The film is based on the Hwaseong serial murders that took place in South Korea between 1986 and 1991, in which a total of 10 women were victimized and one survived.
The police invested a great deal of effort but found nothing. After 1991, this horrific case came to an abrupt end, and the Hwaseong serial rape and murder case became an unsolved case.
In 2003, the film ends with a poignant scene of the original crime, where an agent from that year passed by the scene of the crime.
In reality, the last case of the Hwaseong serial killings exceeded the 15-year legal recourse period in 2006.
In September 2019, South Korean police reopened the investigation after DNA found the suspect, Lee Chun-jae, who had been serving a prison sentence since 1994 for the rape and murder of his sister-in-law, and who subsequently confessed to committing 10 of the Hwaseong serial murders, plus five other rapes and murders and 30 rapes or attempted rapes.
This was more than 30 years after the first case of the Hwaseong serial killings.
Unfortunately, Lee Chun-jae’s crimes are beyond the statute of limitations.
2003 / South Korea / Drama Action Suspense Thriller Crime / Bong Joon-ho / Song Kang-ho Kim Sang-kyung
In 1986, Hwaseong-gun, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, in the heat of the summer, a woman’s body is found by the side of a field, long since stinking.
Small-town police Detective Park (Song Kang-ho) and Detective So (Kim Sang-kyung) from Seoul take over the case, and the only thing that can be confirmed is that the body was raped before she was born.
The lack of clues is so severe that the inexperienced Detective Park and his partner Detective Cho (Kim Ro-ha) rely on brutal confessions and sixth sense to deduce the truth, and they bring the suspect to his knees a few times.
While Detective So is objective and calm, analyzing the case rationally and eliminating suspicions several times, the police are in constant conflict to prove and disprove the case, yet innocent women are still being brutally murdered one after another, so they have to come to an agreement to work together.
At this point, a young man (Park Hae-il), who fits the description of the crime, becomes the biggest suspect, and the police lock him up with their nerves, while the DNA test report is sent to the United States, but the case doesn’t stop here.
