Memories of Murder

Memories of Murder, released in 2003, is based on the still unsolved serial murders that took place in Hwaseong, Korea, between 1986 and 1991. The film depicts how the killer raped and strangled young women, with their head covered with their own underwear. In the film, the police desperately investigate the case but barely find clues, and they keep arresting wrong guys. They eventually get the help of Seo Tae-yoon, a detective from Seoul, but things don’t go better. While watching the film, I kept asking myself, “what is it that they are missing here? Why can’t they find the right murderer? What is the director trying to say?” I thought the film illustrates, to some extent, some political and economic issues in South Korea. The cruel murder case was not occurred once but in series. Even though the killer did not change his method of murder, the police was still unable to identify the killer and there were just more victims. In 1980s, many Korean people strived to regain their human rights and freedom, so they set demos against the government which tries to control the people’s freedom of speech. Under this situation, in the film, the policemen were all sent to restrain the demos that they totally missed the chance to catch the murderer on the rainy day when the murderer emerged. Moreover, due to the fact that technology was undeveloped back then, DNA testing was not available to nail suspects directly to a crime scene. Even when a DNA sampling of the strong suspect was sent to the U.S., it took more than two weeks for them to receive the result. Meanwhile, the murderer killed another woman. This continual failure of police’s catching the murderer and the unstopping of the murderer made me feel hopeless and disappointed. I believed that the reason why the police could not catch the murderer was not because there was no clue at all but because there was no national proper, organized system to find the clue.