Gang (56), a killer who murdered two women around the time he broke his GPS monitoring device (ankle bracelet) and disappeared, called his probation office the morning he broke the bracelet and asked for leniency concerning his violation of a nighttime travel restriction.

At the time, Gang had already killed one woman and placed the body in his home. The probation office, not suspecting anything, notified Gang to come to the office for an investigation and hung up. That afternoon, Gang broke his GPS monitoring device and disappeared. Press coverage also revealed that the probation office had put off an investigation on Gang’s previous violation of travel restrictions for nearly three months.

According to the coverage by the Kyunghyang Shinmun on August 30, Gang called the Seoul Dongbu Probation and Parole Office at around 10 a.m. August 27 and asked to talk to his probation officer. The probation officer was not in at the time, so Gang spoke with another officer. Gang argued that he had no choice but to violate the nighttime curfew and asked for leniency. The officer informed Gang that a violation of the court order prohibiting him from leaving his house at night was a serious issue and told him to come to the office on August 30 for a questioning. That evening at 5:31 p.m. Gang cut his ankle bracelet and fled from the law. Around 3 a.m. August 29, he killed his second victim.

Gang called and asked for leniency because he violated the nighttime curfew when he left his home at 12:14 a.m. that day. The Crime Prevention Team at the Seoul Dongbu Probation Office was dispatched to the site, but Gang returned to his home at 12:34 a.m., before the officers arrived at his home. In a phone call with the Crime Prevention Team, Gang said, “My stomachache got worse, so I went to the convenience store to get some medicine.” At the time, the Crime Prevention Team did not enter Gang’s house. They just told him over the phone, “You have to come to the probation office and be questioned for the travel restriction violation.” At the time, the body of a woman Gang had murdered the previous day was in his house.

On August 24, two days before Gang’s first murder, he appeared at the probation office and was questioned on a previous violation of the nighttime curfew. The investigation was conducted nearly three months after Gang had violated the court order on June 1. The officers took into consideration the fact that Gang’s time outside his home was not long; he was busy making a living as a cosmetics salesman; and he was willing to cooperate with the guidance and supervision of the probation officers. An official from the justice ministry said, “The purpose of the electronic monitoring system is to have the person being monitored return to society,” and explained, “We are flexible in the operation of the system to help probation officers and their subjects build rapport.”

This day, the justice ministry released a press briefing and announced the details of the incident along with the ministry’s response to the incident, but the above details were not included. Gang was being monitored as a subject requiring special attention since he was a criminal with fourteen convictions including rape and robbery, but the probation office notified him of a future investigation as if his case was the same as any other violation of the nighttime travel restriction. Gang’s probation officer and Gang came in contact several times in various ways between June 1, when Gang first violated the court order, and August 27, when he violated the restriction a second time, but such encounters failed to prevent crime. The probation officer last visited Gang’s home on June 25.

This day, the Songpa Police Station in Seoul applied for an arrest warrant on Gang for breaking the ankle bracelet and fleeing from the law after killing two women (murder and violation of the Act on Electronic Monitoring).