The Kidnapped K-Drama Actress Who Was Trapped Inside A Trunk
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The Korean entertainment industry has many shocking tales to tell. One frightening encounter involved a K-Drama actress and a couple in their twenties, who might have gone on to terrorize more celebrities, had they not been caught.
Do Ji Won is a veteran Korean star best known for her roles in Ladies of the Palace (2001), Punch Lady (2007), and Smile Again (2010). Most recently Ji Won appeared in the 2020 series No Matter What. She was 32 years old and nine years into her acting career when she was kidnapped in 1998.
On January 5, 1999, Seocho Police Department in Seoul announced that Yoo Deok Hyun (a 26-year-old unemployed man) and Kwon Hyun Sook (a 25-year-old female academy instructor) had been arrested for kidnapping, special robbery, and extorting more than ₩14.0 million KRW (about $9,530 USD) from Do Ji Won. Reports from the time state that on July 26, 1998, Yoo and Kwon threatened Ji Won with a weapon in an underground parking lot belonging to the C Sports Center in Gangnam. The actress encountered the couple as she was leaving C Sports Center after working out. They told her, “If you scream, we will kill you.”
After threatening Ji Won, the kidnappers used blue tape to cover her eyes and mouth and bind her hands before loading her into the trunk of her own BMW sedan. The actress was confined there was five hours while her kidnappers drove around Seoul to withdraw about ₩700,000 KRW (about $476 USD) of Ji Won’s money. Yoo and Kwon then parked the car in a residential area of Gangnam, popped the trunk, and fled. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of Ji Won’s ordeal.
The next day, the kidnappers called her house to threaten her again, telling her that if she didn’t give them more money, they would murder her family. In response, Ji Won sent ₩14.0 million KRW (about $9,530 USD) to Yoo’s bank account. Months later, in November, the kidnappers called Ji Won again to demand another ₩50,000 million KRW (about $34,000 USD), but this time they failed to get it.
The next extortion attempt led to their arrest. At around 1:20 AM on January 5, 1999, Yoo and Kwon were both caught by police during a random check while sleeping in their Hyundai Sonata II sedan. They’d parked it in front of Ji Won’s apartment building.
How and why was Ji Won targeted? Police investigations revealed that Yoo had found a TV writer’s navy blue notebook that had been left behind in a back alley in July of 1998. In the notebook, he found the actress’s schedule and contact information: everything he and Kwon needed to plan their crime. The notebook also contained similar information for about 300 entertainers. Marks had been made next to the names of 20 actresses, who had possibly been–or would be–targeted.
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