Motive for killing ex-husband remains mystery

By Kim Hyun-bin

The motive behind a gruesome murder case in which a woman is accused of murdering her ex-husband at a vacation house on Jeju Island before dismembering the body and discarding the pieces, remains unknown, with police remaining unconvinced about her account of events.

Koh Yoo-jung

Koh Yoo-jung, 36, who has been arrested on suspicions of killing her ex-husband surnamed Kang, told police she committed the crime in self-defense to stop him from raping her.

She claimed she was cutting a watermelon when he tried to rape her so she used the knife to defend herself. Koh and Kang, who divorced two years ago, were supposed to meet at the vacation home May 25 so that he could see their six-year-old son.

However, police do not believe this, suspecting she carefully pre-planned the murder.

They revealed CCTV footage of Koh purchasing several items from a local supermarket on Jeju ― a knife, three bottles of bleach, rubber gloves, a cleaning brush and trash bags. The footage was recorded three days before their scheduled meeting, and police suspect Koh used the items to kill Kang, dismember his body and clean the crime scene to destroy evidence.

Police also requested a digital forensic investigation of Koh's cellphone and found the suspect searched keywords such as “murder weapon,” “abandoning corpse,” “fatal nicotine dosage” and “destroying corpse” before the crime.

The vacation home uses a computerized check-in system, under which guests do not need to meet the property owner, and police suspect this is why she chose such a place for the crime.

“We suspect Koh thoroughly planned the murder location and ways to destroy evidence,” an officer at Jeju Dongbu Police Station said. “We will focus on finding out the motive of the crime.”

The two had been in a custody battle over Kang's right to see his son, and police suspect Koh developed a grudge against him and this could have been the motive. Koh had refused to allow Kang to see their son, but a court granted him visitation rights and he was supposed to see his son for the first time in two years.

CCTV at the vacation house showed the three entering it May 25, but later in the day Koh took her son back to her parents' home. The suspect returned the same day, and was seen leaving the premises and loading her car with what police suspect to be Kang's dismembered body parts, May 27.

She drove her car to a ferry heading for Wando and CCTV footage shows Koh dumping multiple plastic bags into the sea after the ferry left the port. Koh then arrived at a relative's home in Gimpo, Gyeonggi Province, and allegedly discarded the remaining body parts in the vicinity.

Tracing the movement of waste disposal lorries, police discovered some bone parts that could have been part of Kang's body at a dumping yard of a waste recycling company in Incheon. They asked the National Forensic Service to try and identify them.

Kang's family called the police after they could not contact him. On June 1, police arrested Koh after searching her home in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, and coming across items that were allegedly used for the crime.