Seven time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Eagle Street in Holborn @Googlemaps2026 July2023
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-EIGHT: From the end of October to the start of December 2001, an unspecified two-roomed second-floor flat on Eagle Street in Holborn was a warm and welcoming guesthouse rented out to two Korean students exploring London. As strangers in a notoriously dangerous city, they did everything right to ensure their safety, as London isn’t for the faint hearted. And although they stayed within confines of their tight-knit community, their sadistic killer was hiding in plain sight.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
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UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Is anyone safe behind the locked door of a London Guesthouse? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Eagle Street in Holborn, WC2; three streets north-east of the mysterious falling man, two streets east of the slaughtered spinster, two streets south of Jean Stafford, possibly one of Reg’ Christie’s victims, and one street from the mad axe-wielding baker - coming soon to Murder Mile. Situated just off High Holborn and above a pub called The Bountiful Cow sits ‘Beckley’, a non-descript six-storey block of flats on the corner of 47-51 Eagle Street with a side entrance on Dane Street. Built to fit a gap on a side road full of offices, it’s a communal building where neighbours communicate only by a grunt in the hallway, an awkward silence in the lift, a bang on the ceiling if the music gets too loud, and they only learn each other’s names on a summons for stealing each other Amazon parcels. And like so many city-centre flats, one was rented to tourists to help to the owner cover the costs. From the end of October to the start of December 2001, an unspecified two-roomed, second-floor flat was a warm and welcoming guesthouse with its bedroom rented out at different times to two female Korean students exploring London’s history, culture and art. As strangers in a notoriously dangerous city, they did everything right to ensure their safety, as London isn’t for the faint hearted. And although they stayed within confines of their tight-knit community, their sadistic killer was hiding in plain sight. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 338: Death by Gilbert & George. Hyun-Han Jin, names which mean virtuous and precious, was a 21-year-old South Korean woman who was raised with her brother, Yong-Hee, by her doting parents in a village 40 miles south of the capital city of Seoul. Comprising of farmland and small industry, from an early age, Hyun-Han always wanted to see the world, even if being tiny at 4 foot 11 tall and fresh-faced, she was often mistaken for a child. Just shy of the new millennium, having gained her mother’s permission which was something Hyun-Han always did as a well-mannered and diligent daughter, she flew to the University of Lyon in France to study French, and knowing they would worry about her, she kept in regular contact with her family. By the half-term of October 2001, with a few days to spare to see the sights of London, Hyun-Han got approval from her mother who said “wherever you go, make sure you enjoy it, don’t have any regrets”, as every experience would make her daughter a better woman, only this was one she would regret. On Friday 26th of October, she got the Eurostar from Paris at St Pancras, within 6 hours, Hyun-Han was wheeling her rigid grey and silver suitcase onto the Piccadilly Line tube, and with her case 50cm wide by 29cm thick by 72cm high, she’d packed 3 days worth of clothes and planned to be back by Sunday. Of her brief glimpse of London, she told her friends, the city was “overwhelming”, and often described as a culture shock to outsiders – as it is awash with both the new and the ancient, clean and filthy, and every site is obsessed with its dark history of war, death, disease, torture and executions – as a small lone girl in a big bad city, she wisely stayed within the bubble of London’s South Korean community. At 7pm, she exited Holborn tube, took a 7-minute well-lit walk down High Holborn, and passing a string of Korean restaurants and shops full of familiar faces and smells, on Eagle Street, she checked into a guesthouse at ‘Beckley’. It was recommended by her friends, as 100s of Korean students had stayed before, and with Hyun-Han in the spare bedroom, the landlord 29-year-old Kyu, a student from Seoul had the other room which he used to share with his girlfriend, Mariko, who often stayed over. It was small, clean and safe. The communal door was opened by a keypad and the flat had its own key, as did her bedroom, and with Kyu being friendly and helpful by showing her the sights, she had drawn up a list of places to visit, and had emailed her mother to reassure her “I have met a kind, new friend”. She wasn’t in England long enough to have made an enemy. As far as we know, as her death wouldn’t be discovered for weeks and the crime scene wouldn’t be uncovered for months; there were no signs of a break in, no threats against her, no stalker, no strange calls, and she hadn’t spoken of any worries to friends or family, and with no other