Serial Killer Kang Given Death Sentence

Serial killer Kang Ho-soon gets out of a police van to enter the Ansan Branch of the Suwon District Court, Wednesday. The court sentenced him to death on charges of killing 10 women including his wife and mother-in-law. / Yonhap

By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter

Serial killer Kang Ho-soon was sentenced to death by a court that found him guilty of killing 10 women, including his wife and mother-in-law.

The Ansan Branch of the Suwon District Court handed down capital punishment to the 39-year-old, Wednesday, after finding him guilty of kidnapping and killing eight women in rural areas outside Seoul between September 2006 and December 2008. He was also convicted of killing his wife and mother-in-law in a fire in 2005, which the prosecution claims was set by Kang, although he denied the allegation. The prosecution sought the death sentence for him early this month.

Presiding judge Lee Tae-soo said, ``He doesn’t deserve his life to be protected by law. To root out crimes against women, capital punishment for him is inevitable.’’

Whether or not to appeal the verdict has yet to be decided, Kang’s lawyer, Kim Ki-il, said.

Kang was arrested in January for abducting and strangling a female college student. During questioning, he confessed to having killed seven more women, abandoning their bodies on uncharted hillsides. He was also charged with setting fire to his house in Ansan, which claimed the lives of his wife and mother-in-law after he had taken out large life insurance policies on them.

This sentence raised the number of convicted people on death row to 60, although no capital punishment has been implemented here since 1998 due to the government’s move to become an execution-free country.

pss@koreatimes.co.kr

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