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A Victim Fights Back and Seoul Police Arrest Jeong Nam-gyu, Ending a Two-Year Series of Killings

Jeong was caught after a man he attacked during a break-in subdued him. He confessed to killing 13 people, all women and children, and was sentenced to death.

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Illustration of two police officers walking toward a patrol car down a narrow residential alley in Seoul at night. Not an actual scene from the case.

A man Jeong Nam-gyu attacked during a break-in fought back and held him for police. The arrest, on April 22, 2006, in Seoul, ended a two-year series of killings of women and children.

Jeong broke into a multi-unit house in Singil-dong, in Seoul's Yeongdeungpo district, to steal, and struck a sleeping man in his 20s with a blunt object. The injured man woke, wrestled Jeong down and handed him to police. Checking his record, police suspected more than a robbery and brought in a profiler, and Jeong confessed that he was the killer who had terrorized southwest Seoul since 2004. He had killed 13 people and seriously injured 20 others, targeting women and children; none of the victims was a man. At first he attacked women on the street, but from 2005 he broke into homes. Jeong, then 37, had earlier prison terms for robbery, attempted rape and theft.

At his first hearing at the Seoul Southern District Court, Jeong said he felt urges to kill the way a smoker wants a cigarette, and that he had not thought about his victims' suffering. South Korea's Supreme Court confirmed his death sentence on April 12, 2007. He took his own life in his cell in November 2009.

Weekly Kyunghyang described the killings as spanning three years, from 2004 to April 2006, while later accounts put the span at about two years and five months.

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