Professor A, who contacted his mother-in-law to go on a New Year's trip after killing his family, found out that he lived in two houses in Japan.

■ Broadcasting: FM 94.5 (06:40~06:55, 12:40~12:55, 19:40~19:55)
■ Broadcast Date: December 02, 2024 (Mon)
■ Host: Lee Won-hwa Lawyer
■ Talk: Attorney Hwang Geun-ju

* The text below may differ from the actual broadcast content, so please check the broadcast for more accurate information.

◇ Lee Won-hwa: When you look at the world of a couple who have been sensational for a while, you get this line. It's not a sin to love. The male protagonist who said this line at the time was a husband of a family who had an affair relationship, so we need to consider whether this is a sin or not, but there are moments when it becomes a sin without having to be considered. That's the case I'm going to introduce today. Husband A and wife B, who met as seniors and juniors in the same university department, faced a divorce crisis after 8 years of marriage. This was because her husband, A, had an affair with her junior, D. His wife, B, said she could never divorce her son, but her husband, A, thought differently. That's how the two continue to argue every day. Then it was one day. The couple had been fighting each other every day as if they were going to split up right away. Did they make a dramatic break-up? Husband A left a text message to his mother-in-law that the whole family was going on a trip abroad. However, after 10 days, there was no contact, so mother-in-law, so woman B's mother, started to worry. And I ended up calling the police. What was it that the police who were dispatched after receiving a report found at A's couple's house? What kind of scene was so surprising? It took more than nine years to unlock the keys to this case. What the hell happened? Let's take a closer look at today's incident X file. Hello, I'm Lee Won-hwa, the X-file of lawyer Lee Won-hwa's case. Today, we are with lawyer Hwang Geun-ju of Law Firm, Law Firm of Roel. Welcome, lawyer.

◆Hwang Geun-ju: Hello, I'm Hwang Geun-ju, a lawyer at LOEL Law Firm.

◇ Won-hwa Lee: It's already December. Time flies really fast, but there are a lot of year-end parties at the end of the year, but on the last day and January 1st, I'm with my family. I go on a lot of trips. I think this case, which we will talk about today, also starts with a situation where a family goes on a New Year's holiday, which seems to be nothing to envy.

◆Hwang Geun-ju: Yes, that's right. The family I'm going to talk about today was not a family to others' eyes. Mr. A, her husband, married Mr. B, who is four years his junior at the same university, after dating him and gave birth to a son in two years. Not long after his son was born, A went to Japan to study. Mr. A, who returned home after studying abroad for about four years, was appointed as a professor at his alma mater. At that time, A was recognized by the academic community at the age of thirty-five and young, and he was appointed as a professor of his alma mater immediately after studying abroad, and he even had a good family, so he was a family that others would not envy. However, on the morning of January 1, 2000, A's mother-in-law, B's mother, received a text from A saying that she was going on a foreign trip with her family with New Year's greetings.

◇ Won-hwa Lee: Did you just text me that you were in such a hurry and did you say it was 2000? Of course, it's not the time when smartphones were available, but that doesn't mean you can't reach them at all.

◆Hwang Geun-ju: It was before smartphones became popular as they are now, and it was difficult to contact people who traveled abroad often because they had to use expensive international calls to contact people abroad. Still, when it comes to a family trip for the New Year, I think I'll think about it for a week at the most. My mother-in-law didn't hear from me for two weeks. My mother-in-law, who thought it was strange, called the police, and the police went to A's house. There was no sign of being popular at home, so the police forcefully opened the door and went inside.

◇ Won-hwa Lee: Was there a person inside?

◆Hwang Geun-ju: Yes, he looked very horrible, but there were people. After opening the door, the police found the bodies of B and his son on the bedclothes in the master bedroom, badly burned.

◇ Lee Won-hwa: There were signs of someone being forced to break in, robbery, or resentment.Was there a situation where you doubted if you had it?

◆Hwang Geun-ju: The police used a scientific investigation team to conduct an on-site inspection. Even if I looked at the front door, veranda, and windows, I couldn't find any signs of external intrusion. There were no unusual features in the kitchen or living room, especially on the bedclothes in the master bedroom, and there were no signs of fire in other spaces. Although there were electric pads and stoves in the main room. It wasn't even visible as a fire caused by a short circuit. In the end, the police concluded that the fire was not caused by accident, but by a controlled fire, which was artificially set on a specific location and extinguished before the fire spread.

◇ Won-hwa Lee: What was the cause of death?

◆Hwang Geun-ju: The bodies of his wife, B, and his son were not found to have any special trauma. However, the face was damaged by the fire with a lot of swelling and protruding around the eyes. A swollen face or protruding eyes is a phenomenon that occurs when a dead body is decomposed due to strangulation. Based on this, the police confirmed that the cause of death of B and his son was strangled to death.

◇ Won-hwa Lee: No, but I don't have a husband.

◆Hwang Geun-ju: It's very strange that my wife and son were found in a horrible way, but I don't have a husband. The police also followed her husband's track record. It has been confirmed that the husband left for Japan on January 1st, returned home on January 4th, and then left for Japan again on January 11th. While the police were investigating her husband, they also found circumstantial evidence that her husband had a mistress, D.

◇ Won-hwa Lee: It's a very suspicious situation, but you had a mistress.

◆Hwang Geun-ju: But this mistress... Surprisingly, my wife also knew him. Ms. D, a mistress, was a junior at the same school as Mr. and Mrs. A. When D went to graduate school, she got to know her husband, A, who was a graduate assistant at the time, and D started studying abroad in Japan a year before her husband. So I think D helped her husband in various ways to settle down in his early days. Moreover, D and her husband's research fields are similar, so the husband went to Japan to study, and became rapidly close to D, and eventually led to an affair.

