Kim Dae-doo killed 17 people in South Korea between August and October 1975. Most of the killings took place in the rural and suburban towns of South Jeolla Province and Gyeonggi Province, and in Seoul. His victims included families with young children and an infant. He took almost nothing from them: the total he is said to have stolen over the whole period was under 27,000 won, which the Korea Herald put at about 360 dollars in current money. The Korea Herald called him South Korea's first known serial killer since 1948, and his toll stood until a later killer in 2004 surpassed it.
He was caught because of a laundry. He was sentenced to death in November 1975 and did not appeal. He was executed on December 28, 1976, after a year in which a visitor from a Christian volunteer ministry wrote to him and saw him, and after he wrote letters of remorse.
Kim Dae-doo was born in 1949 in a farming village in Yeongam, South Jeolla Province, the first child of farming parents, the Korea Herald reported in October 2025. He left school at about 15, having barely finished elementary school, and left home at 17. In 1972 he went to Seoul after taking 50,000 won from his family. He was found unfit for military service.
Between 1973 and 1975 he was involved in two violent incidents. One produced a suspended sentence. The other produced a one-year prison term in Suwon, and he was released in May 1975. In the Herald's account he came out of prison with nothing to do and nobody willing to take him in. He later told the press that he had wanted to live better than anyone, and that no one accepted him after he came back from prison. Maeil Shinmun, in a 2006 piece, gave a similar account of his explanation: he had no work after his release, and relatives and friends looked down on him.
The first killing was in Gwangsan, then a county of South Jeolla Province and now part of Gwangju. The Korea Herald dates it to August 13, 1975; the Kyunghyang Shinmun, in a 2010 retrospective, gives August 12 and says the series began at an isolated house. In the early hours, at the home of an elderly couple, the 62-year-old husband was killed. His 58-year-old wife was seriously wounded and survived. Kim took a flashlight and a wristwatch.
Within days he had joined forces with a man he had known in prison, Kim Hae-woon. The Kyunghyang Shinmun described the pair traveling from Mokpo to Suncheon by train and then moving along the railway line in the Muan area looking for places to rob. On August 19, according to the Herald, they went to a secluded corner shop in Muan, South Jeolla Province. The shop's owners, a couple in their 50s, and their 7-year-old grandson were killed. The Herald says the pair took about 250 won and some bread and snacks, and missed 26,000 won that was hidden in the bedroom. Kyunghyang's account gives the same sum, 250 won, but dates the Muan killings to September 7 and gives the boy's age as six; the dates and ages differ between the two reports.
Kim later said he killed the grandson so that no one would be left to tell what happened at the shop. That explanation came from his own statements after his arrest, as the Herald reported them.
By the Herald's account, the two men separated when they reached Seoul in early September. Kyunghyang also says they split up after deciding to go to Seoul, and that Kim then continued alone. The Herald places a killing in Seoul's Dongdaemun district on September 7, the day he arrived: a man in his 60s.
The killings that followed were in the towns of Gyeonggi Province, south of Seoul. The Herald lists them as follows.
On September 25, in Pyeongtaek, a 71-year-old grandmother and three children aged 5, 7 and 11 were killed in their home. Kim was also charged with further offenses in that case. On about September 27, in Guri, a couple in their 20s and their 3-year-old child were killed. On September 30, in Gunpo, a 28-year-old woman was killed, and then her 3-month-old infant. Maeil Shinmun describes the Gunpo killings in similar terms and says Kim killed the whole family so as not to leave evidence.
On October 2, in Suwon, a couple in their 30s was killed. The next day, October 3, a 21-year-old woman in Suwon was attacked and survived; Kim took her wristwatch and jacket. She was the only person he attacked in these weeks who got away.
On October 7 Kim killed a 23-year-old man in Seoul who, according to the Herald, had stolen from him. Kim took a fake gold ring, a wallet and the man's jeans.
The Herald counts the total as 17 people killed in eight separate events between August 13 and October 7, with the attack in Suwon on October 3 as a ninth incident in which no one died. Maeil Shinmun, which dates the series from August 12 to October 8, counts nine incidents, 17 people killed and three people seriously wounded. The Kyunghyang Shinmun also gives 55 days, from August 12 to the arrest.
In the first week of October, Kim took a pair of stained jeans to a laundry in Dongdaemun district, Seoul, and offered an explanation for the stains. The owner was not convinced and called the police. The Herald says that when Kim came back for the jeans at about 4 p.m., an officer from Cheongnyangni Police Station, identified in the article only by his surname, Hong, was waiting. Kim gave answers that did not agree with one another, and he was taken to the station.
