조선일보
Over the months, KSIS has exposed the darkness of the human mind and the terrible secrets hidden within the human heart. Today is no exception, as we descend into even darker territory, exploring a gang that was active for only one year yet left an indelible mark on society: the CHIJON FAMILY (지존파).
The punishment handed down to the members of this clan for the horror of their crimes was unanimous: the death penalty, carried out one year after the trial. But what could this so-called “family” have done to deserve such a sentence? Discover this new case without further delay. Please note that certain details, such as names or specific actions, vary depending on official sources.
“I ate part of a human leg. It ate it alone to give up my humanity” — KIM HYUNYANG
Everything began in September 1994, when several people started disappearing mysteriously, vanishing without a trace. One of the first cases to alert the police involved a man who disappeared for four days and was later found dead inside a car at the opposite end of the country. Even more puzzling, the vehicle was discovered at the bottom of a ravine, yet the body showed no signs of an accident: no scratches, no fractures, as if it had been intact at the moment of impact. A police officer reported that the body smelled strongly of alcohol, leading investigators to conclude it was a drunk-driving accident. The case was closed without further investigation.
However, a second disappearance soon followed, on a very specific date: September 13, the very day the first victim was found. SO, the second victim, vanished along with his wife. Stranger still, SO, who ran a factory in Ulsan while living in Seoul, contacted one of his employees and asked him to bring a large sum of money to Gwangju. The three cities are far apart, making the request highly suspicious. Over the phone, SO claimed he had been involved in… a car accident.
When the employee met his employer to hand over the money (80 million won out of the 100 million requested), the man hastily grabbed the bag and only had time to whisper, “I was kidnapped,” before leaving immediately to avoid suspicion. Shortly afterward, another victim emerged: a woman in her twenties named LEE, who contacted the police claiming she had been kidnapped and had witnessed acts of torture, particularly against a couple who owned a factory. She stated that the couple had been killed, one by gunshot and the other with a bladed weapon, and that a third person had been placed in a car and pushed into a ravine to stage an accident.
At first, the police suspected a hoax, assuming LEE had read newspaper articles to attract attention, especially since she reported repeated rapes and acts of cannibalism. However, the details surrounding the man found in the car had never been made public, as his death had been classified as an accident caused by intoxication. How, then, could LEE have known? This revelation triggered the large-scale exposure of “MASCAN” (마스칸).
According to the gang’s founder, the term Mascan was inspired by a Greek concept related to ambition, although no such Greek word actually exists. The clan consisted of only seven members: the leader, two enforcers, and four additional members. After meeting with police, LEE provided further details, stating that the gang possessed a weapons hideout containing rifles, axes, and roughly twenty sticks of dynamite. In total, more than seventy weapons and objects were seized after their arrest. Once their hideout address was revealed, the police launched an investigation and deployed an elite unit, including officers from airborne military divisions and specialists in martial arts and combat sports such as wrestling.
Surprisingly, the hideout did not match the gang’s fearsome reputation: mint-colored walls, pink floral decorations on the exterior, an inner courtyard, and a garden. The police waited for the right moment, and eventually one member ventured into town and was arrested: KANG DONGEUN, one of the enforcers. He confirmed LEE’s testimony, including the presence of dynamite, making it impossible for police to storm the hideout safely. Instead, the police devised a plan to lure the gang outside. They made a call announcing, “innocently,” that KANG had been involved in a car accident and was hospitalized. To make the ruse believable, the officer used the Gwangju dialect. Part of the gang went to the police station to retrieve KANG’s supposed belongings.
Using this strategy, the police arrested four members: KANG DONGEUN, MOON SANGROK, BAEK BYEONGOK, and KANG MOONSUB. Two members remained, traveling by car toward the police station: KIM HYUNYANG and LEE KYUNGSOOK. They were finally intercepted at a gas station, and the full scope of the CHIJON FAMILY was revealed. At the time of their arrest, the gang showed no remorse for the three murders they were accused of. KIM HYUNYANG even declared to journalists:
“It’s a pity that I can’t kill rich and disrespectful bastards because I got caught so quickly. I would do it again”.
