officers at the scene don’t know about that phone call, but they guess that Lee Jong Won’s crash happened about 2 days ago, around the time that Ms. Lee stopped contacting her family.
To the cops this feels, ignorantly so, like a pretty open shut case. In South Korea in the 1990’s, there weren’t detective or special forces dedicated to solving crime, there were only cops. And according to cops from that time, there weren’t a lot of resources. If they heard hooves, they had to assume it was a horse because they didn’t have the technology or funding to look into if it were zebras.
just as the officers are about to close this case as a classic drunk driving accident, one of them pulls Lee-Jong Won’s body back to get a good look at him. And they see something that changes everything they thought about this case.
Lee Jong-Won is covered in stab wounds. They are consistent with Knife punctures, they couldn’t have been caused by the car crash. The police give each other a look, what the hell happened here?
As this is happening, a few hours away in southwest Korea, Ms. Lee sits, in a disgusting cement enclosure a group of boys are calling “The Murder House”. She’s been there since she stopped getting in touch with her family two days ago.
Inside of a makeshift cell, she is continuously watched by 5 boys in their early 20’s and one, very bored looking girl who Ms. Lee figures out is one of their girlfriends.
Ms. Lee wonders if she’ll ever be let free. She wonders if police have found her boyfriend’s body and if that had inspired them to look for her. But what she’s experienced since she went missing, and what she was about to experience was so unbelievable, so outlandish, that she wondered if anyone would even believe her.
Welcome to heart starts pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings and mysteries. I’m your host, Kaelyn Moore.
I just want to start by giving a content warning for today’s episode. It’s dark and intense. It’s the story of Ms. Lee, a woman who found herself wrapped up in the world of one of South Korea’s most violent and incompetent gangs, the Chijon family. It’s another story of one woman's survival against all odds, which kind of is keeping theme with another episode I recently did on Juliane Koepcke's miraculous journey through the jungle after her plane broke apart in the sky. I will say though, this one is much darker.
There are hardly any resources in English about this case, we had to dig through Korean newspapers, interviews and books to get to the heart of this story, as well as consult some of our native Korean friends. Everything I tell you about today are real events that occurred. Sometimes there will be some dialog added that is consistent with those events to better set the scene, and if you’re interested, we’ll talk more about that this week in our Footnotes episode on this episode, available on Patreon for the high council tier.
For now, We’re going to take a quick break, and when we get back, we’re going to jump right in.
3am, September 8th, 1994. 27 year old Ms. Lee and her boyfriend, 37 year old Lee Jong-Won are driving on a dark country road outside of Seoul, South Korea. Their illicit affair had brought them to a motel on the outskirts of town, and they decided to head back to their respective homes in the wee hours of the morning.
To keep consistent with South Korean privacy standards, I’m going to keep referring to her by Ms. Lee, which is how Korean papers referred to her.
As the two are driving down the dark and quiet road, out of nowhere, the couple sees two sets of headlights in their rearview. They watch as two cars in the distance speed up to them, getting close enough to make out that one is a small sedan, and the other is a large cargo truck. The two vehicles then slow down and keep a steady pace behind their Hyundai Grandeur. The couple doesn’t think anything of it at first, but a minute goes by, two, five, and the cars behind them stay steadily on their tail. Never changing speed, their bright headlights still blinding their rearview mirror.
Ms. Lee starts getting a sinking feeling they’re being followed, so Lee Jong-Won decides to exit the freeway to let the cars pass, just to show her that they’re ok. But as he hits his blinker and starts to exit, the cargo truck revs its engine. Lee Jong-won is about to be off the highway when the truck speeds up and swerves around the car getting in front of it. It then slams on the brakes and forces their car to stop. Lee Jong-Won tries to reverse to get around the truck, but the smaller sedan has already pulled up right behind them, trapping them in between the two vehicles.
