Court Admits 'Kidnapping Plan Conversation' as Evidence Ahead of Third Trial Today

[Anchor]

Records showing that Jang Yoon-gi discussed a "plan to kidnap high school girls" with his high school classmates have been admitted as evidence in court. This follows Jang's previous confession that his crime was "murder with the intent of sexual assault," and now past conversations supporting this have also been accepted by the court.

Reporter Baegun has the details.

[Reporter]

During the forensic analysis of a spare smartphone in Jang Yoon-gi's possession when he was arrested by police on May 5, prosecutors recovered social media conversations between Jang—who was a first-year high school student at the time—and a classmate.

The recovered conversations reportedly included statements such as "If my life ruins, I will kidnap a female high school student" and "We can just kidnap them using a van." Prosecutors also secured testimony from a high school classmate stating that Jang had frequently talked about plans to kidnap female high school students in his daily life.

Ahead of the third trial today (July 27), as Jang Yoon-gi acknowledged the admissibility of the "high school conversation logs" supporting the circumstances of a planned kidnapping, prosecutors withdrew their plan to examine Jang's high school classmate and former colleague from his days as a social service agent as witnesses.

Also scheduled to testify at today's trial are the bereaved family of the late Lee Chae-won and 17-year-old Ko, who suffered severe injuries from the weapon swung by Jang while attempting to help Lee.

The Special Investigation Unit of the National Police Agency is focusing on understanding the command directives from the National Office of Investigation at the time by analyzing the interrogation of Superintendent Lee, former head of the detective division at the Gwangju Metropolitan Police Agency, who was summoned as a reference witness the day before last.

This is because a core issue that this investigation must uncover is the suspicion that, despite frontline investigative teams repeatedly requesting to merge Jang's sex crime and murder cases, they were ordered by the National Office of Investigation to investigate them separately, ultimately forwarding the case to prosecutors for regular murder instead of rape-murder.

The Special Investigation Unit maintains that a direct investigation into Park Sung-ju, the former head of the National Office of Investigation who sits at the apex of the case command structure, is also inevitable.

(Video by Park Sun-su, Design by SOOIN)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.