Jang Yun-gi, 23, facing murder and other charges, is transferred from Gwangju's Seo-gu Western Police Station to prosecutors on May 14. [Newsis]
Jang Yun-gi, 23, facing murder and other charges, is transferred from Gwangju's Seo-gu Western Police Station to prosecutors on May 14. [Newsis]

The killing of a high school girl by Jang Yun-gi, 23, who had no prior connection to his victim, was a premeditated crime rooted in a distorted sexual fixation, prosecutors have found.

The Gwangju District Prosecutors' Office's Criminal Division 3, led by chief prosecutor Kim Jin-hee, indicted Jang on Monday on charges including rape and murder under the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment of Sexual Violence Crimes. Jang remains in detention.

Indicted on charges of murder in the commission of rape, Jang is accused of stalking Lee Chae-won, 17, for about 15 minutes as she walked home alone late at night, then killing her at the scene with a bladed weapon after she resisted his attempt to abduct her for the purpose of sexual assault. He also allegedly attempted to kill a male second-year high school student who ran to the scene after hearing the victim's screams, but failed.

The key facts prosecutors disclosed Monday did not differ significantly from what police had established. Supplementary investigation by prosecutors, however, uncovered the true motive behind the crime — abduction and sexual assault — which Jang had sought to conceal.

Throughout the police investigation, Jang repeatedly claimed the attack was impulsive, saying he had grown bored with life, was contemplating suicide and had decided to "take someone with him."

On the day of the crime, police found multiple sex dolls at Jang's residence with their chests and necks slashed by a sharp object and torn into pieces. Police pressed him intensively on a possible link to sexual violence but could not disprove his account.

Police concluded that Jang had killed the high school girl as an outlet for rage after a woman identified as A rejected his romantic advances, and referred the case to prosecutors on charges of ordinary murder under the Criminal Act, which carries a minimum sentence of five years in prison.

Prosecutors extended the detention period after receiving the case and conducted a supplementary investigation to establish the true motive. They concluded that Jang had planned to drag the girl away and rape her, and indicted him on charges of murder in the commission of rape. If convicted on that charge, he faces only the death penalty or life imprisonment.

After a psychological analysis conducted through the Supreme Prosecutors' Office's integrated assessment unit, prosecutors determined that Jang's account lacked credibility. Jang had claimed he initially intended to strangle the victim and only used a weapon after she resisted. Prosecutors reviewed the autopsy findings and concluded he had lied: the congestion typically found on the bodies of strangulation victims was absent in the girl's case.

Prosecutors also confirmed that Jang grabbed the victim from behind by the neck to subdue her and attempted to drag her toward a parked vehicle — an attempted abduction, not a simple killing. That method matched the one he had used two days earlier when he sexually assaulted a foreign woman identified as A, 20, a Vietnamese national.

After A, a co-worker at a part-time job, rejected his advances, Jang broke into her home, raped her and held her captive for about 13 hours. When A was released and reported him to police, Jang roamed the streets looking for her, intending to kill her in retaliation. Unable to find her, he turned on the high school girl instead — a conclusion police reached before referring the case to prosecutors.

Having established Jang's true motive through supplementary investigation, prosecutors secured a substantial body of evidence through re-analysis of vehicle dashcam footage and his mobile phone, search and seizure operations at his residence and other locations, and interviews with the forensic pathologist.

It also emerged during the indictment process that Jang had illegally filmed parts of middle school girls' bodies on seven occasions between June and July last year while working as a social service worker at a community children's center. Prosecutors included all of these sex crimes in the indictment filed Monday.


bbo@heraldcorp.com