There’s a stillness after all the cars start moving, and Lee Jong-Won doesn’t know what to do next. And that’s when the door of the cargo truck pops open, and a couple young men jump out and circle their Hyundai. One man approaches the window, pulls out his weapon, and fires it into their car. With that, The men rip open the car doors and grab at them, but the couple fights back. Ms. Lee is beaten during the altercation, and someone whips out a knife and stabs Lee Jong-Won as he tries to fight them off. He’s injured, but he’s alive. The two are then dragged from the car, their eyes and mouths are covered with tape and their hands and feet are bound. They get loaded into the cargo truck and driven off, the whole encounter lasts less than 2 minutes.
The next time that Ms. Lee can see again is when she’s taken from the car and brought into a house. That’s where the tape is ripped from her eyes and she’s able to look around. The room she’s in is concrete and contains a makeshift jail cell that she’s been placed into. There’s sterile overhead lighting, and in the corner, she sees what looks like a barbecue pit merged with an incinerator. The whole situation seems like it’s out of a Saw movie.
This is also the first time she gets a good look at her captors. And for how organized and violent the kidnapping was, their appearance doesn’t seem to match. There’s 5 men down in the basement with them that can’t be older than 22. They have bad haircuts and acne, and they pace around the room anxiously. It’s almost like they didn’t think they’d make it this far in their plan.
One of the men goes over to the couple and explains what’s happening. He says he and his friends, who call themselves the Chijon family, know that the two of them are rich and they’re going to need them to pay. Ms. Lee turns to her boyfriend who has already shot her a confused look. Um, we’re not rich, her boyfriend explains.
Ms. Lee was a waitress, and her boyfriend was a musician. They didn’t have any money. What made you think we were rich? They wonder.
You two were driving a car only the rich and famous have. A Hyundai Grandeur. One of them explains
The couple shoot each other another skeptical look. They kind of had them there. Hyundai Grandeurs were common amongst executives and politicians in Korea at the time. Only, this car was most likely not Lee Jong Won’s. he had a wife at home. This car potentially belonged to his wife or her family who made more money. It was not a car he could have afforded on his own.
The captors realized that the two were most likely not going to pay, and that made them frustrated. They continued to pace and swear until One of them eventually brings Ms. Lee some bread and milk. She looks at the gray, sad food and decides that she’s not hungry. The captor who presented her with it really latches on to her response. He calls for the other guys, see, she really is rich! He yells out. Someone who was truly poor would know the value of scraps, they wouldn’t ever turn down food.
That’s it, the group decides. If the two are not going to pay, then they’re going to die. And with that, they unlock the makeshift jail cell and pull the two out.
This gang of villainous, self-conscious boys, known as the Chijon family, had been operating in the shadows of South Korea for about a year.
The idea came from Kim-Ki-Huan, a 26 year old obsessed with Chinese Noir films from the 80’s. Sure, that sounds like a random and unimportant detail, but it’s the genesis of his idea for the group.
Kim Ki Huan was somewhat of a lost soul, he was hyper intelligent, but he had trouble holding down labor intensive jobs in his early 20’s. His grade school reports always said that he lacked cooperation. Kim would spend most of his free time watching gangster films by Donald Chao and Andy Lau. These movies were gritty and emphasized humanity's dark side, selfishness and greed. Media critics will say that these kinds of films inspired Kim to lead a life of crime, but I’d argue he had that inside him the entire time and sought these movies out because they fed into the way he already saw the world.
One night, Kim Ki Huan was playing poker with two other guys, 20 year old Kang Dong-Eun (who I’ll refer to by his last name, Kang) and 22 year old Moon Sang Rok, who I’ll call Sang Rock, when they started talking about how polluted they believed the world to be. They thought people were inherently evil, and that the system was rigged by the rich so they would never succeed.
Recently in South Korea, a scandal involving the corruption of college entrance exams had just made the headlines, and that struck a certain nerve with Kim who was a high school drop out. He wished, outloud, that there was something he could do to clean up the world.
