Episode 76:
The Last Call: A Car Plunge into the Sea and Her Chilling Final Words

A frantic call came into the Busan emergency center. "Help! Please help! We're sinking here at Dongbaek Island! Please help! Help!!" A woman was urgently begging for help after falling into the ocean — then, with one final, suffocating scream, the call went dead.

At first, it looked like a sudden accident. But who the three people inside that car were, and why they'd gone to a restricted area that night, would turn out to matter a great deal.

At 10:25 p.m. on March 4, 2013, a black Grandeur sedan drove onto Dongbaek Island in Busan carrying three people: 31-year-old Jeong behind the wheel, his 32-year-old acquaintance Park in the passenger seat, and Park's 39-year-old wife Lee in the back.

A Celebration, Then a Plunge

The day was meant to be a happy one — Park and Lee had registered their marriage four years earlier but lived apart for work, and were finally moving in together. To celebrate, they'd gone out for dinner with Park's junior Jeong, then driven to the secluded Nurimaru pier on Dongbaek Island to see the night view, forcing their way past a barricade meant to keep cars out after dark.

After about thirty minutes, Lee said she felt cold and got back into the back seat first; Jeong took the wheel, and Park suddenly said he'd forgotten his water bottle and walked off toward the front of the pier. Moments later, the car started — and instead of backing away from the water, it sped straight into the ocean with Jeong and Lee still inside.

Park called 911 and dove in himself, pulling Jeong free after he got stuck trying to escape through the driver's window. But Lee couldn't be found — police divers eventually located her unconscious in the submerged back seat. She was rushed to a hospital but died shortly after. Jeong, tearful, told police he'd only been driving for three months and the car had suddenly accelerated while he was trying to reverse.

No Skid Marks, No Explanation

It was nearly written off as a tragic accident caused by inexperienced driving — until detectives started asking why they'd gone to that particular pier at all, a cramped, little-visited spot that most people skip in favor of the main observatory. Sudden-acceleration claims aren't unheard of, but 99.9% of such incidents happen moving forward, not in reverse, since vehicles are built to move slowly backward. And if the car really had lurched forward at speed, it should have left skid marks. It hadn't left any.

Worse, the car's path from parking spot to the water wasn't a straight reverse — it curved, requiring the steering wheel to be turned two and a half times to the right in a matter of seconds. That wasn't a malfunction. It looked deliberate, which meant this wasn't an accident at all — it looked like premeditated murder, and detectives began to wonder if it had been arranged as a hired killing.

Four Insurance Policies and an Erased Phone

A check on Lee turned up four insurance policies in her name, three of them life insurance, all taken out right after she married Park — with a special clause paying extra if death resulted from a car accident. Park stood to collect roughly $800,000. A recovered recording from when the policies were signed up, four years earlier, caught Park's voice pressing the agent on exactly how much more was paid for a car-accident death, and confirming he was the beneficiary, while quietly coaching Lee in the background during her own verification call.

Park had handed his phone to police early on, but not before wiping it — not realizing deleted data can be recovered through forensic analysis. What investigators pulled from it was damning: a photo of a wedding invitation dated April 2013, just a month after the incident, listing Park as groom and a different woman, using an alias, as bride. He'd been having an affair, and he had debts of $145,000 piling up in interest, on top of needing money to fund a wedding with someone else. Lee's insurance payout would cover both.

The Man Who Learned to Drive for a Murder

Bank records showed Park had sent Jeong roughly $14,500 in ten installments — an advance on a job. Security footage sealed the case: the day before the incident, the same black Grandeur had pulled into the dock area at 2:30 p.m., with two men getting out to inspect the water depth below the pier. Investigators were certain they were looking at Jeong and Park scouting the location in advance.

When confronted, Park tried to get ahead of the accusation by producing a handwritten note promising to pass any insurance payout to Lee's aunt and uncle — but under psychological pressure at the scene, with Jeong beside him, the story finally cracked. Park admitted the plan had roots six years back: he'd started an affair with the then-married Lee while working at her restaurant, she divorced her husband and married him, and over four years she funneled roughly $95,000 to him, including her divorce alimony, while he lived it up in Busan on bars and gambling, hiding both her existence and his marriage from everyone he knew. When he decided he needed more, he took out the insurance policies; when he decided he needed it paid out, he recruited Jeong — who'd never met Lee, was in financial trouble himself, and had no driver's license, which Park solved by paying for his driving lessons and buying him the exact Grandeur used in the crash.

Final Thoughts

On the day of the murder, Jeong rolled down the driver's window to escape, then sent the car into the water with only Lee inside. But panic worked against the plan — as water filled the cabin, Jeong fumbled the controls and rolled down all the windows, giving Lee, in the back seat, a way out too. That's when Park, watching from shore, dove in — not to rescue her, but to stop her. He punched her in the face four times and choked her as she called for help, believing until the end that her husband had come to save her. She lost consciousness and drowned.

At trial, both men confessed fully; the court weighed that cooperation against the severity of the crime and sentenced Park to twenty-three years and Jeong to thirteen. Both are still serving their sentences. The woman Park had been planning to marry never knew how close she'd come to being his next target.