Police: Students Death Was Sex Crime
An ethnic Korean woman who died just before starting school after being admitted into a prestigious university, was killed by a sexual harasser, police said.
Because the offender was a criminal who committed the murder during probation for rape and violence, a hot debate on soft punishments for sexual harassment offenders is expected to flare up.
Seoul Seodaemun Police applied for an arrest warrant for Hwang (aged 42, unemployed) yesterday, who killed and then sexually assaulted Kang Dan-cheong (aged 21) who lived at a one-room flat at a boardinghouse, for theft and murder suspicions.
According to the police, Hwang is suspected to have gone to Kangs home in Changcheon-dong at Seodaemun-gu around 9:50 p.m. on February 15, hit Kangs face several times, and then killed her by strangling her to death using both hands before sexually assaulting her.
Hwang was able to enter Kangs home because the boarding houses door is always open and Kang herself leaves her door unlocked.
Police said, Kang begged Hwang to not kill her, even offering money for her life. Hwang then ran off after stealing three bank cash cards and 30,000 won in cash.
Police investigation work showed that Hwang was arrested for rape and violence allegations in March last year and was released after receiving a sentence in July that same year of one year and six months of imprisonment and two years probation. He tried to rape a woman in her twenties last December at an alleyway in front of a university in Mapo-gu in Seoul, but his attempt failed.
Kang is from Jirin in China and came over to Korea in January last year in order to find a job in a Korean company. She studied Korean for about a year at the Korean Language Institute in Yonsei University and was admitted into the business department in Yonsei last August as a foreign applicant.
Kang was attending freshman orientation, which she had dreamt of so much, before she was killed. Park Yeong-bun (aged 47), Kangs mother, tearfully said, I wanted to raise my daughter as a capable woman in both Korea and China.
Kangs family said, Stricter monitoring is needed for sexual criminals, and added, I hope more attention and care is given to areas around schools and boarding houses such as installing Closed Circuit TV (CCTV) around school areas.
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