The hunt for a serial killer: 'Korea's Ted Bundy' a rare combo of charm and pure evil

Kang Ho-sun, dubbed 'Korea's Ted Bundy,' murdered eight women from 2006 to 2009, using charm to lure them. He was captured and sentenced to death in 2009, but remains alive due to a moratorium on executions.

Kang Ho-sun stares at a camera during excavation work in February 2009. [YONHAP]

[KOREAN CRIME FILES #8] Behind the glitz and glamour seen in pop culture, Korea’s grimmest and most harrowing crime stories, some more well-known than others, continue to haunt society today. The Korea JoongAng Daily takes a deep dive into some of these stories, sharing a glimpse into the darker side of society as well as the most up-to-date known facts. — Ed.

On a humdrum morning in September 2006, a black SUV pulled up in front of Yun, a 23-year-old public servant waiting for her bus at an empty bus stop in Jeongseon County, Gangwon.

The SUV’s window slid down. A handsome driver offered Yun a ride to her workplace.

As if bewitched, Yun hopped into the total stranger's car, believing the offer was a gesture of kindness.

However, she never turned up for work at the Jeongseon County Office.

After Yun vanished into thin air, her family began a wild search for her for the next three years, waiting for any updates from the police.

In 2009, Yun's bones were found beneath a cliff in Yeongwol County, Gangwon.

The man revealed to be behind Yun’s death was 38-year-old animal farmer Kang Ho-sun, who has been called Korea's Ted Bundy — a notorious American serial killer who confessed to at least 30 murders and allegedly killed more than a hundred people.

Next target

Kang Ho-sun, right, re-enacts a scene of murdering a female college student in his car in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi, on Jan. 27, 2009. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]

In December 2006, about three months after Yun disappeared, Kang was onto his next target, using his clean-cut appearance to his advantage.

A 45-year-old karaoke hostess went out with Kang after he asked for a second round of drinking. As Yun did, the hostess also stepped into his car — not knowing it was a death trap.

Kang had sex with her and then strangled her with a necktie. He then buried her body next to a road in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi. He remained unfazed.

Ten days later, on Christmas Eve, he targeted a 36-year-old karaoke hostess. While he used the same scheme on her, there was a minor difference — he used a pair of stockings to strangle the victim this time.

The intervals between subsequent murders became shorter and shorter.

Three more murders happened in the four days between Jan. 3 and Jan. 7, 2007. The victims were a 52-year-old office worker, Park, a 37-year-old Karaoke hostess, Kim, and a 20-year-old college student. All of them boarded his car and were strangled to death.

Kang Ho-sun confesses to the murder of a 23-year-old Jeongseon County Office worker while under interrogation in February 2009, in footage aired by SBS. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Then, he paused his killings.

He resumed his murders in November 2008. He ditched his old SUV — a vehicle used to lure at least six previous victims — and began his hunting with a new black Equus sedan.

A 48-year-old homemaker, Kim, became his seventh victim. The following month, another 21-year-old college student became the eighth. Their bodies, discovered in January 2009, were missing all of their fingers, which had been severed by pruning shears. Kang cut them off in fear that their fingernails might have scratched his flesh when they resisted Kang's violence.

Repeated pattern

A bus stop where Kang Ho-sun kidnapped a housewife in Suwon, Gyeonggi, in 2008. [JOONGANG ILBO]

Kang developed his own crime pattern: women, bus stops or karaoke, and strangling.

He was cunning enough to read women’s thoughts — especially on how they would react when approached by an unknown man. He knew how to bend their wariness and win their trust.

At bus stops, he lowered the driver and passenger-side windows, allowing victims to glance into his car. He also displayed a photo of himself with a dog on the dashboard — a move to project an image of a dog-loving man.

Whenever the victims hesitated to board his car, he smiled and asked, “Do I look like a bad person?”

The map shows where Kang Ho-sun kidnapped eight random victims and abandoned their bodies. [YUN YOUNG]

Once the women stepped inside his car, Kang showed his true face.

Of the five victims killed between December 2006 and January 2007, four were either raped or had sexual encounters with him before their deaths.

All eight unacquainted victims died of suffocation. Later, they were buried. Kang used his pickaxe for the burials. Yet, the blood stains of two unidentified women on the pickaxe did not match the DNA from the eight women he murdered.

Kang once reportedly said that every woman he saw was “money left on the street.”

