Korea is shivering as the details of one of the most gruesome murders this country has ever seen are coming out at both the horrifying details of the murder as well as the incompetence of the police who seemed to have had plenty of opportunities to prevent the tragedy.

On April 2, a woman in her 20's was kidnapped by a man in Suwon.  The kidnapper, a 42-year old Korean-Chinese named Oh Wonchun, took the woman back to his place and attempted but failed to rape her.  After several unsuccessful attempts due to his erectile dysfunction, he strangled her to death.

According to Oh, he then tried to fit her body into a bag but failed as the body was too big.  He then proceeded to chop the body into 280 pieces.  He was later arrested at his place by the police.

The gruesome nature of the murder aside, this murder is putting a spotlight on the inability of the police in effectively responding to the incident.

It seems as though the police could have easily prevented this gruesome murder from happening as the woman was able to make an emergency call to report her location and her situation while her kidnapper was in the bathroom using her mobile phone.

The call to the emergency center lasted for over 7 minutes, during one minute of which she was able to provide fairly accurate description of where she was being held.  The rest of the phone call was filled with her scream and the sound of duct tape being torn as Oh used the tape to bind his victim.

The police, despite having relatively accurate location of the victim analyzed from the information provided by the victim during the emergency call, used bad judgment to the cost of a young woman's life.

It turns out that the police came within 30 ft of where the victim was being held but never made the effort to do a house-to-house search because they felt it was too early in the morning.  (it was around 3 am)

The publicized script of the recording made of the emergency phone call also sheds light on the 'cavalier' attitude with which the call was dealt with.  After the victim became unable to speak to the operator due to Oh returning and beginning to attempt to rape her, there were sounds of struggles, scream and the noise of duct tape being torn to which the operator is heard speaking to another operator that it must be just a trouble between married couple.

In any society, there are bad people who commit crimes.  The only hope we have is that our police force is smart and committed enough to be able to effectively prevent and respond to the crimes.  In this case, the victim seemed to have had no such help.

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