 By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
A 38-year-old man who admitted murdering a female undergraduate last month has also confessed to having killed six other women in southwestern Gyeonggi Province since 2006, police said Friday.
Kang Ho-soon was arrested last Sunday in connection with the killing of the student whose body was found in a nearby town,  Sunday.
Police said Kang approached his victims with the intent to rape them, and then strangled them with stockings. Kang said he began to have the temptation to kill women after his fourth wife and her mother died in a fire in 2005.
``Kang said that dejected after his wife's death in a fire he wandered the nation for a year and began to feel the compulsion to kill when he looked at women,'' said Park Hak-keun, a senior police officer in Suwon, at a press briefing. ``He said he could not hold back the urge after the first killing.''
He killed three out of the seven after having sex with them in singing rooms and the remaining four, including the collegian, after kidnapping them.
The stunning confession came one day after he said that he had killed a missing 48-year-old housewife, identified only as Kim, last November. Her body was found buried on a hillside in Ansan, Thursday night.
On Friday, police found four other bodies again in the area after his confession to the killings. Police said they were having difficulty unearthing the seventh as the burial spot Kang indicated has been turned into an indoor golf range.
Following his detention, police focused their questioning on whether he was connected to other unsolved missing persons cases in the province, since many of them took place in the vicinity of his stock farm.
The collegian's body was also found buried in a rice paddy in Hwaseong, only a few kilometers away from Kang's workplace in Suwon.
During initial questioning, he denied any involvement with the other cases, but later admitted to killing the women when presented with irrefutable evidence.
``Samples of the victims' DNA were found on his clothing and other undeniable evidence backing his involvement in the other cases led to his confession,'' the officer said. ``Kang set fire to his car, presumably used during the crimes, only days before he was caught, to destroy evidence. But the act itself hinted that Kang was definitely linked to other crimes.''
Among the remains of the burnt car, investigators found various tools that could be used as weapons, including a military shovel, a chain and an ax. Burnt contraceptives were also found in the trunk.
He was caught last Saturday in Gunpo, a satellite town of Seoul, nearly 40 days after the 21-year-old collegian went missing. Police said they had traced his whereabouts after analyzing more than 7,200 vehicles caught on 300 CCTVs installed around the area where the student was last seen.
Questionable Death of Wife
Kang's arrest has drawn national media attention due to brutal nature of his crimes. He is also suspected of having intentionally set fire to his house in Ansan, near Suwon, in 2005.
Police are re-investigating the fire, which claimed the lives of the suspect's fourth wife, child and mother-in-law. At the time, they concluded it was accidental, enabling him to get insurance estimated at more than 480 million won (then $480,000).
Questions over the cause of the fire arose after it was confirmed Kang's wife signed four life insurance policies only days before the fire. In addition, Kang, who lived with his de facto wife for two years without a marriage registration, reported their marriage only five days before the incident.
``It was a questionable fire,'' said a police officer who investigated it. Police and the National Institute of Scientific Investigation jointly investigated the scene for six months but failed to find the exact cause of the fire. ``We suspected Kang had deliberately set the fire for financial gain, but no concrete evidence backing this was found,'' the officer said.
The nation's worst serial killing spree was carried out by Yoo Young-chul, who was sentenced to death in 2004 for killing 20 prostitutes and wealthy senior citizens.
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