MASCAN was the original name of the CHIJON FAMILY, led by KIM KIHWAN, whose nickname was Jijon. The group’s objective became clear: to target the wealthy and those known as “Yata” (야타족), a slang term for affluent youths perceived as superficial, driving luxury cars bought by their parents and wearing flashy clothing, as well as the “Orange” (오렌지족), referring to young people who consumed imported luxury goods and food products. At the time, much of Korean society viewed these privileged youths with resentment. KIM KIHWAN set out to “cleanse society,” especially after a scandal exposed fraudulent university admissions secured through bribes.
Born into a disadvantaged family, KIM KIHWAN was highly intelligent and ranked fifth in his school. Despite this, he was forced to drop out after middle school and start working early due to financial hardship. The origins of MASCAN took shape when individuals with similar backgrounds bonded over shared resentment toward wealth, meeting around a poker table in May 1993. To join the clan, recruits underwent a brutal initiation: surviving alone in the mountains for one week during summer with only a bottle of water. The gang officially formed in 1993 and began its crimes on July 18, kidnapping a 20-year-old woman (CHOI) from a bus stop around 11 p.m. She was sexually assaulted and murdered. KIM described this act as “training” for his recruits.
“I’ll show you an example, look carefully guys. Strangle. This is how you kill people, okay ?” — KIM KIHWAN.
KIM KIHWAN’s nickname Jijon came from a popular Hong Kong film in Korea at the time, “Jijon Musang“ [« Casino Raiders »]. To assert his authority, he used CHOI, even though she did not belong to the social class targeted by MASCAN. Her body was discovered by a villager in May 1994. The gang members were extremely young: the leader was 26, while the youngest, SONG BEONGUN, was only 18. Unable to cope with having killed an innocent person, SONG fled in August, stealing three million won before hiding at a relative’s home. The CHIJON FAMILY tracked him down and murdered him with a pickaxe as punishment for his betrayal. The remaining members grew more confident and bonded further. They also killed and ate a dog at the crime scene before abandoning SONG’s body, which was later found by police during guided searches. He had been buried in a pit nearly 60 centimeters deep, his hands bound with copper wire.
Among the leader’s rules, three were absolute: we hate the rich; we kill traitors; and we cannot trust women, not even our mothers.
Being poor meant the members had to work alongside their criminal activities. During the day, they worked construction jobs; at night, they built their hideout, complete with a prison, armory, and incinerator. In less than a year, they had saved 20 million won. The entrance was hidden beneath a trapdoor in the garage of a rural house near Gwangju.
In 1993, the gang’s activities remained relatively limited. However, in June 1994, KIM KIHWAN sexually assaulted a middle school girl. Arrested and sentenced to five years in prison, he left the clan under the temporary leadership of KIM HYUNYANG. The group remained united and shared a joint bank account to fund future crimes. The gang targeted anyone driving a car worth over 20 million won. It was later revealed that a list of over 1,200 Hyundai VIP customers had been sold to the gang.
On September 8, 1994, the CHIJON FAMILY traveled to Seoul in search of their first “true” victim. They targeted a couple driving a Hyundai Grandeur. LEE, the police informant, was a passenger in this vehicle, along with the man later found in the ravine. Contrary to the gang’s belief, the couple was not wealthy. The car had been bought second-hand to carry the man’s intruments, as a musician. The man was forced to drink after the couple was brung back to the hideout, and the woman was coerced into killing him after being gang-raped, in order to make her complicit.
“To make her our member. I told the guys I wanted to raise her strong, as a robot.” — KIM HYEONYANG
She was then forced to suffocate her partner with a plastic bag in order to save her own life. The gang’s objective was to make her an accomplice, ensuring her silence. However, since MASCAN had not targeted the right people, they resumed their hunt and set their sights on the SO couple. Once again, disappointment followed: although they owned a factory, they had only just acquired it and therefore had no concrete income yet. The man promised to gather as much money as possible by September 15, on the condition that the gang leave his wife and daughter unharmed. The money provided by the couple allowed the gang to purchase new weapons, as well as dynamite and tasers. But as 80 million won did not satisfy the criminals, the couple was killed by LEE, who had not yet managed to escape at that time. The man was shot, and the woman was killed with an axe. Their bodies were then incinerated.