That’s where the initial idea formed. That maybe there WAS something they could do to clean up the world. They decided they were going to form a gang to take out their frustrations on the rich.
Kang had been in prison twice and knew another guy, 19 year old Baek Byung Ok that would join them. The two had been cellmates during one of Kang’s stints. Two more guys were recruited, 19 year old Moon Seob who Kang had met playing poker, and 21 year old Hyun Yang was added from a construction site.
The group got jobs working construction to save up enough money to finance their crimes, though they were still unsure exactly what those would be. Kim Ki Huan wanted to raise $1 billion Won, which is around 1 million dollars, but he knew he wasn’t going to make that much from construction.
But He was also a pretty good poker player, possibly inspired by all of the gritty gangster noir he had been raised on. His nickname at the poker table was “Jijon” which meant Supreme. It came from one of the movies he loved. He was hoping playing enough poker would get them the money they felt they needed.
The group added one more guy to their ranks, 18 year old Song Bong Eun who would act as treasurer. They needed someone to watch over their finances while they fundraised. with this final addition, they christened themselves the Chijon Family, and set out to get vengeance on the rich.
Before they found their first target, Kim Ki Huan decided they needed some rules. He gathered everyone around so he could read them their manifesto.
Rule 1 is we hate the rich. Everyone cheered, obviously this was the cornerstone to their operation. Rule 2, is Death is the only thing that awaits the person who betrays the group. Again the group cheered. This would discourage anyone from snitching on the group to the police, they were now brothers until they died.
The group looked to Kim Ki Huan for another rule, but he had only thought of 2. It felt more official to have a third rule though, so he looked down, thinking of what could be next.
Rule 3 is Don’t trust a woman, even your own mother. This one felt a little random, but they could all get behind it. It was the brotherhood until the end, no one else. And with that, they set out to find their first victim.
On July 18th, 1993, the group of guys was driving around Daejeon looking for targets. Kim Ki Huan has told them they still don’t have enough money to do any real crimes against the rich just yet, again whatever that meant, so he tells them that they’re going to practice first.
Around 11pm they spot a woman named Choi in her early 20s walking alone under a bridge in the direction of the Daejeon train station. She’s the daughter of a farmer, she comes from a poor family, she’s hardly the type of target the group is after, and yet, Kim Ki Huan decides she’s going to be their first victim.
He has the guys pull over so they can grab Choi and throw her in the car. She’s driven about 12km away to a secluded area. Kim Ki Huan thinks that he needs to set the precedent for the group and murder the girl himself, so he chokes her and screams “this is how you kill a person” to the group. But witness accounts from the group say that the process looked awkward and sloppy, like Kim Ki Huan didn’t know if what he was doing would even work. After this first kill, they buried Choi right there in the mountains.
Though Kim was the one who killed Choi, he thought it was important that all the members of the gang be implicated in the crime, and this was something he felt was really important to the group moving forward. He’d have the group all participate in the murders and sexual assaults they committed as a way to discourage anyone from ever going to the police.
2 months later though, one of the members does start having thoughts about going to the police. The youngest member, treasurer Song Bong Eun. He’s having a moral panic about the group after Choi’s murder, and one night he runs away. The only problem is, he’s the treasurer, and he takes the few million won the group has saved with him.
That’s in violation rule #2, he’s betrayed the group. And as the rule states, anyone who betrays the group must die.
It doesn’t take them long to find Song Bong Eun. He’s hiding out at a relatives house, and they throw him in their car to take him to another remote mountain in the southwest of the country.
There, Kim Ki Huan tells the group what he told them before. That any crime they commit from now on will be committed together, and so each of them take turns hitting Song Bong Eun’s head with a pick axe until he stops moving.
But something else occurs up on the mountain, and no one has been able to really explain why this happened, though it’s one of the cruelest acts the group ever performs. While they’re up there, they violently kill and eat a dog that they brought with them. Korean criminologists point to this event as a defining moment in the group's history. As a moment they became truly depraved. They had crossed a line with what they were willing to do, and they could never go back.
