Lee Choon-jae

Lee Choon-jae (Korean: 이춘재; born January 31, 1963), also known as the Hwaseong Serial Killer, is a South Korean serial killer known for committing the Hwaseong serial murders (Korean: 화성 연쇄 살인 사건). Between 1986 and 1994, Lee murdered fifteen women and girls in addition to committing numerous sexual assaults, predominantly in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, and the surrounding areas. The murders, which remained unsolved for thirty years, are considered to be the most infamous in modern South Korean history and were the inspiration for the film Memories of Murder (2003).

Lee was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after twenty years for killing his sister-in-law in 1994, but despite DNA evidence and his confession to the other murders in 2019, he could not be prosecuted for them because the statute of limitations had expired.