Rare story from South Korea: He spent 20 years in prison for one murder, then someone else shows up and admits he committed a crime.

In the fall of 1988, a girl was raped and killed in bed. She was only 13.

A crime like this would shock anyone else, but in Hwaseong, a rural and then rural area near the capital of Seoul, South Korea, killings like this almost regularly occurred because she was the victim of eight in two years.

Nearly a year later, police arrived at the home of a 22-year-old man named Yoon (the total identity of which has not been disclosed).

The police took him to a small interrogation room with a desk at the local commissionerate, where they questioned him for three days about the rape and murder of a girl.

In the end, they gained admission from that “, it sends out Telegrafi.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment, though his sentence was later reduced by appeal. He was released after 20 years in prison.

Before 1986, Hwaseong was not a crime scene. But from 1986 to 1991, 10 women and girls were killed in the Hwaseong region. Victims were sexually abused, too.

And nobody was safe there.

Countries in Which Crime Happened

Residents patrolled the streets at night, armed with sticks, while women avoided going after darkness.

They were afraid when they met a man, and the men also feared that they might be suspects.

Ha Seung-gyun, who was involved in the investigation, said the impression was created that the killer attacked women in red, so everyone avoided wearing that color.

The police were looking for a serial killer and there were several aspects of the investigation, there's Telegrafi.

Yoon was the only person ever convicted of any of the 10 murders. The other nine murders remain unresolved. However, the police never gave up.

In September 2019, Gyonggi Nambu Ban Gi-soo, the youngest police officer in charge of the investigation, announced the explosive news. Now they relied on DNA evidence, which was not the case at the time.

DNA evidence for at least three murders matches one man: Lee Chun-jaeu, who is in prison serving a life sentence for raping and killing his bride in 1994.

Date of Crime

And Lee confessed to all the 10 murders in Hwaseong and four other people the police didn't elaborate on.

He had a detailed confession, even drawing a piece of paper to explain the whereabouts of the murders, said the official of the professional police agency Gyonggi Nambu.

But that also left authorities in a complicated position. Yoon spent 20 years in prison for a murder he hadn't committed.

Yoon is already in the '50s. He works at a leather processing factory in North Chungcheong Provinca. He was funny, but his life was hard.

He lost his mother when he was three. His father later disappeared and he left school.

Before a restaurant he wanted food. At the age of 11, he started working at a farm - growing center, and at the age of 22, he was learning to become a qualified technician. He was never in a relationship with a woman.

I didn't even try to talk to girls because I didn't think anyone would want a disabled person like me”, he told the media, it's Telegrafi.

After the police arrested him, Yoon remembers being held in chains for three days, writes CNN.

He could barely eat, and all he could do was go to the bathroom.

Whenever he tried to fall asleep, the police would awaken him.

Those times were like a nightmare. When you don't sleep for three days, you don't know what you said. You don't remember what you did. You can't even think about it right”, Yoon says.

Finally, he signed three” admissions”.

Last December, Provincial Police Gyeonggi Namu launched an official investigation into the behaviour of seven police officers and a prosecutor working on the original murder investigation, including a summary of charges of abuse of office during the arrests. The results of the investigation have not yet been published.

Lee's confession was just not enough to clear Yoon's name. In the eyes of the law, he was still a convicted murderer. The retrial has begun and Lee's confession will be essential.

Yoon says that nothing could ever return the lost 20 years, after which he emerged into an unknown world that has changed a lot.

But he just wants to live the rest of his life as an innocent man, to “returned the honor of losing”.