Episode 92:
The Killer Who Kidnapped His Best Friend's Wife

On July 3, 2024, at 2:30 a.m., an emergency was declared at the Haenam Probation Office — the facility responsible for monitoring violent and repeat offenders wearing electronic ankle monitors around the clock. An abnormal signal had been detected from a forty-year-old man named Kim.

Kim was wearing the monitor because of a past conviction, unrelated to sex crimes, but had been living quietly with his common-law wife, referred to here as Lee Eun-jeong, and their young daughter, working at a factory in Mokpo and renting a two-story house nearby. That morning, his GPS location hadn't moved at all in four hours — completely out of character.

When repeated calls to Kim went unanswered, the probation officer, fearing the worst, alerted police and paramedics to the house in Dongmyeong-dong, Mokpo. Arriving officers found the kitchen balcony window wide open — someone had broken in. Inside, Kim's four-year-old daughter was trembling under a blanket; the moment she saw police, she burst into tears and pointed toward the master bedroom.

A Scene Beyond Description

Kim was found curled in a pool of blood, already dead, with stab wounds nearly seven inches deep through his chest and abdomen — his heart, diaphragm, liver, stomach, and spleen all severed, his right wrist nearly cut through, and his hand and shins slashed. His wife, Eun-jeong, was nowhere in the house. With his GPS having frozen at 10 p.m. the night before, more than four hours had already passed — more than enough time for a second crime to unfold elsewhere.

As officers prepared to search for her, Kim's daughter grabbed an investigator's arm: "My dad has a friend. It was him. That man... he did that to my dad. And he dragged my mom away, too. That man lives on the first floor." The first-floor tenant was identified as forty-four-year-old Park — a coworker of Kim's who had moved into the house just ten days earlier. A background check revealed he was a convicted murderer, released in February 2024 after nineteen years in prison, having also committed a sexual assault while incarcerated. He had been out for only five months.

Caught on Camera

Nearby security footage captured Park returning home drunk around 9:30 p.m., then reappearing an hour later with a terrified Eun-jeong beside him, a weapon pressed into her side as he forced her to a stolen car in the company parking lot and drove off with her in the passenger seat. Police traced the license plate to Yeosu, in Jeollanam-do, confirming they'd left the area.

At around 8 a.m., before a joint investigation could even be requested, Eun-jeong walked into a police station barefoot and disheveled: "Please help me. I was kidnapped, and he let me go. I think my husband's dead, and I don't know if my daughter is okay. But where am I?" She was taken to the hospital with injuries from a brutal sexual assault, given a four-week diagnosis, and reunited with her daughter — breaking down in tears the moment she saw her.

A Debt Repaid With Betrayal

Once she calmed down, Eun-jeong revealed that Kim and Park weren't just coworkers — they'd shared a cell at Gwangju Prison years earlier, before Park was transferred to Daegu Prison in 2013 after sexually assaulting a fellow inmate. Kim was released, rebuilt a stable life, and had moved on entirely until Park, released himself in June 2024, took a job at the very same Mokpo company where Kim worked. The two reconnected quickly, visiting each other's homes — Kim even offered Park the empty first-floor unit of his own house, wanting to help him resettle into society, and treated him generously both at home and at work.

On the night of July 2, as Kim, Eun-jeong, and their daughter lay talking under a blanket in the master bedroom, the door burst open — Park stood there with a 13-inch kitchen knife. He shoved Kim by the neck, ripped a gold necklace from around it, severed his wrist, and stabbed him twice, once nearly seven inches deep, killing him instantly in front of his own child. He then forced Eun-jeong to hand over her husband's car keys, cards, and cash, which she did without resistance, thinking only of protecting her daughter — before Park sexually assaulted her beside her husband's body and dragged her out at knifepoint, threatening to kill their daughter if she resisted.

Hours of Terror

For the next several hours, Park drove Eun-jeong through Yeongam and Boseong toward Suncheon, repeatedly threatening her with the knife, stopping the car multiple times to assault her again, and finally taking her to a motel in Suncheon around 4 a.m. for a further assault that left her with a severe internal injury. Then, without warning, he simply told her she could leave. Investigators concluded this wasn't mercy but calculation — a returned kidnapping victim forces police to redirect resources toward medical care, evidence collection, and her statement, buying Park time to disappear while everyone already knew who they were looking for.

Park fled to Yeosu and went into hiding, but was spotted at a restaurant in Manseong-ri. Given the area's difficult terrain of beaches and mountains, police deployed 500 personnel, three helicopters, and ten drones in a massive land, sea, and air search, capturing him after eight hours — roughly sixteen hours after the murder.

A Pattern Repeating Itself

Park's history stretched back to his teenage years: dropping out of school in eighth grade, working in illegal nightlife jobs, and racking up convictions for robbery, assault, fraud, and theft starting at sixteen. His first murder came in 2005, shortly after a prior release, when a man named Cho — who had taken him in, found him a place to stay, and encouraged him to reconcile with his estranged family — arranged for Park's sister to speak kindly to him during a visit. Park twisted the gesture into an imagined insult, traveled to Cho's home at 3 a.m., and beat him to death with a wooden stick, striking his head nine times. He served twelve years for that killing — a case eerily similar to Kim's murder, in both being retaliation against someone who had shown him kindness.

After his arrest for Kim's murder, Park initially claimed Kim had mistreated and belittled him — an account Kim's family and coworkers flatly rejected, describing a friendship built on genuine generosity. Park's own version, given later, was that after several hours of drinking on the evening of the murder, he suddenly recalled feeling disrespected by something in Kim's tone or expression days earlier, went home to retrieve a kitchen knife, and let himself in through the same open balcony window his daughter had described.

Final Thoughts

In January 2025, Park stood trial for murder, aggravated threats, confinement, and sexual violence. Prosecutors emphasized the pattern: a second killing committed just five months after his release from a nineteen-year sentence for an earlier murder and assault. The court sentenced him to life in prison, with an order for ten years of personal information disclosure and twenty years of ankle monitoring once he becomes parole-eligible — meaning, in theory, he could eventually be released again. Park's appeal was dismissed. Eun-jeong and her daughter, left to rebuild after surviving Park's violence, remain the case's most enduring victims.