What is the truth behind the relationship-breaking murder case?
SBS' 'I Want to Know That' (hereinafter referred to as 'G-R'), which aired on the 27th, tracked the murder case of a high school girl breaking school with the subtitle 'Murder after breaking school – a high school girl's last message.'
In July of last year, a call came to the Daejeon 112 reporting center at around 1:20 p.m. A 17-year-old student who identified himself as a high school senior asked if he would receive 5 years in prison for murder, what would happen next if he killed someone, and if his sentence would be reduced if he confessed.
The police found this strange and asked where the student was, and the student told them not to come find him, saying it was a prank call. Eventually, the police found out where the reporter was through location tracking and, after some persuasion, went to the place he was leading to.
Ms. Park took the police to a family home in an apartment. At the place he pointed to, a woman was found lying between a desk and a bed, covered with a blanket. Police performed CPR on the woman, who appeared to be dead. However, when the paramedic arrived 7 minutes later and examined the woman's condition, she was shocked to see that she had already progressed to cardiac arrest and rigor mortis.
The woman who died was Lee Yeo-reum, a classmate at the same school as Ms. Park. It was revealed that he had been suffocated by Ms. Park.
Accordingly, Ms. Park claimed that her best friend, Ms. Yeoreum, had announced that she would break off relations with her, so she came to see Ms. Yeoreum to talk about it, and in the process, an argument broke out, leading to an accidental murder.
After being sentenced to 15 years in prison and 7 years in prison in the first trial, Ms. Park filed an appeal faster than the prosecution, claiming that the sentence was excessive. He claimed that his crime was accidental and submitted a statement of remorse to the court and even sent a letter to the bereaved family. However, the bereaved family said they could not tell whether the letter he sent was an apology or a threat. That's also true, the letter Ms. Park sent contained contents to the effect, “If you want me to die, I will die.”
Summer's mother, who met Ms. Park at the scene of the incident, could not hide her shock. Ms. Park was the person whom Ms. Yang's mother reported as a perpetrator of school violence a year ago summer. After getting to know Miss Park, Summer returned home late and became sensitive. In the end, Ms. Summer wrote contents in her diary that were almost like a will. And this was because of Ms. Park.
In response, Summer's mother reported this to the school. Then Miss Park said to Yeoreum's mother, “I told you that what you're doing now is meaningless. If you do it here, you're crossing the line. What you're doing is too foolish, and if you do any more, I'll report you for defamation. What you want is for Yeoreum and me to stay together. He sent a message that was close to a threat, saying, “If you want to meet, I’ll do it. I don’t care if you meet or not.”
Yeoreum's parents, who believed that Ms. Park was a dangerous person, did not withdraw their report. The meeting did not end at the school violence committee but continued to the Office of Education School Violence Review Committee. However, the punishment given to Ms. Park was the lowest, No. 1, limited to a written apology.
Ms. Park was finally able to split the class due to protests from her parents in the summer. Summer's parents tried to block the attacker's access as much as possible by changing Summer's cell phone number and having her leave school early as an art student. However, Ms. Park came to Ms. Yeoreum's house a year later and committed murder.
Rather than reflecting and regretting the murder, the bereaved family called 112 to confirm their sentence, reset their cell phones, and even abandoned Yeoreum's cell phone, destroying evidence, making it absolutely accidental. He said it couldn't be a crime.
At first, Ms. Park said she did not know where Yeoreum's cell phone was, but when questioned with other evidence, she testified that she threw it into the underpass. And Yeoreum's cell phone, found in the underpass, was damaged beyond repair.
Ms. Park not only submitted an appeal, but when the bereaved family did not agree to the agreement, she unilaterally placed a criminal deposit of 100 million won in court and submitted several written statements of remorse.
Summer's parents believe that their daughter's death was a premeditated murder that occurred after Ms. Park's one-sided bullying. They complained that evidence of a premeditated crime was not being handled properly simply because Ms. Park was young.
Ms. Park claimed that Ms. Yeoreum opened the door herself. However, the police said that there was a record of the door lock password written down in the notebook taken to the scene of the incident, which was written down as requested by Ms. Park.
However, Ms. Park claimed that she never personally entered the door lock password and that she reported it to 112 and reported it to the police after seeing a photo of the password written on her cell phone. When asked how photos could remain on a cell phone that was reset immediately after reporting, Ms. Park responded indirectly, saying it seemed to be an error.
However, the court had no choice but to accept the defendant's claim because there was no evidence that Ms. Park opened the door herself.
And Ms. Park claimed that she did rescue work by performing CPR after killing Ms. Yeoreum. However, in reality, after killing Ms. Yeoreum, Ms. Park acted incomprehensibly, such as pretending to be Ms. Yeoreum and exchanging messages with Ms. Yeoreum's older sister.
