Madame, are you still laughing?
A story about Jihye and money trumping over justice.
Ha Jihye had her head on straight. At twenty-two years old she already knew what she wanted to do: to help the less fortunate. As a fourth-year student, all she had left was graduating from prestigious Ewha Law School and passing the bar exam. Jihye was the kind of daughter and friend many would be jealous of, dutifully filling her notebook with notes about her fellow students’ achievements and never failing to share a meal with her relatives.
She spent most of her time cramming, switching between home and the library. Her only escape from routine was swimming, prescribed as a remedy for her arching back. Every day Jihye would leave her house in the early hours and walk to a nearby pool.
March 6th, 2003 wasn’t any different. At 5 a.m. Jihye crossed the front door and left for a swimming session. But this time she never came back.
Father
Jihye’s father, Ha Taek-hwan, became worried when his daughter didn’t show up to their usual lunch date. Uneasy, he and his wife left their home in search of Jihye. They made phone calls to her friends, but nothing came up.
After their efforts proved to be futile, they moved onto the next step. By 2 p.m Jihye’s father was already at a police station, requesting help. Ha had a hunch something bad happened to his child. This wasn’t a normal occurrence, he explained, his daughter has been followed for a year. She wouldn't leave the house, she hasn’t even taken money with her.
The police weren’t convinced and stuck to the protocol. Officers pressed Ha for filling a report painting Jihye as a runaway.
Ha was determined to change the police’s mind. On the second day, he dropped documents detailing Jihye’s lawsuit on a detective’s desk. The next day his brother-in-law came to Seoul and with him the key to his apartment. The housing unit’s security place had a recording from the day of the kidnapping. It caught a man holding an umbrella in front of the building and two robust men from the opposite site — both going in Jihye’s direction, who has just left her home.
This was the proof that caught the police’s attention.
According to Ha, the officers changed their mind about the case, but they lacked experience dealing with a kidnapping.
The father wanted to give a prize for information and giving the information to the media, as well as confrontation with his suspect. His pleas were brushed away.
On March 16, ten days after Jihye’s disappearance her body was found, covered by a sea of leaves, in the mountains, near the city of Hanam. Twenty kilometers away from her home in Samsong-dong.
Jihye was shot six times — four gunshot wounds on her face and two in the back of her head. Her hands and feet were tied by a red rope; her face was covered by tape.
Locating the ringleader
The police had no clear motive and no leads. They resolved to hypnosis from a milkman, who reported seeing an SUV in front of Ha’s family home. He remembered seeing young men. One of them was skinny, with oval face and pimples on his forehead and cheeks. But even this detailed description didn’t bring any leads.
Once again, the move from Jihye’s father. A few weeks after the disappearance Ha recalled a strange man who visited his firm a while ago. He introduced himself as Kim Ki-Jun, an investor and representative of a trading company. Kim came into money and proposed Ha doing business together, but Ha was suspicious of his goodwill — he asked Kim what brought him to his company, but received no answer and cut off contact. Ha brushed it off as a scam.
It was the first big step towards discovering the truth and the police made sure they found him. Kim Ki-Jun’s was really called Kim Man-Seok. He wasn’t an investor, but an unemployed man who hasn’t paid rent for over a year. But the true revelation came after the police checked his cell phone records. Kim was in front of Jihye’s house on the day of her disappearance and at the Geomdan mountain.
Soon, a different proof appeared — Kim purchased an air gun a month before Jihye’s disappearance. A gun which was later confirmed to the murder weapon.
Kim led the police to his accomplice. As soon as they caught his trail, police found another person — his friend Yoon Nam Shin. Both of them, despite the lack of stable job, suddenly received a large sum of money.
Police had quickly arrested five out of seven accomplices. The remaining two had already left South Korea before police caught a whiff of their tail. Once again, Jihye’s father took reigns and headed towards Vietnam — the place where Yoon Nam-Shin’s father had operated a sewing factory. Once in the country, Ha requested help from Interpol and fellow countrymen. He had even offered a monetary prize for those who knew about Yoon’s whereabouts.
The trip didn’t bring any results for both men were on the run to the next location: China, with supposedly their end goal being North Korea. Yoon and Kim never managed to cross to the northern part of the Korean Peninsula; they were arrested and brought back to South Korea on April 11th.
With two men finally in the police’s hands the only question remaining was: why? What was the reason for killing an innocent young girl?
The answer to this question shocked both the police force and the Korean public: the murder was a contract killing and the ringleader behind it was a woman called Yoon Gil Ja — Yoon’s aunt, and Jihye’s distant relative.
How it all began
The South Korean media often refer to Yoon as samonim, Korean for Madame. And certainly, Yoon was a woman in power; at the time of Jihye’s kidnapping, she was married to Ryu Ji-Hun, a chairman of Yeongman Milling — one of the largest milling companies in South Korea.
The revelation seemed to come out of the blue. A wealthy woman ordering the killing of a college student sounded more like a movie screenplay rather than a real-life situation. However, there was nothing accidental about it.
It all began in November 1999, when Yoon’s beloved daughter was wed to an elite judge — Jihye’s cousin. It was an arranged wedding and the groom was carefully picked with a help of a matchmaker; Yoon Gil-Ja paid top dollar to make it happen.