According to the Herald, the officer gave him a meal, and Kim confessed. The Herald places the confession in the days after the October 7 killing. The Kyunghyang Shinmun gives October 8, 1975 as the date of the arrest, after 55 days, and says the crime scenes were reconstructed with Kim two days later. Maeil Shinmun recalled that at the first reenactment he complained about the pace, said to hurry up, and was seen chewing gum and smirking, which angered the public.
Kim Hae-woon, the man who had been with him in Muan, was tried alongside him.
The trial began in November 1975, and the court sentenced both men to death, the Herald reported. Kim was defended by a public defender, Lee Sang-hyuk, who argued for life imprisonment rather than death. The Kyunghyang Shinmun noted that the defense also pointed in closing to the movement to abolish the death penalty. According to the Herald, Kim told his lawyer that the lawyer was a police informant who wanted him sentenced to death.
Kim did not appeal, which meant the death sentence against him became final. Kim Hae-woon's case went further. In March 1976 a later trial reduced his sentence to life imprisonment, because the court viewed him as relatively passive in the one killing in which he was implicated.
Kim was held at the Seoul Detention Center. The Weekly Kyunghyang reported in 2004 that in October 1975 a woman who was then an ordinary homemaker learned of his arrest and discovered that he came from her husband's home district. She was shocked, and her husband suggested that she try to bring him to the Christian faith. She wrote him a letter urging him to repent and ask forgiveness, and he replied within a few days in a letter that included the words, as the magazine quoted them, "Why did I become such a bad man?" In March 1976 she visited him at the detention center. She had expected a menacing man and found a gentle one. The visit led her to start a ministry to people on death row, and she later said she had met more than 20 of them.
The Herald gives a somewhat different account of the same woman, calling her a retired English teacher, and says she began writing to him in December 1975. The two publications also differ on when the correspondence began.
Kim became a Christian in prison and spent his time reading the Bible and singing hymns. The Herald says he sent 18 letters to her. The last, dated December 18, 1976, thanked her for visiting. In his final statements he expressed remorse and apologized to the families of the victims. He asked that people show more leniency toward offenders so that they could be rehabilitated, and that first-time offenders be held apart from repeat offenders.
Kim Dae-doo was executed on December 28, 1976, at the age of 27. The date is given by both the Korea Herald and Maeil Shinmun, which described him as a once-in-a-generation killer. The Weekly Kyunghyang says that he sang hymns at the end.
The case was treated in later decades as the starting point for serial murder in South Korea. The Korea Herald placed it as the first since 1948 and as the benchmark that stood until 2004, when another man was convicted of killing 20 people. The woman who visited him went on to minister to other prisoners on death row.
Several details of the record differ. The first killing is dated August 12 in two accounts (Kyunghyang Shinmun and Maeil Shinmun) and August 13 in the Korea Herald. The Muan killings are dated August 19 by the Herald and September 7 by the Kyunghyang Shinmun; the boy's age is given as seven and as six. The Herald implies an arrest in the days after October 7, while the Kyunghyang Shinmun gives October 8. The Herald describes the woman who visited him as a retired English teacher who began writing in December 1975; the 2004 Weekly Kyunghyang piece describes a homemaker who wrote after his arrest in October 1975.
The total of 17 dead is consistent across the Herald, the Kyunghyang Shinmun and Maeil Shinmun. Kim's explanations for his actions, including the remark about the shop owner's grandson, are his own statements after arrest and were not tested by any reported court finding.
1949: Kim Dae-doo is born in Yeongam, South Jeolla Province.
1972: He goes to Seoul.
1973 to 1975: Two violent incidents; a suspended sentence and a one-year prison term in Suwon.
May 1975: Released from prison.
August 12 or 13, 1975: First killing, in Gwangsan, South Jeolla Province.
August 19, 1975: Three people killed in Muan (another report says September 7).
September 7, 1975: One person killed in Seoul.
September 25, 1975: Four people killed in Pyeongtaek.
About September 27, 1975: Three people killed in Guri.
September 30, 1975: Two people killed in Gunpo.
October 2, 1975: Two people killed in Suwon.
October 3, 1975: A young woman escapes an attack in Suwon.
October 7, 1975: One person killed in Seoul.
Early October 1975 (October 8 in one report): Arrested after a laundry owner calls the police.
November 1975: Sentenced to death with Kim Hae-woon.
December 1975: Begins correspondence with a Christian visitor (Herald; another report says October 1975).
March 1976: Kim Hae-woon's sentence reduced to life imprisonment.
December 18, 1976: Last letter.
December 28, 1976: Executed.