After they kill the traitor in the group, the Chijon family decides to lay low for a while. They don’t practice killing for a few months.
The following spring they forgo killing to start building a permanent base for their operations. They’ve finally saved enough money to do so.
They find a quiet area of Bulgap-Myeon in the southwest, there’s only 19 homes in the area and they purchase one that’s painted light blue and pink which drew a lot of attention to it, but they didn’t care about that, they’d just paint over it. What they really cared about was the basement.
The basement was completely made of concrete and had three distinct rooms. In one room, they built a make shift prison or “detention center” as they called it, and in another they built an incinerator. The plan was they’d capture the rich, hold them in the detention center, get as much money as they could out of them and then ultimately would kill them and dispose of their bodies in the incinerator.
It was all coming to plan, Kim Ki Huan thought. He had his gang, he had his facility, now he was going to use his influence and leadership over the boys to destroy the wealthy. Korea was never going to be the same once he was done.
Except, a few weeks later Kim Ki Huan winds up in prison. It turns out on top of his plan to kill the wealthy, he also had other plans to commit other crimes, and he was arrested after he attacked a middle school girl. Though he fancied himself a master criminal, Kim Ki Huan was no more than a serial predator, and before the group kills a single rich person, the Chijon family loses it’s Chijon, the master behind their planning.
Not long after, Moon Soeb brings his girlfriend, Kyung Sook into the mix. What? I thought we said we didn’t trust girls. One of the members says. Kyung Sook isn’t just a girl, she’s my girlfriend. The group didn’t have their leader to look to to clarify the rules. Kim Ki Huan was the brains of the group, the rest were unsure how to proceed without him. Ok so besides Kyung Sook, we don’t trust any girls. The group agrees.
And that’s how they ended up where they are now, with Ms. Lee and her boyfriend in their detention center who aren't even rich, and no idea what to do next. All that they know is what they learned from Kim Ki-Huan- kill and make sure everyone is implicated. So they tell Ms. Lee that they’re going to kill her boyfriend and she’s going to help them do it.
And first, they make the couple drink lots of alcohol.
They choose to strangle Lee Jong Won because that’s what they saw Kim Ki-Huan do on the mountain, and as they do, they make Ms. Lee put her hands around his neck as well.
Next, they bring his lifeless body and his car to the top of the cliff, make it look like there’s skidmarks near the edge, and push him off, hoping the scene will look like he drunkenly swerved off the road. It seems like they’re successful, and they breathe a sigh of relief, that is until they turn around and realize they still have to figure out what to do with Ms. Lee.
Let’s just kill her, we don’t trust women. Says Sang Rok. He was one who founded the group with Kim Ki Huan, and he was the most eager to behave like his incarcerated friend would have.
But one of the other guys in the group, 21 year old Hyun Yang, said no, they should keep her alive. At just 21 years old, he was one of the oldest guys in the group, and the de facto leader after Kim Ki Huan’s arrest. Ms. Lee couldn’t help but feel like he also was taking a liking to her. She noticed him watching her every now and then. Not with a malicious eye, but almost admiration.
Kim Ki Huan said no woman could be trusted, but did he mean, every woman? He did say not even their own mothers, but he just said they shouldn’t be trusted. He didn’t say they should all be killed, right? Plus, they let Kyung Sook in the group. The guys decided that Kim didn’t really explain that last rule very well, so Ms. Lee can live, for NOW.
I want to mention that just because they decide to keep her alive doesn’t mean she’s treated kindly at all. She’s still brutalized by the group, and I’m sure at times she figures she’d be better off dead. But as long as she’s alive she can escape, so she takes the small win.
When they get back to the house, they give Ms. Lee a stack of books and tell her that if she wants to be part of the family, she needs to read them. Well, 1. She doesn’t want to be part of the family but she doesn’t really have a choice. And 2. They’re just noir books that Kim Ki Huan liked. It seemed like the group had a limited understanding of the world they were trying to be a part of. Like everything they knew about crime came from books and movies. Ms. Lee sighed and got to reading.
