A woman was sentenced to life in prison this Wednesday morning for killing her two children and hiding their bodies for several years in a storage unit, a crime known in New Zealand as the “suitcase murders”. The case made headlines when the bodies of the two children, aged 6 and 8, were found in August 2022 in suitcases stored in a storage unit in Auckland.
Quickly identified as the children’s mother and suspected of murder, Hakyung Lee, a 45-year-old New Zealand citizen, was extradited the same year from South Korea, her country of origin and refuge, after changing her name.
He was sentenced Wednesday by Judge Geoffrey Venning of the High Court in Auckland, the northern metropolitan city, to life in prison, with a secured term of 17 years.
Investigators estimate the children, Minu Jo and Yuna Jo, died three to four years before their bodies were discovered by auction buyers in an abandoned storage unit. Both children died of drug overdoses.
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Throughout the trial in September, the defendant sat with his head bowed, his hair covering his face, without ever speaking. Hakyung Lee was found guilty after two hours of deliberations by a jury at Auckland High Court. He showed no particular reaction Wednesday to the announcement of the sentence.
