Christmas Nightmares 2: Holiday Crimes

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Christmas is often framed as a moment of peace, forgiveness, and reflection. But in Korean history, Christmas Eve has repeatedly been chosen for violence, punishment, and erasure.

In Part 2 of Christmas Nightmares, we examine three chilling cases tied to the holiday. We begin with the Seokdal-ri Massacre of 1949, when South Korean soldiers burned a mountain village and executed dozens of civilians on Christmas Eve — a crime buried by the state for decades. We then move to the execution of Park Heung-suk, remembered as “Mudeungsan Tarzan,” hanged on Christmas Eve in 1980 after a violent confrontation born from forced eviction and extreme poverty. Finally, we revisit the Daejeon bank robbery and murder of 2001, a Christmas-season killing that remained unsolved for over twenty years.

These stories expose how Christmas, rather than symbolizing mercy, was repeatedly used as a moment of finality — when the state acted, and history tried to move on.

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