Supreme Court Confirms 17-Year Prison Sentence for Main Perpetrator in 'Pattaya Murder Case'

The main perpetrator of the so-called 'Pattaya murder case' has been sentenced to a heavy prison term eight years after the crime.

The Supreme Court's 1st Division (Presiding Justice Kim Seon-su) on the 9th dismissed the appeal of Kim (39), who was indicted on charges of murder and corpse abandonment, and upheld the original sentence of 17 years in prison. The order to attach an electronic tracking device (electronic anklet) for 10 years was also confirmed.

A man in his 30s who operated an illegal gambling site in Thailand on April 6, 2018, killed a Korean he had hired and fled to Vietnam is being repatriated through Incheon International Airport.

The court stated, "There is no error in the lower court's judgment that violates the rules of logic and experience or exceeds the limits of free evaluation of evidence, nor any misunderstanding of the legal principles regarding the intent of murder or the establishment of the crime of corpse abandonment."

Kim was charged with kidnapping Korean programmer A (24 at the time of death) along with accomplice Yoon (40) near a resort in Pattaya on November 19-20, 2015, driving him around in a car, assaulting and killing him, and then abandoning the car with the body in the parking lot.

Since March 2015, Kim had been operating multiple illegal gambling sites in Bangkok, Thailand. He and Yoon habitually assaulted A, who was hired to develop an integrated management system for the gambling sites, claiming that A was incompetent at his work.

On November 19, 2015, Kim remotely accessed A's computer through an acquaintance in Korea to check whether A had leaked betting information and member data from the gambling sites. During this process, they discovered that A had shared audio files on a file-sharing site that recorded Kim beating him.

That same evening, Kim told Yoon that they had found evidence that A had leaked betting information from the gambling sites. Together, they repeatedly beat A all over his body with fists and feet, demanding the password and ID for the shared site.

Believing that the office address of the gambling sites had been exposed, they decided to move the office to Pattaya, Thailand. While traveling by car, they continued to beat A, whose health had already deteriorated due to habitual assault. They not only used fists and feet but also inflicted burns with an electric shock device and used tools to pull out his fingernails.

During the journey from Bangkok to Pattaya, they stopped the car twice, forced the critically injured A out of the vehicle, and struck his head and entire body dozens of times with long, hard objects such as baseball bats and wooden swords.

Eventually, when A lost consciousness and was in critical condition, they moved to a hotel in Pattaya and brought him water, but A did not regain consciousness. Fearing that supporting A into the hotel would expose his condition to third parties, they wandered around Pattaya looking for a secluded place shielded from outside view and left the unconscious victim unattended. As a result, A died in the early morning of November 20, 2015, from head injuries caused by external trauma (brain edema).

They then transported A's body in the back seat of the car to a resort in Chonburi, Thailand, put sunglasses on the corpse to prevent others from noticing the death, parked the car in the parking lot, and abandoned the body, thereby committing corpse abandonment.

After the crime, Kim fled to Vietnam but was repatriated to Korea in April 2018. Initially, he was indicted on charges of joint confinement and injury and was sentenced to 4 years and 6 months in prison by the Supreme Court in December 2019. After further investigation, he was re-indicted on charges of murder and corpse abandonment and received the confirmed 17-year sentence on this day.

Accomplice Yoon was separately indicted and sentenced to 14 years in prison by the second trial on September 9 and has appealed; the Supreme Court is currently reviewing the case.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.