Gang from South Korea that ate the rich (7 photos)

There are gangs in any country, they have their own rules and traditions. But the most unusual can perhaps be called the South Korean Chizhon, consisting of seven people.





This gang was led by Kim Ji-hwan. He was from a problematic poor family, which is why he was often forced to miss school lessons. He dropped out of school in the seventh grade and soon moved to Busan to work in a factory. Afterwards he worked some more in Seoul and eventually came back home, angry at the whole world and disappointed in his own life.

When entering university, Kim had to deal with corruption.

Over time, Kim decided to start playing poker and from his “colleagues” players he formed his own gang. Its participants were from 20 to 23 years old.

The rules of the gang were:

do not trust women, even if it is your own mother;

we hate all rich people;

the traitor must be killed.

They called their gang the Chizhon family and their main goal was to earn a billion won (that’s about a million and a quarter dollars at that time) from the construction sites of the cities of Dunsan and Bundang. With this amount they bought a modest waste incineration plant in Yongwan County, a couple of cars, 17 different weapons, dynamite, and walkie-talkies.

The family trained their endurance by climbing South Korea's second highest mountain, Jirisan.



On July 18, 1993, a gang kidnapped a 20-year-old girl. They took turns raping her and then killing her. The girl named Choi was not from a rich family; they kidnapped her as a kind of “training”. Kim Ji-hwan choked her and said, “This is how you kill a person.” The body of the unfortunate woman was found by a village resident who was mowing the grass.

The third was a gang member - 18-year-old Song Boung-un. He handled the gang's finances, which they earned from construction projects, and fled with 3 million won. Chizhon found him in a relative's house in August 1993. The thief was taken to a secluded place, not far from the incinerator, and killed, according to the code.



The next couple were already. A 27-year-old cafe worker and a 34-year-old musician. They were not rich in the usual sense, but the man drove a Hyundai Grandeur sedan, and this was considered a sign of luxury at that time.

The Chijong learned that motels in the Yangsu-ri area were in great demand among wealthy people. They arrived there and randomly selected a couple sitting in a Hyundai Grandeur.

On September 8, 1994, at night, the gang dealt with them. Chizhon shot at them with a gas pistol, then they began to cut the musician with a knife and beat him. Bound with tape, the couple was taken to their factory, where the gang abused the girl. Her boyfriend was still alive and the next night the family demanded a large sum of money from him. The musician did not own the required amount, and when the gang received confirmation of this, they promised to kill him “painlessly.” In their understanding, it was like this: they forced him to drink alcohol, after which they threw a bag over his head and strangled him.

They decided not to kill the girl, but to use her for their own purposes: they kept the victim with them all the time so that she would not run away to the police. The gang dragged the dead man's body to a cliff, put him in the driver's seat, and then pushed the car down. There, on the cliff, they raped the girl again.

The musician's friends reported his disappearance to the police and the car was quickly found. Since the deceased smelled of alcohol, the police thought it was an accident.



Afterwards, the gang kidnapped a married couple, where the head of the family owned a factory. They took them to a waste incineration plant, where they demanded 100 million won in cash from the couple. The husband replied that he only had 80 million intended to pay factory workers and to purchase equipment there. The wife was left hostage and the husband was sent to get money.

In order not to go into unnecessary details, it is worth saying that the police, to whom the factory worker ran when he was ordered to give all the money to the boss, ignored this message, deciding that this was some kind of cunning plan to hide the financial problems of the factory.

The wife and husband were killed. The gang cooked them into a roast and not only ate them themselves, but also forced the same cafe worker they were still keeping to swallow human flesh.

The gang, inspired by their “success”, decided to go further and act on a larger scale. They managed to get a mailing list to Seoulcom Hyundai department store. There were 1,200 of the best buyers there, paying by credit card. They chose the next victims from this list.



In September 1994, the gang leader came to the police station for some reason unrelated to the gang's affairs. The gang decided to learn how to throw dynamite and during training throws, one of the gang members earned himself a serious burn that could not be healed at home. He went to the hospital and took a cafe employee with him. It was at that moment that she realized that she had to run. The girl fled first by taxi, then by rented car and finally reached Seoul. There she decided to take refuge in a motel, from where she called her close friend and asked him to call the police. And only after making sure that she was not in danger did she come to the station on her own.

At first, law enforcement officers simply didn’t believe her. They ran drug tests and examined her for needle marks. And only the girl’s words about the missing married couple, about whom only the police, but not the media, knew so far, convinced the investigator. The investigation has begun.

But the gang didn’t even think that the girl would leave for another city and closely watched only the local Yungwan police station and realized that no fuss had started and their captive, apparently, did not say anything to anyone.



The police, relying on the girl’s stories, arrived in Yongwan County, where, by the way, the signal from the mobile phone of the kidnapped factory owner was recorded.

They managed to arrest one of the gang members and the police called the others, identifying themselves as hospital employees, with the message that their friend had been in a serious accident and was in a nearby hospital. In this essentially childish way, they managed to detain all the other members of the Chizhon family.



For the murder of five people on November 1, 1994, the entire Chizhon family was sentenced to death. None of the cannibals and murderers showed any remorse for their actions. One even said, standing in front of television cameras, that he was very sorry that he could not kill more.

On November 2 they were all executed.