Yoo Young-chul was born in 1970 in Gochang and had a long record for theft, forgery and a sexual offence against a minor, and had spent much of his adult life in prison. He was released in September 2003.
Between September 2003 and July 2004 he killed twenty people in Seoul. The first eleven were wealthy elderly people, killed in their own homes in the affluent districts of Gangnam and Jongno with a hammer he had made himself; he said afterwards that he had targeted the rich. He then changed pattern and began telephoning massage parlours and escort services, having women sent to his flat near Mapo, killing them there and dismembering the bodies, which he buried in the hills around a Buddhist temple.
The two series were investigated separately. He was caught in July 2004 after a massage parlour owner, alarmed at the number of women who had gone to the same address and not returned, followed one and called the police.
He confessed to twenty-six and twenty were established. He was convicted and sentenced to death on December 13, 2004.
He is still alive. South Korea has retained the death penalty but has not carried out an execution since December 1997, and is classified internationally as abolitionist in practice, so he has been under sentence for more than twenty years.