A woman has been sentenced to life in prison at the High Court in Auckland for the 2018 murders of her two young children, whose remains were discovered inside suitcases four years later. Hakyung Lee, 45, received the sentence on Tuesday with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years for killing her 6-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son.
Justice Geoffrey Venning delivered the sentence, ordering that Lee must receive compulsory treatment at a secure psychiatric facility. According to the New Zealand Herald, she will be transferred to prison if she is later deemed mentally fit. During the sentencing, Justice Venning stated, “You knew your actions were morally wrong.”
The case gained public attention in August 2022 after a family purchased the contents of an abandoned storage locker in Auckland at an auction. Upon examining the purchased items, they discovered the remains of the two children inside two suitcases, leading to a police investigation.
Forensic evidence helped police identify the children and determine that they had been deceased for several years. The investigation led authorities to Lee, the children’s mother, who had since moved to South Korea. She was arrested in the city of Ulsan in September 2022 and extradited to New Zealand in November of that year to face murder charges.
During the trial, Lee admitted to causing her children’s deaths but pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. The defense argued that the 2017 death of her husband from cancer had triggered a severe decline in her mental health. A forensic psychiatrist testified for the defense, describing Lee’s depression and a belief that killing her children was the appropriate course of action.
The prosecution countered that Lee’s actions demonstrated a calculated effort to conceal the deaths. They pointed to her steps to place the bodies in suitcases, move them to a storage facility, and subsequently leave the country as evidence that she understood the moral wrongfulness of her actions.
At the sentencing hearing, the court heard victim impact statements from the children’s family members. A statement from the children’s maternal grandmother, Choon Ja Lee, was read to the court, asking, “If she wanted to die, why didn’t she die alone? Why did she take the innocent children with her?”
Sei Wook Cho, the children’s paternal uncle, also provided a statement that was read in court. He said, “It was my late brother’s will that I protect them. They were our hope for the future. This is an ongoing sentence from which I can never be paroled.”
Life imprisonment is the maximum penalty for murder in New Zealand.