Even more horrifying, the gang kept parts of the wife’s body to consume them, forcing LEE to join in by making her eat her raw liver. When they burned the bodies, the clan members invited villagers into the garden for an “innocent” barbecue, whose smell helped mask that of the incinerator. The barbecue itself did not contain human flesh, but it was a clever way to avoid alarming the neighborhood and to build a better reputation in order to prevent future suspicion. During this time, LEE remained locked in the prison, kept alive by KIM HYEONYANG.
At this point, internal conflicts erupted over the young woman, a killer against her will: should she be killed as well, or integrated into the CHIJON FAMILY? Tensions escalated, but the clan focused on making dynamite. KIM HYEONYANG burned his hand in the process, which required a hospital visit the following day. He took LEE with him, as she was now under his protection. At the hospital, he gave her a choice: run away, or stay. It was a way to test her loyalty. She took the risk and fled, leaving the hospital in haste and getting into a taxi. Feeling unsafe and suspicious of everyone, she jumped out of the moving vehicle and hid among vineyards for eight hours, waiting for nightfall. She had already been kidnapped for a week; she could endure a few more hours to ensure she was not being followed.
Then came a twist of fate. While at the hospital, KIM HYEONYANG had left both his phone and his wallet with LEE. She took advantage of this to call a car rental service and immediately headed to Seoul, crossing the country overnight. Meanwhile, and for the three days that followed, the gang waited near a police station to see whether LEE would show up to confess the murders. They had not expected her to return to Seoul, and confident that she would remain silent, they went back to their hideout. When the case finally broke and MASCAN was fully arrested on September 19, LEE was released by the police, who acknowledged that the murders she had committed were carried out under coercion. She was therefore not found guilty of her actions.
Nevertheless, an SBS program (“꼬꼬무”) later tracked her down, revealing that she developed cancer more than twenty years after the events, illustrating the severe psychological impact of what she endured. As for the CHIJON FAMILY, they were tried on November 1, 1994, at the Seoul Criminal Court. The members were found guilty on multiple charges, including kidnapping and murder, and were executed the year following the trial. A seventh individual was convicted of gang membership: LEE KYUNGSOOK, the girlfriend of KANG DONGEUN. She received only a three-year prison sentence, having joined MASCAN in September and not having participated in the murders. During the investigation, it was revealed that KANG DONGEUN had already been convicted twice for theft, while MOON SANGROK and BAEK BYEONGOK each had one prior conviction. Authorities also arrested the weapons dealers and the individual who had supplied the list of Hyundai VIP customers.
“They may have been antisocials most likely, not psychopaths” — BAE SANGHOON, criminal psychology analyst
Although the clan was dismantled three decades ago, its impact after just one year of activity remains deeply ingrained in Korean society. Active from July 1993 to September 1994, what left the strongest impression was the members’ motivation to eliminate the privileged, resulting in the deaths of three men and two women, and the abduction of another. Even more striking was their age: none were older than 23, except for the leader. The CHIJON FAMILY has since been studied extensively by psychology and criminology students, as well as experts. The most tragic aspect of this case is that the victims should never have been targeted: they were stopped because of their car, which did not symbolize luxury or wealth, but simply belonged to ordinary people. Notably, the employee who delivered the 80 million won to SO was not taken seriously by the police, who deemed the matter outside the jurisdiction of their station. In short, some murders might have been prevented if the initial car accident had been treated as a homicide and SO’s ransom request had been taken seriously from the outset.
Other gangs emerged after MASCAN’s dissolution, such as MAKGAPA, which also targeted the Yata, demonstrating the considerable influence of the CHIJON FAMILY during the 1990s. This reignited debate over the death penalty, which some argued had “glorified” the gang by turning them into martyrs of society, symbols of the poor rising against the rich.
What did you think of this criminal case? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Journalist : Pillet Anaïs
Sources : KSTATION TV, under pics
