Suspect Lee Hyeongwon, 29. Photo courtesy of the police.

Lee Hyeongwon, 29, came to Vietnam on November 1. He planned to flee the country soon after murdering 49-year-old Jung Young Sook, said Nguyen Dang Nam, head of the criminal department of HCMC Police.

On December 21, Hyeongwon entered Sook's home in Tan Phong Ward, District 7 and killed her with a knife. Sook's husband and 16-year-old daughter were also attacked and heavily injured, said police.

They said the man had prepared carefully, seizing all the victims' cell phones so that they could not alert anyone.

Hyeongwon then escaped the scene in a car belonging to the family and took it to an abandoned field next to Thu Thiem Bridge in District 2, about 10 km away from the family's home. He burned the car.

Initial investigations have shown that Sook and her husband had business disputes with an unidentified fellow South Korean, who hired Hyeongwon to kill them.

A 4-seat car of a South Korean woman is found burnt in a field in Saigon's District 2, December 21, 2019. Photo by VnExpress/Xuan Chung.

"This is an especially serious murder," said Tu Luong, deputy director of Ho Chi Minh City's Department of Information and Communications, adding that more information would be revealed to the press later.

The murder first broke news last Saturday after neighbors and construction workers heard screams and alerted the police at around 2 a.m. Sook was found dead and her husband and daughter were rushed to a local hospital.