Between 1986 and 1991, 10 Korean women were murdered and raped within a 2km radius in a small town outside of Seoul. With over 3000 suspects interrogated, the police were never able to indict anyone for the crimes. Based on this true story of Korea’s first serial killer, Palm Pictures’ MEMORIES OF MURDER is the culmination of a year’s worth of research, visits to the crime scenes and interviews with key detectives and reporters. Winner of three awards at both the San Sebastian International Film Festival and South Korea’s Grand Bell, this film stars an award-winning cast including Song Kang-Ho (Deauville Film Festival Best Actor Award for his starring role in the Palm Pictures DVD release, J.S.A.) and Kim Sang-Kyung (Turning Gate) (MBC Acting Awards Best New Actor Award winner, 1999.)

Filmed on locations throughout the Korean countryside, MEMORIES OF MURDER takes place in 1986 in the Gyunggi Province, where the body of a young woman is found brutally raped and murdered. Two months later, a series of rapes and murders commence under similar circumstances and the local police set up a task force in the area in response to catch the killer.

This is a story about two detectives, local detective Park Doo-Man (played by Song Kang-Ho) and the visiting city detective, Seo Tae-Yoon (played by Kim Sang-Kyung),who employ their separate strategies to find the killer. Park uses his instincts and fists to challenge every small-time crook in the area, while Seo, because of his peculiar personality ticks, pours over the evidence, although not even a single hair is ever found on the scene. At this time, there was no profiling mechanisms, or any idea of preserving the crime scene for forensic investigation. The two detectives only had a “search and interrogation” method based on their own sense of duty and persistence. The two detectives must mesh the ways of new and old to try to solve a mystery in a time when people were unable to comprehend the unbelievable acts before them.

Director Bong Joon-Ho began this film with a single image — a brutally murdered woman found naked in a remote village on a beautiful, sunny afternoon. His motivation for the film is to enrage the audience at not just the murder, but the circumstances that enabled such horrible murders to take place. Joon-Ho is best known for his first film, Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000), which was honored at film festivals worldwide, including the Hong Kong International Film Festival and the Munich International Film Festival, among others.