◇ Won-hwa Lee: Did your wife know about this?

◆Hwang Geun-ju: Even after my husband returned home, Mr. D stayed in Japan, so he frequently went back and forth to meet Mr. D. In the end, his wife, who was suspicious of this, was found to have an affair. Of course, the wife asked her husband to end her relationship with Mr. D. The husband avoided answering several times, and finally asked his wife to divorce him around May 1999.

◇ Lee Won-hwa: Our country does not accept that the person who provided the cause of the breakdown is seeking a divorce just because of the principle of liability. If you file a divorce claim, you will be dismissed, so if your wife doesn't accept the divorce, you can't actually divorce from A's point of view.

◆Hwang Geun-ju: Yes, that's right. From her point of view, how ridiculous was her husband asking for a divorce after a long period of extramarital affairs? For about seven months, from the time my husband demanded a divorce to the time this happened, the relationship continued to deteriorate. According to my husband's statement, there has been a fight since the day before the incident. The husband came home drunk the day before the incident and fought with his wife, and when she fell asleep, he drank alone. Then, when my wife woke up in the morning, we fought again. Perhaps he killed his wife by strangling her because he couldn't hold back his anger during the fight.

◇ Won-hwa Lee: But wasn't your son found dead at the crime scene? What happened to your son?

◆Hwang Geun-ju: The husband moved his deceased wife's body to a room and this time woke his son up and took him to a playground. After playing with my son until about 3 p.m., I put a plastic bag on his head and strangled him, saying, "Let's take a nap on him and use a plastic bag."

◇ Won-hwa Lee: That's terrible. This is the worst.

◆Hwang Geun-ju: I wonder if this is a human act. My husband's crime wasn't the end here. The husband sprayed cooking oil on the bodies of his wife and son and set them on fire. Maybe he was trying to destroy the evidence by burning the body. However, since cooking oil is not as volatile as gasoline due to its nature, the fire does not seem to spread. However, there is a story that my husband intentionally turned off the light because he thought that if the house caught fire, it would smell and smoke.

◇ Won-hwa Lee: I wonder if this is something that humans do. But why did Japan go back and forth in the meantime? Was this also part of the crime?

◆Hwang Geun-ju: My husband killed his wife and son, sent his mother-in-law a text message saying he would go on a New Year's holiday, and left Japan immediately on January 1, 20, the day after the crime. I will return to Korea and then leave for Japan again on January 4th. As it turned out later, it seems that he left for Japan on January 1st and informed his mistress D of the crime. Immediately after returning home, he rents 60 million won as collateral for his apartment. I gave this 60 million won to six students each, asked them to bring it to Japan on January 12th, and then moved back to Japan on January 4th. Listeners may have seen a sign in front of the security checkpoint asking you to report anyone who has more than US$10,000. Under the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act, each person can carry up to US$10,000 without reporting when leaving the country. Perhaps at that time, it would have been a little over 10 million won at the exchange rate. So it seems that 60 million won was divided into 6 people by 10 million won each. And the mistress also returns from Japan on January 5th, raises 70 million won, and prepares for a life on the run with her husband.

◇ Lee Won-hwa: It's funny that you thought about the foreign exchange transaction method and did it so carefully, and you know that you and your wife are a mistress. Whether you know it or not, it means that you killed a person in the end, and you should have let him turn himself in. I think it's a word used when people say that they play together to raise funds for escape.

◆Hwang Geun-ju: I can't understand it, but I have to say that I loved you that much. My husband and my mistress, who suddenly became fugitives, lived on the escape funds, but when the money ran out, they worked as restaurant workers and saved money again. With this money, I even opened a restaurant in Kokura, Fukuoka.

◇ Lee Won-hwa: But they haven't been caught by the police for quite some time since they've lived in Japan for so long. This is it.

◆Hwang Geun-ju: I don't think my husband and his mistress have been caught for nearly 10 years because they have lived in different personalities using fake IDs.

◇ Won-hwa Lee: Then how was it discovered in the end?

◆Hwang Geun-ju: In the end, the tail was caught. My husband and his mistress must have had a car accident while driving in Nagoya, Japan, around October 2008. When the Japanese police checked their ID and fingerprints, they were not registered properly. Upon checking, it was confirmed that he was wanted by Interpol for murder. Eventually, the two were forcibly repatriated to Korea on the 24th of the same month.

◇ Won-hwa Lee: The husband admitted to the crime.

◆Hwang Geun-ju: The husband admitted to killing his wife and son, setting his body on fire, and fleeing to Japan. The mistress also admitted all charges of helping her husband escape. In any case, the husband was arrested and charged with murder and corpse damage against his wife and son, and the mistress was charged with concealing the criminal and aiding and abetting the escape.

◇ Lee Won-hwa: What was the outcome of the trial?

◆Hwang Geun-ju: The husband was sentenced to life imprisonment, the mistress was sentenced to one year in prison, and two years of probation. And before he was caught, around March 2002, his wife's bereaved family filed a civil lawsuit claiming alimony against him. Although the trial was conducted without a husband, the court ruled that the husband should be paid 110 million won in alimony. It was unlikely to be executed because my husband was on the run abroad and we didn't know when he would be caught, but I think it was the family's desire to comfort the victim. The husband and his mistress have been on the run for nearly 10 years, but in the end, they were caught by external factors beyond their control and paid for their crimes, which I think is a must-have reason.

◇ Lee Won-hwa: Case X file. Today, we looked at the murder of a professor who brutally murdered his wife and child to continue his affair. You all deserve to be defended. Incident X file, thank you everyone.