Serial killer revealed after years of agony

Police identified South Korea's worst killer yesterday and said he murdered 15 women.

And officers apologized for a botched investigation that saw an innocent man jailed for 20 years.

Lee Chun Jae, 57, raped and murdered 10 females aged from 14 to 71 in Hwaseong over five years from 1986.

A huge number of police officers hunted the killer, investigating 21,000 individuals.

The case inspired South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon Ho's 2003 hit Memories of Murder.

Lee was named as a suspect last year after new techniques to retrieve DNA from long-past crimes were used.

He admitted all 10 Hwaseong murders and four others, including an eight-year-old girl. He also raped nine other women.

Lee is serving a life term for raping and murdering his sister-in-law in 1994 and will not be prosecuted for other crimes as the statute of limitations has expired.

The innocent man convicted in 1989 of raping and killing a teenage girl among the Hwaseong victims was paroled in 2009 after 20 years in prison. Named Yoon, he was abused physically and forced into a false confession. Eight police officers and prosecutors involved were charged with abuse of power and illegal detention.

And at least four individuals took their own lives in the 1990s after being investigated as murder suspects.

Provincial police chief Bae Yong Ju publicly apologized for the botched, decades-long investigation.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE