Episode 83:
[True Crime in Seoul] The Suspect Must Be Either Father or Son

On October 10, 2009, at 4:46 in the morning, a sudden loud boom shattered the silence and woke the entire neighborhood. Firefighters were dispatched to a multi-family home in Myeonmok-dong, Seoul, after reports of a fire in a semi-basement apartment. By the time they arrived, the fire had already engulfed the home.

A family of four lived there: fifty-one-year-old father Jang, forty-nine-year-old mother Kim, their nineteen-year-old daughter A, and their seventeen-year-old son B. As residents evacuated in a panic, there was no sign of this particular family anywhere.

Firefighters found the mother in the basement with full-body burns, flames still smoldering on her pants, and just enough consciousness left to tell them her daughter was still inside before passing out. They pulled the daughter from a room with third-degree burns across her entire body. Both mother and daughter were rushed to the hospital, but neither survived. The father and son, it turned out, had both been away from home since the night before and escaped the fire entirely.

The Smell of Gasoline

A veteran investigator caught the smell of gasoline in the smoke almost immediately — unusual in a house fire, which typically burns wood, plastic, and fabric. The team found a half-melted 2.5-gallon plastic container in the living room with gasoline residue inside, confirming this wasn't an accident. But the fire had destroyed nearly all physical evidence, and there were no signs of forced entry anywhere in the house, suggesting the killer either had a key or was let in — and had timed the attack for the one night both men of the household happened to be away.

Neighbors described a family under real financial strain: father Jang sold health food door-to-door with dwindling sales as the business shifted online, the mother handed out flyers for extra income, and their daughter had dropped out of college to work at a hair salon just to help make rent on their cheap, run-down semi-basement unit. The strain had the family arguing over money constantly — and the fact that the blaze hit on the one night both father and son were conveniently elsewhere made both of them immediate suspects.

Two Alibis, Both Airtight

Jang's alibi held up completely: he'd gone to Bucheon for work the day before, then to a friend's place in Suwon, both confirmed by phone location data and witness statements. His son B's alibi looked just as solid — he'd taken his girlfriend on a trip to Pyeongchang, with a timestamped photo from around 2 a.m. and hotel staff who remembered seeing him. With both men cleared and no leads on grudges, affairs, or debts pointing anywhere else, the investigation stalled completely.

The break came from security footage: two minutes after the fire started, a man rode past on a bicycle wearing only a t-shirt and underwear — no pants, no shoes — through an alley just 500 feet from the scene. A neighbor had also turned in items found dropped near the house: a burnt red North Face padded jacket, sweatpants, and three-striped slippers, a look popular enough among Korean teenagers at the time to be nicknamed the "delinquent look." Investigators reasoned that if the culprit's outer jacket and pants had caught fire and he'd kicked off his slippers, exactly this outfit — t-shirt and underwear — would be left. Gasoline tested positive on the clothes, but no DNA or other identifying evidence turned up, leaving only a small tear on the jacket's left shoulder as a distinguishing mark.

A Confession From an Unrelated Case

Police canvassed the area with flyers of the clothing, questioning teenagers across the neighborhood for a week with no results — until a boy being questioned at the station for an unrelated minor offense recognized the torn jacket in the photo as one he and his friends used to share, and even had a photo of himself with the friend he'd given it to around October 8. That friend was fifteen-year-old Kim, who, as it turned out, was already sitting in a holding cell on an unrelated mugging charge.

When police examined Kim, they found untreated burns on his arms and legs, and he confessed on the spot: "I really didn't want to do it. But they said they'd kill me and my grandmother if I didn't, so I had no choice." He named the person who'd hired him — the deceased mother's own son, seventeen-year-old B, whose Pyeongchang alibi had cleared him just days earlier.

A Life Insurance Payout and a Frame Job

Under interrogation, B — referred to here by the alias Jongsu — described a childhood built entirely around being the best: a competitive middle school track star recruited by top sports high schools, who stole from friends not for money but to keep up appearances, and who grew increasingly resentful of his family's poverty even as he pocketed prize money and still received only a small allowance. A motorcycle accident tore his ligaments and ended his athletic career, sending him into delinquency — nine criminal convictions within a year, constant conflict with his father, and a family relationship reduced, in his words, to "when it comes to money, family means nothing."

Overhearing his parents argue about struggling to pay insurance premiums, Jongsu learned his mother had taken out three separate policies — and began fantasizing about a payout large enough to buy a home in Gangnam. He first tried recruiting neighborhood kids to burn down the house for a cut of the money, but no one would agree, and word of his plan quietly spread among them, who stayed silent out of fear of retaliation. When bribery failed, he turned to threats, targeting Kim, who lived alone with his grandmother, and coerced him into carrying out the arson — supplying a stolen gasoline container, a spare key, and detailed instructions to mimic Jongsu's usual routine of heading straight to the bathroom upon arriving home, so the family wouldn't suspect an intruder. He built his alibi around the same window, deliberately timestamping a photo with his girlfriend in Pyeongchang and staying visible to hotel staff late into the night.

Final Thoughts

At 4 a.m. on the day of the fire, Kim biked to the house, let himself in with the spare key, locked himself in the bathroom as instructed, then doused the home in gasoline and lit it — catching his own arm and leg on fire in the process and fleeing on his bicycle, stripping off his burning clothes as he went. Jongsu's mother and sister died from their injuries; his father survived only because he happened to be away for work that night, a detail Jongsu hadn't accounted for. Rather than abandon the plan, he tried to redirect suspicion onto his own father, quietly hinting to detectives that his father seemed suspicious while playing the grieving son in public.

Prosecutors charged Jongsu with soliciting murder and Kim with murder; as a juvenile case, full details were sealed, but both were ultimately sentenced to thirteen years. Jongsu showed no remorse throughout, at one point asking detectives mid-interrogation to order him fried chicken and sweet and sour pork, and reportedly smirking while reading his own police report. As of 2026, both Jongsu and Kim have completed their sentences and returned to society, their current whereabouts unknown.