Two days later, the group decides it’s time to find new victims, so they hop in their car and drive around randomly. Hoping they’ll be able to know a rich person when they see one, which so far has not worked at all for them.
They drive all the way back up the country near Seoul, where they see 42 year old So Yun-oh and his wife, 35-year-old Park Mija at the Dong Seoul Park Cemetery tidying up their family graves. It was Chuseok, a big Korean holiday, and this is one of the ways people celebrate.
At around 5pm, So Yun Oh and Park Mija were the only two people in the cemetery. The gang was able to sneak up on them and drag them into their cars. One of the members takes the couple's car with them, and they all drive south back to the murder house.
They dump them in the detention center, where one of the guys demands So Yun oh give them 100 million won. Unsurprisingly, So Yun Oh is not a rich person and does not have access to that kind of money. He tells them that he operates a factory and can maybe get them 80 million won, that’s the money he had on hand to pay his employees.
So Yun-oh calls the guy who runs the factory for him and says he’s been in a drunk driving accident. He just makes something up so the guy will meet him somewhere with the money
He tells the employee to meet him at the Gwangju bus terminal, which is just a little inland from the gang’s hideout. It’s also all the way across the country to the west, far from where his factory is and nowhere close to Seoul. When the employee hears that’s the meeting location, he starts to think something else might be up.
The gang takes So to the bus terminal but keeps his wife with them as a hostage in the truck. The deal is that they’ll be let go when he brings the money back. So is nervous that his employee wont even show up, he could hear in his voice that he was skeptical of the plan. Hopefully he hasn’t notified the police, he still doesn’t know what the group is capable of.
Then, he sees headlights pull up to the bus station through the dark. Out of the car steps his employee holding a bag. The two make the exchange, but the employee is now even more skeptical of what’s going on. Where was So’s car, and why didn’t he look like he had been in an accident. He knows he shouldn’t, but he gives the bag of cash to So and watches as he walks over to a car idling in the shadows.
So hands over the cash to the men in the car. There, here’s your money, now let us go. But the gang breaks their deal, they don’t play by the rules. They grab So and shove him back in the car, dragging him and his wife back to their house.
This is all witnessed by the employee, who immediately reports what he thinks is a kidnapping to the police in Ulsan, back where the factory is located. The police say they can’t do anything, it happened in a different district, you need to call Gwangju.
The only thing is, when he calls Gwangju, they seem to be confused. They don’t check out the area where the kidnapping occurred. Instead, they send three officers over to Ulsan to investigate the factory and its executives. They come to the swift conclusion So was probably running away with a woman or it was some sort of financial scheme but not a kidnapping or anything to take seriously.
As the police come to their conclusion that everything is fine, Ms. Lee watches as So and his wife are shoved back into the detention center in the basement. Follow us, the guys tell her. She does, she doesn’t really have any other choice.
Because So paid up, they tell her, they want to kill him painlessly. Wait, kill? But we paid you, we had a deal. So is emotional. He begs for his wife’s life, even if they kill him they should spare her life, she has nothing to do with this.
It would make sense to let So go here. He clearly wasn’t rich, so he shouldn’t be on their hit list. He cooperated and paid them what money he had. But the group didn’t operate on what made sense. They didn’t even operate on the rules they laid out for themselves. So once again, they thought about what their incarcerated former leader would have done, and they decided the couple should die and that everyone should be implicated.
They forced the pair to get very drunk, and then they told Ms. Lee she would be responsible for So’s murder. She was, after all, kind of one of them now. At least, Hyun Yang treated her like she was one of them, so the others did too. They handed her an air rifle and made her shoot So in the chest at point blank range.
Next, the gang attacked his wife with knives and an axe. Her death would not be so painless, they decided.