lodgers, it was mostly just Hyun-Han and Kyu in the guesthouse. She had done everything right to ensure her safety… or so she thought. Nothing was seen, heard and there were no witnesses to what happened, except the evidence itself. At an unspecified hour, unwittingly Hyun-Han unlocked her bedroom door from the inside to let her killer in. Dressed in just jeans, a t-shirt, her underwear and a pair of socks but no trainers, she wasn’t ready for bed but neither was she going out, and it was likely to be late as she wasn’t a night owl. Neighbours heard no shouts, screams and nothing suspicious was seen, so we can’t pin an exact time or day to her murder, and as a dot of a woman who was easily overpowered, she sustained no cuts, there were no signs of struggle, but her bruises may have been obscured by the severe decomposition. Months later, when this crime scene was finally unearthed, even after several students had stayed over and the room (as expected) was thoroughly cleaned after every use, forensic scientist Sarah Gray found a faint spatter of Hyun-Han’s blood by the door and a white wooden desk, staining the brown carpet, the white skirting board and the dark blue wall. Stating "I concluded the presence of spots of blood… which gives strong support that she had been bleeding freely whilst on the floor of that room (possibly) deposited on different occasions (was) from contact with bloodstained surfaces like a hand". With no marks, it’s likely she had bled from her nose having been punched to render her unconscious. But it wasn’t this which took her life, as her cruel killer’s plan was far more dark, and sadistic, and evil. While she was unconscious, he stripped her of all but her bra, and yet sex didn’t seem to be his motive as her autopsy confirmed she wasn’t raped or molested, this was about degradation and humiliation. With a thick reel of dark blue packing tape emblazoned with a brightly-coloured cartoon of two men’s faces, he tightly bound her wrists and ankles so that no matter what she couldn’t flee or resist. As she came to, he stuffed her socks into her mouth, not only to silence her, but having also wound the tape around her head to hold the gag in place, he stretched it over her nostrils, so that she couldn’t breathe. Gasping for air and pleading with terrified eyes as a faint squeak squealed from her throat; with the tape on, she would slowly suffocate; with it off, she gasped great gasps of air; and whether she lived or died was dictated by him. Dangling the prospect of death before her, over a protracted torture, he extracted her PIN number, went to the Sainsbury’s ATM by Holborn tube and withdrew the daily limit of the limited funds she had. But as Jonathan Laidlaw QC for the Prosecution stated: "Was there a sexual motive? Was it simply about money? Or a more sinister possibility is that he achieved a sadistic form of pleasure from the slow deliberate form of killing and sex, and money was simply incidental?". She believed she had given him what he wanted – money, but what he wanted was to humiliate and degrade this tiny helpless woman, and watch her die, slowly and in great pain, as he had commanded. Without a fresh supply of oxygen in her bloodstream, she would have lost consciousness in five-to-ten seconds, her face and lips would have turned a hideous purply-blue, and as seizures riddled her body, oxygen deprivation would have resulted in brain damage in two minutes and her death within four… …that’s only if this sadist took her to the brink of death, just once. As a small and slender woman, still bound and gagged, he folded her tiny body in a foetal position, he stuffed her inside of her own grey and silver suitcase which he’d stripped of any ID or possessions, and hid it inside the sliding wardrobe, flat on the floor, so the rubber supports left little marks in the carpet. Hiring a Peugeot 406 from Avis car rental a few streets over, he pulled up outside of the flat, and as if he was on holiday, he loaded the suitcase into the boot, and drove 202 miles north; up the M1, passed Sheffield and Leeds, and taking the A64 nearly to York, just south of the village of Askham Richard, on an isolated unnamed country road surrounded by nothing but fields, he dumped it in a hedge and left. And there it sat for two weeks, in the shadow of the Bilborough TV mast and Stockhill Cottages, but as a slew of cars and dogwalkers passed, everyone assumed – as her killer thought – it was just rubbish. One day prior, on Monday 29th of October, her classmates thought it odd that she hadn’t returned to university, and with no contact with her friends or family, her brother Yong-Hee posted appeals for sightings amongst the 20,000 strong Korean community in London, and officially reported her missing. Seeing this, her killer initially told her distraught mother that she was spotted on the 17th of November at London’s Victoria Coach Station heading to York with three friends, and cruelly giving her hope, he gave Hyun-Han’s bank card to a friend who was heading to Paris, and told them to drain the account. Everything would point to Hyun-Han fleeing abroad and wanting to be left alone… …until her badly decomposed body was discovered. On Sunday 18th of November, just after 4pm, a local heading