The newlyweds moved into Yoon family’s house, but their marital bliss didn’t last long — at least in Yoon Gil-Ja’s eyes. The same year, Yoon received a phone call with an ominous message: Your son-in-law is cheating on your daughter. This one sentence was enough to plant a seed of doubt in her mind.
Yoon needed to know if her daughter’s husband was having an affair. She started closely watching her son-in-law and planted a spying device in her daughter’s room.
One day she caught the judge talking on the phone with a young girl. She demanded to know who was on the other side of the phone call. Son-in-law explained it was his cousin, who was preparing for the bar exam. He was helping her.
Yoon wasn’t satisfied by his answer.
In 2001 Yoon hired men to spy on two suspected lovers. The more time passed the more people she added to the stalking team. At its peak, the number of members grew up to twenty-five men. Some of them the members of the police force. They were managed by Yoon’s nephew, Yoon Nam-Shin.
Stalking wasn’t Yoon’s only method. According to some of Jihye’s friends, they were called by Madame Yoon, who asked them for help in acquiring discriminating photos, in exchange for monetary gratification. But nobody could find a proof Yoon so desperately wanted.
At her wit’s ends, Yoon called Ha’s household and warned them to control their daughter. This is when Jihye’s family learned about stalking which has been going for almost two years. The conflict arose between two branches of the family — Yoon who was sure Jihye was guilty and Ha family who thought it was nonsense. In the end, Jihye’s father sued Yoon and the group of stalkers. Ha won in court and the defendants were hit with a restraining order.
During the whole ordeal, both sides agreed on one thing: they were unsatisfied by Judge Kim’s reaction. According to Ha, Kim was quiet the whole time and played a passive role. He didn’t try to convince them, even when pressed for answers by Jihye’s father. The son-in-law’s silence was the last straw, which convinced Yoon of her suspicions. She decided to use the last resort — to get rid of the young girl. For executor, she chose her nephew, the very same person who managed the stalking group. The reports about Yoon Nam-Shin vary — some said he was unemployed, the others claimed he was the family’s chauffeur.
Either way, he was dependent on Madame as a money source. Yoon demanded from his aunt 200 million won (US$ 180 thousand), but after a round of haggling, they settled on 175 million won (US$ 150 thousand). At some point, Kim Man-Seok, the childhood friend, was brought into this ordeal for Yoon was afraid of acting alone.
The reason why
Despite the wealth, Madame’s married life wasn’t the happiest. Her husband was a notorious cheater, and one time she even caught him during the act. It was an event that led to Yoon’s nervous breakdown. She was later diagnosed with paranoid personality syndrome.
Jihye wasn’t even the first target. Madame’s murderous nature had woke up even earlier. When Yoon’s husband was arrested for embezzlement, Yoon suspected a company worker wanted to take over. The second target was Jihye’s father. “Kim Man Seok” was planted to lure out Ha to a different city, where he would get ambushed. It’s only after Kim was unsuccessful they moved onto the next option.
Even the murder weapon wasn’t the first choice; Yoon planned on poisoning Jihye — a plan which was ruined by a restraining order.
The Ha family’s tragedy & Madame’s luxurious life
For many, this is where the fight for justice would end, with all criminals in prison, but it wasn’t the case for Jihye’s family.
2013 brought a bombshell: Yoon Gil-Ja wasn’t in prison. Since 2007 Yoon has been leading a cushioned life in a luxury hospital suite. According to official information, Madame was diagnosed with twelve separate conditions — so severe she couldn’t continue living in prison. Among them were breast cancer, diabetes, partial macular degeneration, asthma, osteoporosis, and depression.
Yoon’s sentence was suspended on three occasions and her stay in the hospital was extended seven times. She was allowed to leave the facilities for causes as flimsy as family matters. The reports have said she was treated as the most important person in the hospital; attended to by thirteen different doctors, including a president’s former chief physician.
As soon as a report aired Madame’s bad condition was called into question and South Korean TV stations have published a recording of Yoon in hospital. In front of the hospital staff, Yoon was seated, eating with her hands shaking; when she was alone she moves on her own around the hospital room. The matters were taken to court and it was confirmed Yoon paid for a fake medical examination. One of the doctors was punished by a fine of 500 thousand won (US$ 4 thousand dollars) and eight months in prison.
South Korean public was enraged by the news and Yoon came back to her cell. However, even the choice of prison proved to be a controversial one. According to Korean sources, the correction center Yoon was transferred to was one of the country’s most cushioned and comfortable prisons.
In the middle of the scandal, Madame’s company changed its name from Yeongman Milling to Hantop. It operates to this day. Yoon’s husband has continuously claimed the murder was “his children’s mom’s fault”; the backlash and hate their family received was unjust.
Ha family dealt with more than hate. The murder changed their entire lives. Three years after, in 2006, Jihye’s father left the family house — he couldn’t bear to look at his wife anymore for she reminded him of Jihye. He gave up his company and moved to the mountainous area of Gangwon. Even after Ha’s son moved out, Jihye’s mother kept on living there, with her daughter’s beloved Juri. In 2016 she followed her daughter. Her body was found in a state of extreme emaciation, reportedly after attempting other forms of self-harm. She couldn’t bear to live without her daughter any longer.
Jihye’s brother, Ha Jin-Yeong, is still seeking justice for Jihye and his mother and frequently posts on a dedicated Facebook page: “Madame, are you still laughing?”