To dispose of the bodies, they put them in their incinerator, but for some reason, they start worrying that this will get them caught. Maybe it’s because of all of the smoke leaving the house, but they become convinced that what they’re doing is too obvious.
To combat this, they decide that they’ll throw a barbecue, and invite their neighbors over. That way everyone will assume they were using the incinerator for the barbecue.
But that day, when they have the barbecue, the gang does another thing that baffles Korean detectives, investigators and criminologists. They eat some of the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. So. Some have suggested the group was illustrating how far they were willing to go, it was a step beyond what they had done to the dog. It’s said that Hyun Yang ate some of Mrs. So’s calf, and a piece of liver was force fed to Ms. Lee.
The next day Ms. Lee was sitting inside the house watching the group outside. They were drunk, again, shirtless, again, and this time, they were playing with sticks of dynamite. Hyun Yang’s brother had gotten them from his construction job, and given them to the group. They decided that’s how they were going to break their leader, Kim Ki Hwan out of prison.
But as Ms. Lee watched them drunkenly light the firecrackers and run away squealing, she knew they’d never be able to get Kim out of prison that way. They’d never be able to do anything. They had no direction, no plan, they didn’t even have any principles they were really operating on. Eat the rich? Ok, well all they’ve done is eaten a dog and two middle class people. They hadn’t gone after a single rich person, they were just cannibalizing their own class.
It’s then that Hyun Yang runs into the house, holding his hand. There’s blood dripping all down his arm. Did you hold the dynamite while it exploded? Ms. Lee asks. Hyun Yang nods, on the verge of tears.
“Here, let me see”
The wound is pretty bad, he’s going to have to get it checked out at the hospital. Ms. Lee perks up a little. He can’t go to the hospital by himself, and if she could just go with him she’d be out of the house away from the whole group. It’d be much easier to get away from one of them than all of them.
“A doctor needs to check this out, you shouldn’t drive there by yourself though” she tells him, nervously awaiting his response.
He looks at the wound. She’s right, he’s going to need stitches, and he’s in a lot of pain.
“Will you drive me? He asks.”
Hyun Yang had allowed her to live, and now he was allowing her out, was this intentional? She didn’t have time to figure that out, she grabs the keys to the gangs sedan and quickly helps him to the car.
Her heart is racing the whole way there. Hyun Yang is pale and sweaty, his body is definitely in shock.
When they get to the hospital, the nurse checks him in, and then the two have to sit in the waiting area. While they’re there Hyun Yang empties his pockets, giving the contents to Ms. Lee to hold onto for just a second. This includes a cell phone and about $500, though he keeps his car keys. Ms. Lee looks down at them in her hands, almost salivating. These are all she would need to escape.
“Kim Hyun Yang” a nurse calls out, beckoning him into the doctor's office.
He gets up, walks through the waiting area over to the doctor who closes the door behind them. Leaving Ms. Lee with his belongings.
Ms. Lee can’t hear anything but her heartbeat in her ears as she holds onto the phone and cash, alone in the waiting room. She wonders if this was some kind of test of loyalty, like he was testing to see if she was really one of them. They had been treating her as one of their own, and they had made her take part in some horrible crimes. Did he think that would keep her in her chair? Would it?
It turns out, no, because in a split second, she jumps up and books it out of the hospital.
She gets a cab outside by the curb, the money should cover a far ride. She knows she can’t go to the local precinct. Within 2 hours the group would know about her escape and come looking for her, and she didn’t want to know what would happen if they found her. Once she’s in the cab, she tells him to take her to Seol. That’s 4 hours away, the driver protests, but she tells him she has the money, and they’re off.
The driver can tell she’s anxious, so he tries to make a joke. “Don’t worry,” he says “I know all the gangs in the area”. It’s maybe meant to jokingly calm her down, like she’s safe as long as she’s with him. But Ms. Lee does not take it as that. She thinks he means that he knows the Chijon family. They had told her they were part of a larger group that had spread all throughout Korea, so she has him stop the car near a farm and she takes off running.
