Kim Seon-ja was a housewife in Seoul who was sentenced to death in 1989 for robbery-murder. The court record covers the deaths of four women between October 1986 and July 1988, among them her own younger sister. A fifth death, that of her father in March 1988, was part of the police case but did not end in a conviction. She denied every charge from her arrest in September 1988 until shortly before she was executed on December 30, 1997.
Korean newspapers have long called her the country's first female serial killer. She was executed along with 22 other death row prisoners on a single day that proved to be the last day of executions in South Korea.
Kim Seon-ja was born in 1939. The Seoul Economic Daily describes her as a homemaker with three sons, married to a painter who worked on construction sites. Naewoe Press reported that in her forties she took up cabaret dancing and gambling and borrowed money at high interest, and that her debts grew. A Buddhist monk, Samjung, who visited her in prison and wrote about her in 2018, said she had never attended school and could not read. Her name appears as Kim Seon-ja in current romanization and as Kim Sun-ja in older English-language writing.
The Seoul Shinmun, in a 2026 audio feature, said the motive in her case was money and a life of gambling and nightlife, not any wider grievance. Little else is on record about her life before 1986.
Investigators later treated the deaths as separate events, spread over about twenty months. All took place in Seoul. Each was first taken for a natural death.
The first was on October 31, 1986, in Sindang-dong, in the Jung-gu district. The woman who died was 49, a neighbor of Kim's and a fellow member of the same rotating savings club, a common neighborhood money arrangement in Korea.
The second death came in April 1987. The woman was 50 and also belonged to the savings club. The Seoul Economic Daily reported that Kim owed her 7 million won and that the debt ended with her death. The date is given as April 4 by the Seoul Shinmun in 2011 and as April 7 by Naewoe Press.
In February 1988 a third woman, to whom Kim owed 1.2 million won, survived. Kim repaid the loan afterward, according to the Seoul Economic Daily. Reports at the time of her arrest listed this as an attempted killing alongside the deaths.
Kim's father died on March 27, 1988. This is the death that did not lead to a conviction. The Seoul Economic Daily reported that she was acquitted of it for lack of direct evidence. Naewoe Press reported that it was left out of the charges because the evidence was judged insufficient. Either way, no court found her guilty of her father's death.
On April 29, 1988, her younger sister died. Kim had borrowed 10 million won from her, the Seoul Economic Daily reported. The Seoul Shinmun gave the same date and noted that the sister's death came about a month after the father's, within the same family.
The last death was in July 1988. The woman who died was related to Kim by marriage. Kim owed her 4.84 million won, the Seoul Shinmun reported in 2011. The Seoul Economic Daily gives the date as July 8; Naewoe Press gives August 8.
The deaths drew attention to Kim because of what they had in common. Detectives from the Yongsan police district noted that each of the dead had been close to her, and that most were creditors or relatives, the Seoul Shinmun reported. Investigators came to treat the deaths as killings.
On September 2, 1988, police sought a warrant on a robbery-murder charge and arrested her. She was 49. She denied the killings. Reports of the time listed five killings and one attempted killing as the basis of the case.
The charge was robbery-murder, with other charges. The Seoul Economic Daily describes the charge as robbery-murder. Naewoe Press reported that she was indicted for the deaths of the first neighbor, the second woman, her younger sister and the relative by marriage, which makes four deaths.
The name of the trial court and the date of its verdict are not on record. She was sentenced to death in 1989, and Naewoe Press says the first and second instance courts both imposed the death sentence. Samjung wrote that the case went through dozens of hearings across the district and high courts. Jeju Sori noted that her 1989 sentence was the last death sentence given to a woman for a violent crime in Korea at the time of its report.
She maintained her innocence throughout. The Seoul Shinmun reported in 2011 that she shouted that she would not stay silent without evidence against her, and in 2026 that she went on denying everything to the end.
According to the Seoul Economic Daily and Naewoe Press, the appeal court upheld the death sentence and the Supreme Court did the same, making it final in 1989. Samjung dated the death sentence to 1989 and described it as confirmed by the Supreme Court. The Seoul Economic Daily summarized the result as a death sentence on the robbery-murder and other charges, with an acquittal on the father's death.
Kim spent about eight years on death row. Samjung, who visited prisoners as part of his ministry, wrote in 2018 that she told him she was innocent and that a prison guard told him she had always given the same account. He wrote that after a television documentary on her case, she was moved to Daejeon Prison, and that he pressed the Justice Ministry about a retrial. In his account, a former justice minister was contacted and an instruction for a new look at the case was reportedly passed to the Correction Headquarters. Naewoe Press reported that his appeals to the Justice Ministry delayed the execution by about eight years. A retrial was never granted, and Samjung noted that retrial requests from death row were usually rejected at once.
On December 30, 1997, South Korea executed 23 prisoners in a single day at five prisons and detention centers, the Seoul Shinmun reported the next day. Amnesty International's news service said the 23 included 18 men and 5 women, that there had been no warning, and that the executions came after two years without any. The Seoul Shinmun's list named Kim, then 58, among those executed. It called the day the largest number of executions since 28 prisoners were executed in two rounds in 1977.
SBS Star, reporting on a 2026 television program, gave her closing statement: that she had only wanted to live freely and enjoy life as she pleased, and that she said she was dying unjustly.
The December 1997 executions were the last in South Korea. In an October 2026 report the Seoul Economic Daily said that no execution had been carried out since. Kim's case has stayed in Korean public view through newspaper series and television programs; Korean broadcasters examined it again in 2026, and the Seoul Shinmun published a new account that spring.
The number of victims has never been settled. The Seoul Shinmun said in 2011 that she was convicted of killing five people over twenty months, and several accounts speak of five killings. Accounts of the verdict, however, describe four deaths as the basis of the robbery-murder convictions, with her father's death leaving no conviction and a woman who survived. The Seoul Shinmun and Samjung called her the country's first female serial killer. The reports also differ on the dates of the second and last deaths (April 4 or 7, 1987; July 8 or August 8, 1988), and a Seoul Shinmun report of December 31, 1997, describes one of her victims as a younger brother, where all other reports say younger sister.
Samjung's account of the guard, the broadcast and the justice minister is one man's recollection, and no court is on record as acting on it.
1939: Kim Seon-ja is born.
October 31, 1986: first death, in Sindang-dong, Seoul.
April 1987: second death.
February 1988: a woman who had lent her money survives.
March 27, 1988: her father dies; no conviction follows.
April 29, 1988: her younger sister dies.
July 1988: the woman related by marriage dies (July 8 in the Seoul Economic Daily; August 8 in Naewoe Press).
September 2, 1988: she is arrested in Seoul.
1989: sentenced to death for robbery-murder and other charges; upheld on appeal and by the Supreme Court, final in 1989.
December 30, 1997: executed, with 22 other prisoners.