He was on death row. Then they learned about his parents.

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He was on death row. Then they learned about his parents.

Published: 04 Aug. 2025, 07:00 Updated: 06 Oct. 2025, 23:35

CHO JUNG-WOO
[email protected]

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Lee Eun-seok, who murdered his parents, is escorted by police in this undated screen capture. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

[KOREAN CRIME FILES #3]

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.

“We found the body of your father,” a police officer told a man at an apartment building in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi, on May 24, 2000.

The 24-year-old son showed no signs of panic or distress. “My parents left for church three days ago, and I haven’t been able to reach them,” he said calmly. He had been planning to contact his older brother, he said, and report them missing to the police.

His reaction, however, made more sense once the truth emerged — that he was the one who had killed them.

What initially appeared to be a cold-blooded and inexplicable crime was cast in a different light when details emerged about his alleged motive: years of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of his parents. The brutality of the crime horrified many, but some saw Lee Eun-seok as a tragic figure — and even a scapegoat. The case prompted not only psychological analyses of his actions, but also wider conversations about family violence, trauma and the long-lasting effects of abuse in Korean society.

A trash bag containing the dismembered remains of Lee Eun-seok's parents is found in a park in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi, on May 24, 2000. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Two victims, 11 locations

He opened one of the plastic bags — only to find a human ankle. The weather had been clear and dry for several days, allowing the body part to remain relatively well-preserved.

The man called the police, who discovered a total of eight body parts: five belonging to a man and three from a woman. They initiated a wider search and eventually found fragments of both individuals in 11 different locations. Fingerprint analysis confirmed that the victims were a married couple: a 60-year-old man, surnamed Lee, and his 50-year-old wife, surnamed Hwang, who lived in an apartment near the park.

No missing person reports had been filed.

Police traced the address to the couple’s home, where they found the couple’s youngest son, Lee Eun-seok. Lee had been living with his parents after completing his mandatory military service. Although he had previously been enrolled at Korea University, he did not return to school after finishing his enlistment.

Lee Eun-seok demonstrates the homicide in an undated photo. [YONHAP]

Police brought Lee in for questioning. At first, he denied everything. “I don’t know,” he told them repeatedly.

But when a security guard from the neighborhood testified that he had seen Lee leaving the apartment carrying plastic trash bags, and police presented him with a hammer and saw bearing his parents’ blood, Lee confessed.

Spinning the narrative

Six days before the murder took place, Lee had quarreled with his mother, then locked himself in his room. His only sibling, an older brother, was living separately in Seoul at the time.

He emerged on May 21 around 3 a.m. He had a drink alone. He walked into his mother's bedroom and struck her head with a hammer while she was sleeping.

He sat next to her body in silence for four hours, staring into space. He entered the separate room where his father was sleeping and struck him three times in the head with the same hammer.

Then, Lee panicked. He took a saw and began dismembering the two bodies in the bathroom, wrapping each part in multiple layers of plastic bags. Some of the parts he placed in shopping bags and disposed of in trash bins at subway stations. He disposed of the other parts in places around the capital and Gwacheon, including a hotel dumpster in central Seoul's Myeong-dong. He scrubbed the entire apartment with detergent in an effort to hide the evidence.

Lee Eun-seok and his family [SCREEN CAPTURE]

But it wasn’t enough to fool forensic investigators. Bloodstains were discovered in the living room and bathroom. Lee's fingerprints were found on the trash bags used to discard his parents' remains.

When asked why he did it, Lee said he'd never thought of the victims as his “real parents,” and that they'd ever done was ignore and scold him.

“They made my life miserable, always insulting and belittling me, stripping away my will to live and destroying my sense of self,” he said.

Lee's father, a former naval officer, and his mother, a graduate of an elite university, had high expectations for their two sons. But Lee claimed that they'd subjected him to physical violence from a young age, beating him for not being able to tie his shoes in kindergarten and throwing chopsticks at him for not eating fast enough.

“My parents never celebrated my birthday. Not even once. They never visited me while I was in the military. I’ve never received any praise or recognition from them,” he said in an interview with Sisa Journal on June 8, 2000.

A screen capture of Lee Eun-seok’s journal notes on abuse [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Despite achieving strong academic results, including admission to the engineering department at Korea University, Lee claimed he'd only received cold stares and disappointment from his parents for failing to get into the top-ranked Seoul National University.

“I could understand my father hitting me or scolding me. But even after hitting me — if he had just said once, ‘I still love you,’ I could have been happy,” he told investigators.

A court is hooked

In the first trial, Lee was sentenced to death.

But Lee appealed, and his team got to work. His lawyers argued his parents' poor treatment had motivated the crime. On the stand, his older brother testified that he also had endured physical and verbal assault from their parents and said he “understood” his brother's act. Members of his former church submitted petitions to the court on his behalf, attesting to his suffering and pleading for mercy.

Lee Eun-seok speaks to reporters in an undated screen capture. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

“It wasn’t an act of revenge. I did it because I was scared. I wanted to erase what had happened and get out of the situation. I believed that if the bodies disappeared, the fear would go away,” Lee told Sisa Journal. “Even when I saw myself covered in blood, I didn’t feel afraid.”

Lee's death sentence was overturned on appeal. The court issued him life in prison instead, acknowledging that he'd committed the murders while in “an unstable mental state due to extreme anxiety, despair and a sense of victimization.”

Lee Eun-seok sits near a collection of evidence at a police station in an undated photo. [YONHAP]

Lee remains behind bars to this day. But more than two decades later, his story is still debated. Though the truth behind his motive, and the years that led up to it, may never be known for sure, it clearly resonated with large swathes of Korean society nonetheless: It's often retold in documentaries and on forums, and it often surfaces in discussions of child abuse and trauma.

“Children are not the property of their parents,” a viewer commented on a YouTube video about the case in 2021. “They are individuals with the right to be happy.”

BY CHO JUNG-WOO [[email protected]]