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A New Zealand court has handed down a life sentence to a 45-year-old mother for the murder of her two young children, whose bodies were discovered in suitcases bought by an unsuspecting family at a storage locker auction.
Hakyung Lee, a New Zealand citizen originally from South Korea, showed no visible emotion as High Court Justice Geoffrey Venning delivered the ruling, describing the killings as a shocking crime against particularly vulnerable victims.
The court heard that Lee poisoned her two children, seven-year-old Yuna Jo and six-year-old Minu Jo, in what prosecutors described as an act of profound grief following the death of her husband from cancer. Evidence suggested she had initially intended to take her own life as well.
After the killings in 2018, Lee wrapped the children’s bodies and concealed them inside two suitcases, which she then stored in a facility near Auckland. The grim discovery was made four years later, in 2022, when a family who had purchased the contents of the abandoned locker made the traumatic find.
Lee was later tracked down and arrested in Ulsan, South Korea, before being extradited to New Zealand to face trial. The central question for the court was not whether Lee had committed the acts, but whether she was legally insane at the time and could therefore be held morally responsible for her actions. The jury found her guilty, leading to the mandatory life sentence.
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