The sensational case of a suspected serial killer that has saturated South Korean media this week has led to calls from leading public and political figures to end an 11-year de facto moratorium on executions.

South Korea has tread cautiously concerning executions, given the country's tainted past with capital punishment. Hundreds were sent to their deaths for arbitrary reasons by authoritarian Presidents who ruled the country for decades.

Analysts said public sentiment toward resuming executions has shifted dramatically after a South Korean cattle farmer allegedly confessed last week to killing at least seven women and disposing their bodies in shallow graves in suburbs south of Seoul.

"The death penalty is the only way to punish criminals as atrocious as this one," Park Jun-seon, a lawmaker with the ruling, conservative Grand National Party, said in a statement that called for a resumption of executions.

Internet discussion boards in the world's most wired country have been awash in debates on resuming executions, with most sharing the sentiments of the lawmaker.

"This case grabs the attention of the public and has certainly rekindled public debate on the death penalty," said Chun Sangchin, associate sociology professor at Sogang University.

Police paraded the suspect, who has yet to be charged, in front of TV cameras this week to re-enact his alleged crimes, showing investigators how he supposedly cut off finger tips with pruning shears to dispose of evidence and dug graves in deserted hillsides.

Police said the suspect told them he usually picked up his victims at karaoke bars or bus stops and offered them rides. He then raped the women, strangled them with nylon stockings and buried their bodies.

South Korea has come close to ending capital punishment but MPs seeking to ban the practise have fallen slightly short of the votes needed to repeal the law.

South Korea has carried out 902 executions since it was legalised in 1948, and now has 58 people on death row, local media said.