Grisly husband trades lives for money

By Han Yoon-ji

A seemingly perfect husband was recently found to have traded human lives for money. Park, 46, was accused of murdering his first wife, younger brother and brother-in-law in order to gain an insurance of 20 million won.

Park lives in two 40-pyeong apartments in the wealthy part of the country with his in-laws, and had been reputed as an ideal husband who gives plentiful allowances to his unsuspecting family.

The first victim of his grisly chain of murders was Kim, then 29, who was his first wife.

Park called young gang members Yu and Jeon and told them to “work on (kill) his wife” because he “needed insurance money.” Although Yu protested in disgust and stormed off, Jeon strangled Kim to death in a carpark in Gyeonggi Province. Park moved the corpse into the trunk of a car and staged her death. He received 1,450,000 won as insurance.

The money Park traded for his wife’s life was used on pubs and moneylenders. Soon, Park ran out of money and staged a similar murder for his own younger brother, receiving 6 million won as recompense.

With the new insurance money, Park aimed to lure in a new wife. In 2005, he was successful in his scheme and met housewife Choi, 41, on an online game.

“Let’s live together,” Park whispered to her, “off the money we’ll get after your husband dies from a ‘traffic accident.’” Choi unwittingly believed that he truly loved her and agreed, putting sleeping pills in her husband’s drink. However, their plans were foiled when Shin, who was to hit the husband with a car, pulled out in the last minute and crippled him instead.

The third and final victim was his murdered wife’s brother, Lee, then 32. Due to his unemployment, Lee eagerly met up with Shin when he offered him “a great sum of money”. Lee’s ‘traffic accident’ shored in another 1,250 million won.

Although the police were suspicious of the horrendously similar chain of events surrounding members of Park’s family, they were unable to find sufficient evidence to convict Park of his crimes.

However, things took a turn for the better when Yu, the gang member who was not involved in the murder of Park’s first wife, reported to the police that Park “staged traffic accidents for insurance money”.

The arrested Park only confessed to killing his wife and planning the murder of his mistress Choi’s husband.

“I’m going to find you when I come out of prison,” Park sang to Yu during the course of the investigation.

After three weeks of undercover investigation, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency announced on June 21st that they have found evidence of Park’s grisly string of murders and have since detained Park.