The Doctored Confession Statement Hidden in 11 Hours of Interrogation Footage

The confession statement (a document in which police record a suspect's words) in the 2009 cyanide-laced makgeolli murder case in Suncheon, South Jeolla Province, was doctored. Park Jun-young, a lawyer specializing in retrials, reached this conclusion after reviewing roughly 11 hours of interrogation footage contained in the case files.

In July 2009, four residents of a village in Suncheon, South Jeolla Province, shared makgeolli, and two of them died. Cyanide was detected in the rice wine. The court found that the daughter and husband of the deceased woman had carried out the crime out of resentment after their 15-year sexual relationship was discovered. The reason was that both the woman and her father had allegedly confessed. As a result, the daughter was sentenced to 20 years in prison and the father to life imprisonment, and they have been serving their terms for 14 years. In a CBS radio interview, it was revealed that the two have maintained their innocence and petitioned for a retrial while in prison.

The case was featured three times on the TV program That's What I Want to Know, with writer Seo Hyung conducting in-depth reporting. Lawyer Park Jun-young said that although the case had been the subject of broadcasts and reporting, he had harbored no particular doubts about it — until, while reviewing the prosecution's case files, he examined the roughly 11 hours of interrogation footage and concluded, based on it, that the confession statement had been fabricated.

According to Park, the father in the interrogation footage never admitted to the murder, and when the prosecutor pressed him, he merely responded, "Yes… yes…" Park also pointed out that the fact that the father — who struggled to answer even 'yes' or 'no' — wrote a handwritten statement himself further undermines the statement's credibility. He added that the handwriting in the statement was so crooked that it raised the question of whether it could have been written by someone unable to write even 'yes' or 'no'.

Two handwritten statements were confirmed, dated August 25 and September 5, 2009, while the father was arrested on August 26. The statement written on the day of his arrest contains the sentence, "If my daughter admitted it, then I admit it too, I admit it." It has also been pointed out that testimony from people around the pair that would have been favorable to them was deliberately omitted from submission.

The first hearing to determine whether a retrial will be granted was held last Tuesday. Lawyer Park Jun-young said he intends to prove the extent to which the confession statement was doctored.