Lee U-cheol, a 'long-unexecuted death-row inmate' who killed a member trying to defect and the member's partner, died of illness while serving his sentence.
According to the Ministry of Justice on the 7th, death-row inmate Lee U-cheol died last month at Gwangju Prison while battling cancer.
Lee U-cheol was serving time on charges of murdering a fellow member surnamed Lim, then 30, and secretly burying the body in a wooded hill near a highway rest area in Anseong, Gyeonggi Province, in 1994, when he was active as a member of the 'Anyang AP faction.' When Lim, who had taken part in 'contracted violence,' tried to leave the organization, he killed Lim with two other members.
Lee U-cheol did not stop there and killed Lim's partner at the same location and secretly buried the body. He also killed an acquaintance of the victim to prevent a report to the police.
Lee U-cheol was indicted on charges including murder and concealment of a corpse and received a final death sentence from the Supreme Court in 1996.
With Lee U-cheol's death, the number of people with finalized death sentences in Korea stands at 56 as of this month. Since no executions have been carried out since Dec. 1997, Korea is classified as a 'de facto abolitionist' country.