Episode 80:
The Deadly Delivery at the Door: The Seoul Luxury Apartment Murder

On the afternoon of December 31, 2004, a bar in Banpo-dong, Seoul, was busy preparing for its last, fully booked night of the year. Amid the preparations, the phone rang — a woman's anxious voice on the line. "By any chance, did my younger sister come to work? I haven't been able to reach her since yesterday."

She was the older sister of the bar's forty-six-year-old owner, known by the alias Kim Na-ri. The staff who took the call were already uneasy — missing one day was one thing, but two, at the busiest bar in the neighborhood, was another.

Na-ri's sister rushed to her apartment in Dongbu Ichon-dong. No one answered the door, so she let herself in with a spare key — to find the inner door broken, dog waste scattered across the floor, and the terrified dog trembling under a chair. Bankbooks and credit cards lay strewn across the living room, every drawer pulled open, as if a burglar had torn through the place. But her sister was nowhere in sight.

A Body Wrapped Like a Mummy

In the bedroom, Na-ri lay on the bed under a blanket, her face wrapped in yellow tape except for her nose. Police arriving at the scene found her wrists bound behind her back and tape wrapped around her knees and ankles — but with none of the wrinkling or disruption a real struggle would leave behind, suggesting she'd already been unconscious when she was tied up. The cause of death was later confirmed as non-obstructive asphyxiation: with her mouth sealed and only her nose left to breathe through, prolonged exposure had dried her nasal passages until she suffocated — a detail specific enough that detectives suspected the killer hadn't necessarily set out to murder her, but caused a death that spiraled out of control.

Na-ri had built real wealth — first with a well-known rib restaurant in Seocho-dong, later a two-story luxury bar in Banpo-dong, one of Seoul's priciest districts, with a Han River view and a reputation for carrying large amounts of cash. What wasn't public was that she'd quietly been struggling financially for nearly a year. When investigators peeled back the tape from her face, they found something stranger still underneath: a condolence envelope, the kind used to hold money at Korean funerals, taped directly over her eyes — with no clear explanation for why it was there.

A Stranger's Shoes, A Familiar Drink

The scene left two contradictory clues: a sneaker footprint in the living room, suggesting an intruder who never removed their shoes — typical of a stranger or robber — and two used cups in the sink, suggesting Na-ri had shared a drink with someone she knew shortly before her death. The building's security was tight for 2004, with a guard stationed at every entrance who reported no suspicious visitors, and Na-ri herself was known to be cautious about who she let in. With no signs of forced entry, investigators leaned toward someone she trusted.

DNA on one of the cups matched a longtime customer witnesses had seen entering Na-ri's apartment two days before the murder — a lead that looked airtight until his alibi checked out completely. He'd had a drink, slept in the spare room, and left for work the next morning, verified to be there during the estimated time of the murder on the 31st. If the killer really was a stranger, though, the question became how they'd gotten Na-ri to open the door at all.

The Grape Juice Slip

Detectives combed through Na-ri's enormous volume of phone calls — hundreds in a single day from customers, staff, and business contacts — cross-referencing who her contacts had called immediately afterward. One record stood out: a thirty-three-year-old bar employee named Jeon had called Na-ri from a public payphone at 11:30 a.m. on December 31, then immediately made three calls to the same unregistered burner phone, whose location traced to right near Na-ri's apartment.

Jeon was evasive for hours, insisting she'd only called her boss to wish her a happy new year. Detectives kept the pressure on, refusing even a moment of silence when she tried to stall by claiming she needed the bathroom — until frustration got the better of her and she blurted out, "For god's sake, it was because of the grape juice!" and immediately realized her mistake. The full story came out from there: her boyfriend, a thirty-three-year-old unemployed gambler using the alias Jeong Man-bae, had asked her to call Na-ri and tell her a delivery man would bring a gift of grape juice at exactly 11:30 a.m. — supposedly as a favor to ask Na-ri to look out for his girlfriend. Na-ri never showed up to the bar again.

The Man From Daegu

Mid-interrogation, Jeong called Jeon's phone, immediately sensed the tense atmosphere, and hung up after asking if she was at the police station — his own phone then traced to Gangnam, where officers caught him trying to flee. Cornered, he insisted he'd only been the lookout: the man who'd actually entered Na-ri's apartment was someone he knew only as "Daegu Hyung," a contact from an online forum called "Jackpot Cafe" where members organized robberies and other quick-money schemes. Jeong had originally planned to rob Na-ri alone, gotten cold feet, and recruited Daegu Hyung to disguise himself as the delivery man and get inside while Jeong kept watch from the car outside.

Using Daegu Hyung's burner phone location data and a license plate captured on nearby security cameras, police traveled to Daegu with Jeong and lured the man out by phone with a fake story about a scratched car. The moment Jeong confirmed his identity, he was arrested — thirty-one-year-old Kim, who had posed as a delivery driver carrying a box of grape juice, been let in thanks to Jeon's call, then asked Na-ri for a glass of water and tasered her the moment she turned her back. When Na-ri's dog charged to protect her, he tasered the dog too, which is why it was later found wandering the house, disoriented.

Final Thoughts

When Na-ri began to regain consciousness and tried to escape, Kim shocked her again, dragged her to the bedroom, and bound her wrists, knees, and ankles, taping over her face to keep her quiet — but, by his account, deliberately left her nose exposed because he had no intent to kill her. He ransacked the apartment for valuables, escaping with only about $1,000 in jewelry and $300 in cash, planning to get her bank password once she woke up. When he returned to find her gagging and struggling to breathe, he chose to flee rather than remove the tape — a choice that left her to suffocate. His claim that Na-ri herself, mid-unconsciousness, had asked him to cover her eyes with the condolence envelope rather than tape them directly was widely doubted by experts, given she'd already been shocked unconscious twice, but no other explanation for the envelope was ever confirmed.

Prosecutors ultimately charged Kim with robbery resulting in death rather than murder, concluding there was no clear intent to kill, which significantly reduced his sentence. Kim received 12 years for robbery causing death and special robbery, Jeong Man-bae 7 years for aiding and abetting, and Jeon a suspended two-year sentence for her role in the phone call. As of 2026, all three have completed their sentences and returned to society.