Oct. 17, 2022, was the day serial child rapist Kim Keun-sik, then 54, was scheduled to walk out of prison after completing his full sentence. He never made it through the gate. Three days before his release, prosecutors received a report alleging a sex crime committed 16 years earlier, and he was taken back into custody.
The reported case ultimately produced no confirmed charges. But the reinvestigation it triggered led somewhere unexpected: Kim was identified as the man behind the indecent assault of an 8-year-old girl, a case that had gone unsolved for 16 years. Combined with assault charges stemming from his conduct behind bars, the findings added five more years to his sentence.
Reoffended Within Two Weeks of Release, Raping 12 Schoolgirls in Four Months
Kim was first punished for a sex crime in 2000, serving five years and six months for raping a minor at an elementary school in Seoul's Yongsan District.
After completing that term and leaving prison on May 8, 2006, he began offending again within roughly two weeks. In the span of less than four months, until police arrested him that September, he raped 12 schoolgirls aged 9 to 17 while moving between Incheon and Gyeonggi Province.
Kim targeted girls walking to and from school alone. He disarmed them by claiming he knew school staff or that he had come to attend church, then lured them into his van by asking for help "moving heavy luggage in the car." He drove them to secluded areas and assaulted them there. Investigators concluded at the time that Kim, hampered by sexual insecurities that made normal relations with adult women difficult, had turned to children as targets.
As the police net tightened, Kim fled to the Philippines using a passport issued in his younger brother's name. He failed to settle there and returned home, but did not stop offending. Drifting between cheap inns, he eventually turned himself in after authorities issued a public wanted notice.
The court sentenced him to 15 years in prison. Judges gave some weight to his surrender but found little prospect of rehabilitation, citing the severity of harm to the victims and the fact that he had repeated the same crime despite having already served time for rape. Assaults on fellow inmates while incarcerated extended his term further, pushing his scheduled release from 2021 to October 2022.
A Report Three Days Before Release, and Custody at the Prison Gate
On Oct. 14, 2022, three days before Kim was due to complete his sentence, prosecutors named him as a suspect in an indecent assault of a child that had occurred in Incheon years earlier. The victim had reported the case in December 2020.
Citing the specificity of the victim's account and Kim's history of fleeing to the Philippines, the court issued an arrest warrant. Kim, on the verge of release, was returned to custody and placed under investigation.
To determine whether he had committed further offenses, prosecutors conducted a full review of unsolved sex crimes across Incheon and Gyeonggi Province. The original Incheon report yielded no confirmed charges against him. But in reexamining cold cases, investigators found a link between Kim and the indecent assault of an 8-year-old girl in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, on Sept. 18, 2006.
The 8-year-old had been walking home from a cram school when a man lured her to a wooded hillside. He threatened her with a weapon and sexually assaulted her. Investigators recovered the assailant's DNA at the scene but could not identify him, and the case went cold.
Sixteen years later, prosecutors compared that DNA from the unidentified man with Kim's. The two matched.
Working from the DNA findings, prosecutors pressed Kim and obtained a confession. He was additionally indicted over the case and over assaults on fellow inmates and correctional officers, on charges of habitual assault and obstruction of official duties. The Supreme Court finalized a five-year prison term.
Prosecutors also sought a court order for drug treatment to suppress Kim's sexual urges, a measure commonly called chemical castration. A psychiatrist who examined him said there was a risk of reoffending and that drug treatment could help. The court rejected the request, however, noting that Kim had caused no sexual incidents in prison and that his paraphilia could ease with age.
Full Sentence Ends in October 2027 as Paju Residents Push Back
Kim is now set to complete his sentence in October 2027. Reports in 2022 that he would enter a halfway house in Uijeongbu triggered fierce local opposition at the time, and anxiety is building again as his release date approaches.
Opposition has flared recently after rumors spread that Kim could be placed in a facility in Wollong-myeon, Paju, Gyeonggi Province, after his release. The claims circulated quickly, particularly through online parenting communities in the Paju area.
The facility, operating since 2022, is a halfway house for former inmates that provides shelter and rehabilitation support to help those released after long prison terms readjust to society.
Residents say they are worried about the prospect of a man who serially targeted minors living in their area. The Paju city government has also stated its opposition to housing Kim at the facility.