Even after eight murders of random women, his audacity continued. He put a wig on his head and a condom on his finger to prevent identification when withdrawing money from an ATM using his victims’ credit cards.

But his freedom did not last long. He appeared on the police’s radar on Jan. 22, 2009, after police learned that a surveillance camera had spotted the 21-year-old victim in his Equus.

Kang Ho-sun wears a condom on his finger to prevent him from leaving fingerprints while using an automatic teller machine to withdraw cash using the victim's credit card in footage aired by cable broadcaster Channel A. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Two days later, Kang’s two cars — the black SUV and Equus — were discovered burned. Police suspected him of tampering with evidence and arrested him.

Kang was shameless. He asked the police, “Do you have evidence that the man in the footage is me?”

However, the next day, on Jan. 25, he admitted that he had killed the 21-year-old undergraduate student.

A series of murder confessions followed. The eighth and final confession to the murder of the 23-year-old Jeongseon County Office worker came in February.

Behind the handsome face

Kang Ho-sun in an undated file photo [JOONGANG ILBO]

Kang lived a dual life. While he maintained the image of a decent gentleman to his neighbors, his friends remembered him as a man obsessed with women.

The revelation that he was a serial killer shocked his town and neighbors. In 2009, a neighbor told public broadcaster KBS that Kang was a “polite and well-behaved man with a clean-cut appearance,” adding that he was a “likable character.”

Yet, his close acquaintances recalled that he frequently asked to be introduced to wealthy women, such as widows or landlords in the countryside. Han, who had known Kang since 2004, told KBS that “all Kang ever talked about was women.” Han said that Kang’s appearance was a “disguise.”

Criminal profiler Kwon Il-yong, who interviewed Kang throughout the investigation, said he bragged about his ability to charm women. “Kang claimed that he is ‘capable of seducing any woman within 10 minutes,’” Kwon said in a crime documentary aired by Channel A in 2022.

While Kang murdered eight random women, those killings were not his first.

An image shows the burned home of Kang Ho-sun's mother-in-law. The Ansan Branch Prosecutors’ Office said Kang set fire to the home to kill his wife and his mother-in-law. [JOONGANG ILBO]

In 2005, Kang set the home of his mother-in-law on fire. He escaped with his son.

But the fire killed his fourth wife — he had three divorces before his fourth marriage — and his mother-in-law. He later received 480 million won (approx. $344,270) from his wife’s insurance policies.

Kang also ran a dog farm with tens of Siberian Huskies from November 2003 to February 2006. He rarely fed the dogs, leaving them to die in the cold during winter. He even brutally killed dogs by strangling them with a noose or electrocuting them.

The dog from the picture on his car’s dashboard was killed and later eaten by Kang, according to criminal profiler Bae Sang-hoon, who handled Kang’s case.

Kang Ho-sun, left, poses for a photo with a Siberian Husky in an undated file photo. It was alleged that he killed the dog after taking the photo. [YONHAP]

The Suwon District Court said Kang's cruel behavior toward animals made him lose respect for human lives.

“Because I had killed so many dogs, killing a human felt like nothing at all,” Kang reportedly told investigators.

A singular killer

Burned SUV and sedan vehicles, owned by Kang Ho-sun, are seen abandoned in Ansan, Gyeonggi, in February 2009. [YONHAP]

Nearly three months after his arrest, Kang was sentenced to death by the Suwon District Court in April 2009. Despite his appeal, the Seoul High Court upheld the death penalty in July of the same year.

Kang became the 60th person on death row. However, he remains alive today because Korea has not executed anyone since 1997.

In the aftermath of Kang’s serial homicide, CCTVs were rapidly installed nationwide.

Song Kang-ho, then-head of the investigation bureau at the National Police Agency, said that the budget for CCTV installations would be primarily allocated to the southwestern part of Gyeonggi, Kang's primary hunting ground.

Song noted that CCTVs played a “crucial role” in catching Kang, adding that the cameras would be installed in vulnerable areas.

Forensic authorities search for remains of 45-year-old karaoke hostess in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi in January 2009. [JOONGANG ILBO]

After Yun went missing on her commute to the county office, her older brother hung up missing posters in downtown Jeongseon to search for his sister.

He later took the police qualification exams four times and became a police officer in 2010.

He told the local newspaper Chosun Ilbo in 2010, “I want to say this to him: 'You killed my innocent sister, who never knew you, but I have become a police officer, and now I protect your family.'”

BY LEE SOO-JUNG [lee.soojung1@joongang.co.kr]