And on Ms. Summer's tablet PC, there were still traces of attempts to unlock the password up to eight times for free. After that, she gave up and appeared calm as she just took her cell phone and went up to the rooftop.
Ms. Park said she gave up trying to commit suicide. Regarding the reason, he said, “I thought suicide was irresponsible and I thought I should be punished.” But after his murder, Park wiped his own phone and abandoned the victim's phone.
Ms. Park complained to her friends in the online community that she felt unfair about the school violence, saying that she comforted and took care of Ms. Yeoreum, who was having a hard time psychologically. He also personally took Summer to a psychiatrist to resolve her concerns that she could not share with her parents. He said that he was only trying to correct Summer's depression and bad habits, but the relationship between the two worsened due to the adults' misunderstanding. insisted. And she added that her violence against Miss Summer was due to Miss Summer's own request to beat her until she came to her senses.
In addition, Ms. Park's father and defense attorney claimed, “The victim and her daughter are best friends,” and “No one but the two of them can know. If the bereaved families know what the relationship between the two friends is, it cannot be considered a premeditated murder.”
Ms. Park's lawyer added, “The two are now minors and there are comments that can be justified in a romantic relationship. The defendant also knows that things have gotten worse. He never intentionally went to kill them.” He also said that the reason he became a perpetrator in the school violence committee was because of a one-sided misunderstanding between Yeoreum's parents, and that the fight on the day of the incident was caused by the shock of Yeoreum having a boyfriend.
Ms. Yeoreum's friends said that they had never heard of Ms. Yeoreum being depressed or going to a psychiatric clinic until she became close with Ms. Park, and that she said that she was having a hard time in the latter part of her second year of high school, crying and blaming herself all the time. And this was because of Ms. Park.
Also, his friends said that Ms. Park tried to block and control everything about Ms. Yeoreum. One day, he saw that Yeoreum was in contact with someone else and even threatened to kill her.
And at one point, Yeoreum said that she had been beaten by Ms. Park, and she acted as if it was natural, like someone who had been gaslighted.
So what was the actual relationship between Yeoreum and Park? Yeoreum's tablet PC, on which Ms. Park attempted to unlock the password, contained hidden within it the relationship between the two that Ms. Park had hidden.
In the conversation between the two, Ms. Park's one-sided obsession was revealed. If I didn't reply right away or answer the phone right away, I would get angry and that would happen again and again. And Summer always apologized.
And in the notice of the two people's chat room, there was a list of things that Yeoreum should follow: “Answer quickly and quickly, contact me quickly, do not act on my emotions, answer the phone well. Think and act, contact me when you wake up in the morning, contact me before going to bed.” Rules that cannot be found in normal friendships have emerged, such as:
Ms. Park also demanded an expensive gift from Ms. Yeoreum. Accordingly, Yeoreum, who only had pocket money, worked part-time without her parents' knowledge, and while Yeoreum worked part-time, Park waited for him, killing time without doing anything in particular.
And Ms. Park held a grudge against Yeoreum's parents' report of school violence and demanded an apology from Yeoreum.
The broadcast analyzed four months worth of messages exchanged between the two people. There were 20,000 words in 1,700 conversations, of which the two words “die” and “suicide” came out in about 100 of them. And these are all words spoken by the perpetrator, Ms. Park, and more than half of them were used in the sense of urging the other person to die.
The expert analyzed, “Criticism of the victim, threats, anger toward the victim, etc. are used as strategies to induce guilt in the victim. Ultimately, the pattern of the defendant getting what he wants is being repeated for quite a long time.” .
He also said that the biggest problem of perpetrators is that they do not know how to control their emotions. “If they feel even the slightest discomfort, they have to pass it on to the victim in order to feel at ease. And if they have good feelings, they show it all to the victim and brag about it.” He added, “He is someone who doesn't know how to calm himself down and only needs applause to calm himself down, so the victim would have been very necessary to Ms. Park.”
Ms. Park said that the reason she killed Ms. Yeoreum was because of Ms. Yeoreum's declaration of breaking off relations, but it was Ms. Park who actually mentioned breaking off relations. And Ms. Summer accepted Ms. Park's declaration of breaking off relations 15 days before the incident.
Behind this decision was Summer's boyfriend. Looking at the relationship between Yeoreum and Park, he said, “You are not strange, she is strange, so you don't have to do that.” As a result, Summer began to realize that she was wrong.
Six days before Ms. Summer's death, Ms. Park sent a one-sided message bordering on a death threat after being cut off from contact. He threatened, “It's all because of you. I want you to die. I'll kill you when you go to college. I'll really kill you. Even if you change schools, they'll find out and just live well. Because I'll kill you and kill you.”
