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A New Zealander who killed her two children and hid their bodies in suitcases was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday.
Hakyung Lee, 45, a New Zealand citizen originally from South Korea, was convicted in September following a three-week trial.
The remains of her children, Yuna, 8, and Minu, 6, were found inside suitcases in 2022 by a family who had purchased the contents of an abandoned storage unit at an auction in Auckland. The grisly crime shocked the country and grabbed international headlines.
Justice Geoffrey Venning of the Auckland High Court said Lee would begin her life sentence as a patient in a locked psychiatric facility under the nation’s compulsory mental health treatment law.
She is required to return to prison when she is well enough and serve at least 17 years of her prison term before she is eligible for parole.
Lee’s lawyers argued for a reduced sentence, saying she was not guilty by reason of insanity. They said she was insane at the time of the killings, which took place in 2018 after the death of her husband. Lee had come to believe it was best if the rest of the family also died.
Lee had attempted to kill herself and her children with an antidepressant, but misjudged the dosage and woke up to find them unresponsive.
Justice Venning examined Lee’s background and an updated psychiatric report, which indicated that she was likely suffering from atypical depression and prolonged grief at the time.
The judge said Lee’s mental health did play a part in the murders, but her actions were calculated.
Lee was not able to cope with the burden and responsibility of the children after her husband’s death due to her depression, he noted.
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Hakyung Lee has been sentenced to life in prison (AFP/Getty)
“You relied heavily on him during your marriage, you could not cope when he became seriously unwell, and perhaps you could not bear to have the children around you as a constant reminder of your former happy life, which had been cruelly taken from you,” the judge said.
Lee sat quietly in the dock with her head bowed down. She remained present during the hearing at the court but watched the trial from a separate courtroom at the High Court.
After killing her children, Lee changed her name and fled to South Korea, where she was arrested in Ulsan in September 2022 after police identified her as the mother of the deceased children. She was extradited to New Zealand soon after.
The sentencing hearing heard how the killing of her children left deep emotional scars on Lee’s family, with her mother’s emotional statement read out by prosecutors at the court.
Her mother recalled that Lee had no will to live after her husband died of cancer in November 2017 and she regretted not taking her daughter to a counsellor.
“If she wanted to die, why didn’t she die alone?” Choon Ja Lee said in her statement. “Why did she take the innocent children with her?”
Her late husband’s brother said he “never imagined such a profound tragedy would ever befall our family”. He said their mother still did not know the two children were dead.
“It was my late brother’s will that I protect them,” Jimmy Jo said. “This is an ongoing sentence from which I can never be paroled.”