SEOUL — The Area I sergeant grabbed the college student from behind on a Dongducheon street early one morning last summer and dragged her to a nearby parking lot. He then allegedly raped her, took her dress and cell phone and left her in the parking lot wearing only her underwear.
It was around 4 a.m., and the woman stopped at the first building she saw with its lights on — a motel, whose owner provided her a dress. She then went to the South Korean police, who collected DNA samples from the attacker’s semen, a South Korean police officer handling the case said Thursday.
More than two months later, that DNA would tie the 23-year-old Korean-American soldier to the June 14 attack and persuade him to confess.
"We were so surprised," the officer said. Police had no leads in the case and never expected to solve it, he said.
Details in the case and another possible attack continue to emerge as South Korean police investigate, several days after Seoul prosecutors announced the sergeant would be indicted for raping the 21-year-old woman.
The soldier, whose has been identified only by his last name of Kim, is being held at a Camp Humphreys jail until he is officially charged and transferred to South Korean custody. Prosecutors expect that to happen next week.
Kim is suspected of raping or trying to rape two other South Korean college students in August, but he will not be tried for those attacks because the women, both 21, dropped their complaints against him, authorities said.
The police officer said Kim allegedly raped one of the students in his car at 4 a.m. Aug. 15 in Sinchon, an area of Seoul near several universities. Kim met the woman earlier that night at a Sinchon "booking" bar, a common type of South Korean nightclub for singles where staff "book" introductions between men and women.
Kim allegedly tried to rape another woman he met at the same bar on Aug. 28, the police officer said. The couple left the bar and went inside the first floor of a nearby building around 4 a.m. Kim is accused of pushing her against a wall and trying to rape her. But the woman screamed, and a group of her friends ran to her and stopped the assault. The police officer said Kim left the area in a taxi but was caught by police.
Police took a sample of his saliva for DNA analysis. His DNA perfectly matched with a DNA sample taken from the semen of the rapist in the June 14 Dongducheon attack, the police officer said. When confronted with the news, the officer recounted, Kim confessed.
Kim, who has been confined at Camp Humphreys since August, still maintains he had consensual sex with the woman he met on Aug. 15 and was beginning to have consensual sex with the woman he met on Aug. 28 until her friends arrived.
South Korean and USFK officials had said those attacks happened in Hongdae, a popular bar and restaurant area beside Sinchon that is off-limits to U.S. military personnel at night. Hongdae was placed off-limits after a U.S. soldier brutally raped a 67-year-old woman there last year.
A USFK spokesman could not confirm Thursday whether the alleged attacks happened within the off-limits Hongdae area or in neighboring Sinchon.
Kim agreed to private financial settlements of an undisclosed amount with both women he met in Sinchon.
The police officer said prosecutors and police believe the women dropped their complaints against Kim so they wouldn’t have to testify in court, since being a rape victim carries a stigma in South Korean culture.
The police officer said Kim deployed to South Korea from Germany in August 2005, is fluent in English and Korean, and usually went to nightclubs with his South Korean friends and not U.S. soldiers.
USFK is not authorized to release details of the South Korean police investigation, and South Korean law prohibits the release of a suspect’s identity until he is indicted, a USFK spokesman said Wednesday.