to a pub spotted the suitcase in a hedge, and with fluid leaking out, a foul smell emanating and with it too heavy to lift, he contacted the Police. Examined in the mortuary of York Hospital, the body was in an advanced state of decay; the skin had begun to slough off and the muscles to liquify, bloated and infested with maggots, the blackened skin made it impossible to see any bruising, but with her wrists and ankles still bound by a colourful parcel tape wrapped from her chin to just under her red and protruding eyes, it was clear this was a murder. Detective Chief Inspector Alan Ankers appealed for information based on the vague details they had; “she was a woman of Asian or Oriental origin, 4 foot 11 ½ inches tall, aged 20 and 40. She was slender, with brown eyes and shoulder-length dark hair, pierced ears but wasn’t wearing studs, wore contact lenses”, but with had no tattoos, scars or ID, and with her fingerprints not on the Police or Immigration databases, it was highly unlikely they would ever identify her, having been dumped so far from home. Pathologist Professor Christopher Milroy stated of the way she had been bound and asphyxiated, “I’ve only seen that once, during a professional presentation”, so it couldn’t be linked to any British killer. One witness stated how he saw a man, on a date near to when the body was dumped, 15 metres from the suitcase and 20 metres from the junction of York Road where a dark-coloured saloon was parked, he saw a man in the middle of the road, "I found it strange that someone was in that lane at that time of the morning”. He described him as “white, late 30s to early 40s, 6 foot tall, with dark brown scruffy hair and a heavy stubble, wearing a black ski-type jacket, dark jeans or trousers, and black gloves”. It was an excellent description of Hyun-Han’s killer… with one key exception, he wasn’t white. As for the brightly coloured parcel tape used to bind and gag her, that was from a limited edition set of 850 rolls, produced exclusively for the Tate Gallery shops in London, Liverpool and Cornwall. It was a reproduction of a piece called ‘Death, Hope, Life and Fear’ by conceptual artists Gilbert & George. It was something so unique, it should have snared her killer within days, but with many months having passed, most transactions by cash and the CCTV long since erased, the case was crumbling, and all they knew was that she was an unknown woman from somewhere who died somehow by someone… …the evidence had reached a dead end, and what they needed was a bit of luck. Superintendent Lin Byong Ho was a South Korean police officer who was studying criminal justice at Leeds University; having read the report of the body in the suitcase, the appeal by Hyun-Han’s brother, and with every South Korean required to provide their fingerprints for their social security cards, by the 2nd of January 2002, 45 days after the body was found, she was identified as Hyun-Han Jin. With her name, they had her bank details, and except for an erroneous transaction in Paris, which had occurred days after the pathology confirmed she was already dead, her phone data concluded it was switched off on Saturday the 27th of October, and it had been pinging the cell masts around Holborn. Keen to trace her movements, DCI Ankers came to London with the aim of catching her killer… …unaware that another body was lying motionless, bound and cold. Similar to Hyun-Han, In-Hea Song, a name meaning ‘grace’ and ‘longevity’, was a 22-year-old South Korean woman who had come to London to study hotel management at Guildhall University. As one of two children to a doting mother and a retired policeman, she was outgoing, popular and described as a model daughter, but having struggled financially, she’d quit her course and was looking for work. Again, staying within the safety of her community, in late November, she stayed at a recommended guesthouse owned by a close friend on Eagle Street in Holborn, the same room where Hyun-Han had been brutally murdered three weeks before, but needing somewhere cheaper to stay, the landlord offered his friend a spare room at the property where his girlfriend lived, a maisonette on the Lansbury Estate in Poplar, East London. Hyun-Han & In-Hea never knew each other, and they had never met… …but they would cross paths in a very deadly way. Kyu Soo Kim, his first name which bizarrely means ‘model citizen’ was a 29-year-old South Korean man who had come to England one year before to study English at the Callam Language School on Oxford Street. Kyu was well-liked, popular, kind and charming, and having a fairly conventional middle-class upbringing with his father running a herbal medicine shop in Seoul, having divorced his wife, Kyu had travelled across Europe, south-east Asia, Canada, and for the last year at least, he had lived in London. Being smart, he had funded himself by subletting his spare rooms, one on Eagle Street in Holborn and Augusta Street in Poplar to South Korean students, and being cheap, clean and safe, it proved popular. Every tenant who stayed at his guesthouse said he was “handsome”, “charming”, “very helpful”, and as strangers in a city full of danger, he was the person they knew they could rely on. But even though he had no criminal record in