She gets to the farmhouse and is able to convince the man there to call her a different cab, and then she takes that one to Seoul.
Meanwhile, Hyun Yang emerges from the doctors office to see the seat where Ms. Lee once was is now empty.
He rushes back to the group and tells them what happened, and they insist that they should go stake out the local police station, but they don’t see Ms. Lee ever go in. And it never looks like the police are mobilizing for a raid. Hyun Yang tells them that she’s probably just hiding out and that she’ll return later. She can be trusted.
But she’s in a police precinct on the other side of South Korea, telling the police everything. It’s unbelievable, and the cops think she’s on drugs. They almost turn her away. But she knows about Mr. and Mrs. So, who show up as missing in the police database. And she knows about the crash of Lee Jong-won and how it wasn’t an accident.
The police are able to ping Mr. So’s cellphone, and they see that it’s pinging where she said it would, near the murder house.
They also confirm the cell phone she brought is registered to Kang.
So very early the next morning a team of 9 police with only four guns between them, head southwest to the place where the musician was allegedly pushed off the cliff, and they see that everything at the scene checks out with what Ms. Lee told them. So they start putting a plan together to catch the gang.
With Ms. Lee’s help they identify the murder house and begin a stakeout the next day around 5am, and to their surprise, the whole gang is inside. Why would they be there if Ms. Lee had escaped, they must have REALLY trusted her.
Around 7:30am, Kang comes out and hops in the truck to go into town to get groceries. As he’s driving he notices police behind him. He tries to lose them but they run the truck off the road and capture him after a fight.
Now they know the rest of the gang is still holed up with explosives so they want to lure them out. They decide they’ll call the house and tell them that Kang was in a bad accident and they’ll need to come to the hospital to claim the cash and other items he was carrying.
Moon Sang Rok, Hyun Yang and Lee Gyeong Sook (the girlfriend) show up to the hospital, and as soon as Moon Sang Rok gets out of the car he’s arrested. Hyun Yang and Lee Gyeong Sook take off in the car and lead the police on a 20km chase that ends when they crash into a private residence.
At this point then, only two gang members remained: Moon Seop and Baek Byung Ok.
So after all the arrests, the Seocho team of nine finally request backup to go into the actual house where they know the dynamite and weapons and two remaining members are. A team of 20 descend on the house and arrest Kang Moon Seop. Baek breaks out a window and escapes into a bamboo forest behind the house, but he’s no match for the detectives that chase him down.
Everyone in the group is now in police custody.
In the end, the Chijon family never killed a single rich person, and what did them in was trusting a woman. They were a disorganized group of men that couldn’t follow the rules they made up for themselves.
They hadn’t even inspired any fear in the country, because no one knew who they were until they were caught, and that’s including the police. It is tragic that they were still able to take so many lives.
The group went on trial where theyrevealed they were not remorseful at all. They were proud of their crimes, even saying they wished they’d killed more people, and one member saying he regretted not being able to kill his mother. They gave the rich/poor divide as their reason but admitted to not necessarily killing the right people.
One strange element of Korean detective work, is sometimes criminals were brought back to the scene of the crime for reenactments. The trial was heavily covered in Korean papers, and included pictures of the gang handcuffed at the crime scenes, reenacting for police how they pushed the car off of a cliff or killed Mrs. So. It was a strange kind of theater, almost.
During the trial it was also revealed that the group had in their possession the VIP list of customers at the Hyundai Department Store in Gangnam—the premiere department store in south korea. There were 1300+ names on the list and around 70 had been highlighted as targets. When asked what they were going to do with it, the gang said they planned on beginning their real work of targeting the rich after the holiday—which would have been the very next week.
Ultimately, the gang was all given the death sentence, and it took only 25 days after their arrest for their sentencing to be decided. The only member that was spared, was Lee Gyeong Sook, the girlfriend. In a strange and almost poetic manner, the only two survivors of the gang were the two women they decided to trust.