Kim Geun-sik, Suspect in 16-Year-Old Molestation Cold Case, Re-Arrested Just 6 Hours Before Release
The perpetrator of the 16-year-old cold case involving the molestation of an 8-year-old girl was identified as Kim Geun-sik, just six hours before his scheduled release. DNA analysis pointed to him as the culprit, finally closing the long-unsolved case. On September 18, 2006, an 8-year-old girl returning home from an academy in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, was lured to a hillside, threatened with a weapon, and molested. Although investigators secured the perpetrator's DNA from the scene, they were unable to identify him, and the case remained unsolved for years.
Kim Geun-sik had a prior record: in 2000, he was sentenced to five years and six months in prison for sexually assaulting a minor in Yongsan-gu, Seoul. Released on May 8, 2006, he resumed offending within about two weeks. In less than four months, until his arrest that September, he sexually assaulted 12 schoolgirls aged 9 to 17 in Incheon and Gyeonggi Province. He approached students walking to or from school alone, posing as an acquaintance of school staff or a church visitor. After asking them to help move luggage into a van, he drove them to secluded areas and committed the assaults.
As the investigation closed in, he fled to the Philippines using his brother's passport, but failed to settle there and returned to Korea. He continued committing crimes, and after police issued a public wanted notice, he turned himself in. The court sentenced Kim to 15 years in prison. During his imprisonment, he assaulted fellow inmates and received additional prison time, pushing his release date from the originally set 2021 to October 2022.
Just three days before his release, a new sex crime report was filed. A woman reported that Kim had molested her in Incheon 16 years earlier. Given the specificity of the victim's statement and Kim's record of fleeing to the Philippines, the court issued an arrest warrant, and Kim found himself under investigation in custody once again.
No wrongdoing was confirmed in the reported Incheon case. However, while re-examining cold cases, investigators uncovered a link between Kim and the 2006 molestation of the 8-year-old girl in Paju. Prosecutors confirmed that the DNA of the unidentified man secured at the time matched Kim's DNA, and based on the analysis results, pressed him until he confessed to the crime. Kim was additionally indicted on these charges as well as for assaulting inmates and prison guards, and the Supreme Court finalized a five-year prison sentence.
Prosecutors sought an order for pharmacological treatment to suppress sexual urges — so-called "chemical castration" — but the court declined. The psychiatrist overseeing his treatment opined that he posed a risk of reoffending and that drug treatment could help, but the court considered the fact that he had caused no sexual problems in prison and the possibility that his paraphilia might ease with age.
Kim is due for release upon completion of his sentence in 2027. The city of Paju has stated its opposition to Kim entering a facility in Wollong-myeon, Paju, Gyeonggi Province, after his release.