the UK, Kyu was not what he seemed. He professed to be generous to a fault, when in truth he was broke having amassed £17,000 in debt in a single year. He also gave the impression to the girls who stayed with him that he was un-threatening, with In-Hea telling her friends “we were like brother and sister”, but all the while, his head was riddled with his deadly addiction. It wasn’t drink or drugs, but porn; hardcore porn involving bondage, sadomasochism, strangulation, pain and the degradation and humiliation of women, and an obsession with their long lingering deaths. By day, he was charm personified. By night, a perverted danger to women. By September 2001, barely a few months after they had got together, Mariko, his girlfriend split with, just weeks before his killings began, she packed her bags and left the guesthouse in Poplar, leaving behind a half-used roll of parcel tape; limited edition and brightly-coloured made for the Tate Gallery shops by artists Gilbert & George. It became a key part of his cruel fantasy, and a crucial piece of the evidence. As before, with no witnesses and the crime scene undiscovered for months, all we have is the evidence itself. In-Hea Song had stayed at his guesthouse on the Lansbury Estate for a little over a week, it was quiet, cheap and the kind of six-storey block of 1960s flats where everyone minded their own business. Nobody saw her move in, nobody knew her name, few people knew him, and nobody saw her leave. Saturday 8th of December 2001 would have been a typical evening for In-Hea, as being short on cash, she wasn’t dressed to go out. There would be no sign of a break-in as her killer had his own key being her landlord; she willingly let him in, as being a close friend, her bedroom door was always open; and as someone she trusted, he overpowered her in a single punch, knocking her cold, and out of the blue. As before, being semi-clad, he bound her wrists and ankles with the packing tape so she couldn’t flee. Stuffing her socks into her mouth, she couldn’t cry or scream. And winding the tape around her head, so tight her eyes bulged out, with a flap over her nostrils, only he could decree if she lived or died. Living out his dark fantasy for a second time, having tortured her to obtain her PIN number, and leaving her bound and barely able to breathe as he drained her account at the nearest ATM, she must have had a faint hope that he may let her live having given him what he wanted – money, but as the tape cut into her flesh and a bloody froth gasped around the air holes, he watched as he subjected her to long lingering death. It is uncertain how long it lasted, but for her sake, let’s hope her death was quick. Unlike Hyun-Han, as a free spirit who had lived in London for almost two years, In-Hea’s family were used to hearing from her intermittently, and no longer being at university, she wasn’t reported missing for ten days. As before, her empty bank account and switched off phone told a story of a woman who had fled and didn’t want to be found by anyone. Kyu told her friends the believable tale that she had gone on a hotel management course, but didn’t say where. And having told the same lie to her mother, he gave her a false hope that her daughter was alive and well, when he knew she was cold and dead. With the body of Hyun-Han found in a suitcase three weeks before, knowing it wouldn’t be long before detectives found the one thing which connected them – the guesthouses – Kyu used her credit card at a travel agents, and on Thursday 13th of December 2001, at Heathrow Airport he fled to Toronto… …and there, as someone who for many years had lived off-grid and anonymously, making a living by cash in hand and blending in amongst the Korean community overseas, he may never be found. With Hyun-Han’s fingerprints leading to her identification, DCI Anker of North Yorkshire Police came to London, and having met with his Met Police counterpart, DCI Vic Ray, they unearthed an unnerving parallel; Hyun-Han Jin, a young female South Korean student had vanished without trace, her phone off, her bank account emptied and a trail of clues suggesting she had fled overseas, which proved to be false when her body was found, bound, gagged and suffocated. DCI Ray had been handed a missing persons inquiry into In-Hea Song, a young female South Korean student who vanished in a similar way. But were they connected? Escalated to the Met Police’s Murder Command, Detective Superintendent Peter Ship would oversea both inquiries, and together with North Yorkshire Police, on the 8th of January 2002, they established a joint investigation into the murder of Hyun-Han Jin and the disappearance of In-Hea Song, stating "we identified him early on, as he was the main link between the girls, and both stayed at Eagle Street" His phone records showed he had travelled to and from the village of Askham Richard where the body was dumped on the night he dumped it. Tracing his bank account, a Peugeot 406 had been hired from Avis, the log book matched the distance, Hyun-Han’s blood was found in the boot having leaked from her suitcase, and the rubber supports on its underside matched those which marked the boot’s carpet. Establishing that he had left the country just five days before