In response, the expert said, “The victim's acceptance of breaking off relationships must have been the button. You must have dared to feel this way,” and analyzed, “To the perpetrator, the victim is an essential tool to safely graduate from high school, and is nothing more or less than that.”
The conversation between the two would never have been revealed to the world if Summer had not changed her password three days before her death. Experts and the production team said that their conversation was abnormal enough to cause mental stress just by reading it. No one would not become depressed if they heard negative words every day.
After hearing that Yeoreum had a boyfriend, her friend Park told her friend Kim that she was going to kill Yeoreum when she went to college. He then asked if he would still remain his friend even if he killed someone.
The informant who found out about their conversation tried to calm Ms. Park down, but Ms. Park refused to listen to anything, saying, “Don't say anything strange because I'm going to kill Lee Yeol-eum.”
A criminal psychologist who watched their conversation said, “The question of whether I can be a friend even if I commit murder shows that I not only thought about the murder, but also thought about the impact it would have if I actually carried out the murder, so it suggests that the crime was planned. This is an important point in “Even if we admit everything as the perpetrator claims, the fact that he committed murder afterwards can be seen as proving that there was an intention and plan for the murder, saying that if the victim does not respond as I want, I will kill him.” did.
Also, “If it was an accidental murder, the victim should have recovered when CPR was performed as he said. The perpetrator's statement further disproves that the act of strangling with hands, an act equivalent to death by death, continued for a very long time. “There is,” he said.
And considering that the defendant, who was only a minor and a high school student, meticulously destroyed evidence and continued to make several attempts to get a reduced sentence during the trial, people wondered if this was possible after an accidental murder.
And the informants said that even before meeting the victim, Ms. Park had other friends who showed obsession with her. “He liked another girl. He continued to pursue her regardless of her will. Even when she expressed her refusal, he unilaterally contacted her and became obsessed with her.” Additionally, an informant who was close to Ms. Park said, “She said a lot of depressing things over the phone or through messages. I thought it was right to listen, so I listened, and at some point, I felt like I had become an emotional trash can.”
The expert pointed out that the problem was the way she related to others rather than the murder itself. He also cautioned against the possibility of repeat offenses, saying that similar victims and similar situations are likely to lead to similar behavior.
In particular, in the case of juvenile offenders, parole review can be applied to one-third of the short-term terms. In the case of Ms. Park, even if the long-term sentence of 15 years in the first trial and the short-term sentence of 7 years are maintained in the second trial, she will be released after undergoing parole review before she turns 21. Therefore, a device to prevent recidivism is absolutely necessary.
The expert explained, “I'm not asking you to confirm whether there is a possibility of reoffending, but just confirming that there is no real possibility of reoffending. The bereaved family will be convinced only if you show that there is truly no possibility of reoffending.”
In court, Ms. Park blamed everything on the victim. Accordingly, Ms. Yeoreum's parents also said that they did not get any feeling that Ms. Park was showing any remorse.
And Summer's parents said, “I am worried that as the deposit increases, it will affect the sentence in the trial. And I hope that probation will be implemented.”
Yeoreum's father, who can do nothing for his daughter other than watch, said that the reason he attends the trial despite having to face faces he never wants to see for the rest of his life is because he regrets not being able to bring closure to the school violence committee.
The minutes of the school violence committee meeting, obtained through the bereaved family's request for information disclosure, contained details of the incident from the perspective of Ms. Park, the perpetrator. Also, the basic problem was that there was a lack of understanding of the relationship between the two people.
If you know the concept of gaslighting, you would not know what kind of relationship the victim has with the perpetrator. And the members of the school violence committee completely believed Ms. Park's story, which explained that the expensive gift was Yeoreum's voluntary gift, that the assault was just a slap, and that it was only to comfort Yeoreum, who was having a hard time due to a conflict with her mother.
In response, the expert said, “The school violence committee's decision must have been interpreted in a completely different way to Ms. Park. It was the school violence committee that gave this person the sense of power that she can control the world of adults as she wants. So now she's even more proud. That's why. “It made me think, ‘How dare you do that to me?’ And I thought it would be enough to destroy things like that, so I killed him and casually sent a text message to the victim.”
Even in her apology, Ms. Park did not reflect on her crime and only prioritized her own position. Accordingly, the expert warned, “There is a need to carefully consider the possibility of retaliation against the victim’s family.”
Lastly, the broadcast raised its voice saying that if Ms. Park really regrets and regrets the incident of that day, she should start by honestly telling the truth of that day instead of glorifying her obsession with the victim as friendship or love.
Otherwise, regardless of the law's decision on whether she is a juvenile or an adult, the same misfortune will continue to repeat itself in Ms. Park's life, and as a result, another Ms. Summer may be born, he warned.
(SBS Entertainment News Editor Kim Hyo-jeong)