In-Hea was reported missing, both of his guesthouses were searched. At the maisonette on the Lansbury Estate in Poplar, her DNA and traces of her blood was found, and although none of her possessions remained, on a black metal shelf, the roll of Gilbert & George tape was found with Kyu’s fingerprints and In-Hea’s blood. Indisputable proof. But where was her body? He hadn’t hired another car, he hadn’t travelled outside of London, no-one had seen him wheeling a suitcase out of the flat, and forensics checked the flat twice. It wasn’t there. In the Eagle Street flat, although an extensive clean-up had taken place and several students had lived there in the three months since, her blood was found on the skirting board and the same rubber marks on the wardrobe’s carpet where the body in the suitcase sat, while Kyu worked out where to dump it. But where was the other body? It had vanished without a trace. On Thursday 17th of January 2002, for reasons only Kyu knows, with detectives searching for him, he flew back to London Heathrow, and with a warrant issued for his arrest, his passport pinged up on the Police radar, they tracked him to an internet café on Oxford Street, and that day, he was arrested. Interviewed at West End Central police station, he was described as cold, calculating and even when faced with the evidence against him, via an interpreter, the only words he said was “no comment”. They charged him with the murder of Hyun-Han Jin, and suspicion of the murder of In-Hea Song, but without her body, in the same way he had tortured these girls for his own sexual gratification, he got pleasure by denying In-Hea’s family a chance to grieve their dead daughter and bury her with dignity. But sometimes, evidence will only emerge at its own speed. On Friday the 15th of March 2002, three months after her murder, with the maisonette on the Lansbury Estate in Poplar sold to new owners, a builder was renovating the flat and he spotted a familiar hum, as a swarm of bluebottles (one of the first insects to be attracted by the smell of decaying flesh into which it lays its eggs, and maggots feed) coming from a wooden panel underneath the bath. Removing it, he couldn’t see anything, but saw that they were coming from a hole, where a foul odour emanated. The Police had searched the flat twice, but it was only as the spring temperatures caused the maggots to feast and the eggs to hatch as their winter hibernation ended, that the body could be found. Beside the front door, in a small unused cavity wall space made of bricks and breeze blocks, Kyu had dumped her semi-clad and bound body, wrapping it in a duvet, covering it in her clothes and possessions, and replacing the partition wall, using a masking gun, he had sealed it up so the smell wouldn’t permeate… …at least until Spring. She was positively identified as In-Hea Song, and finally her family had peace. (End) Committed for trial on the 25th of March 2002, one week after his further arrest for double murder, on Tuesday 4th of March 2003 before Judge Jeremy Roberts, Kyu Soo Kim was tried at the Old Bailey. On the first day, he denied all charges of murder. On the second, he confessed to killing Hyun-Han, yet he claimed that In-Hea’s death was due to the lesser charge of manslaughter owing to a sex-game gone wrong. But as Jonathan Laidlaw QC for the Prosecution stated “there were some circumstances where we would accept a manslaughter plea. This is not one of those cases", and the judge agreed. Giving no evidence at his own trial, Kyu’s motive could only be guessed – was it about money, sex, or the humiliation and degradation of women – and with the deliberation delayed as one of the jury felt sick at hearing the evidence, on Tuesday 25th of March 2003, they reached a verdict on the murders. ‘Guilty’. Handed two life sentences with a minimum of 25 years, he will be eligible for parole next year. Summing up, Judge Roberts described his crimes as "exceptionally wicked… you snuffed out the lives of two innocent young girls who trusted you and believed you were their friend. You did that in a way which must have been exceptionally distressing to them and caused untold misery and anxiety to their families". And although a sadistic and perverted killer was locked up, another mystery remained. Having travelled extensively across Europe, south-east Asia and Canada for the last decade, Kyu Soo Kim only came to the UK in September 2000. He had lived here for just one year, and in that time, he had committed two brutal and horrific murders. So, why did he start, and were these his first murders? Detective Superintendent Ship stated "my concern is that he has committed two offences, very similar in nature, within a fairly short period time. I am fairly confident he has not claimed other lives in the UK… I cannot rule out that he hasn’t committed offences elsewhere… it is a concern, and we have linked with other law enforcement agencies, but it is not for us to say how far those investigations go" Kyu Soo Kim has never given a statement as to whether he has committed any further murders. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster of Murder Mile UK True Crime and creator of true-crime TV series. 
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