{"id":24119,"date":"2025-09-15T17:04:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T17:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/24119\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T17:04:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T17:04:11","slug":"suitcase-murder-trial-accuseds-spending-skyrocketed-before-deaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/24119\/","title":{"rendered":"Suitcase murder trial: Accused’s spending skyrocketed before deaths"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Finn Blackwell of RNZ<\/a><\/p>\n

A forensic accountant has told the High Court at Auckland the spending of a woman accused of murdering her children and hiding their bodies in suitcases skyrocketed after her husband’s death.<\/p>\n

Hakyung Lee\u00a0faces two charges\u00a0of murder over the deaths of her children Yuna and Minu Jo in 2018.<\/p>\n

The bodies of Minu Jo and Yuna Jo, aged six and eight at the time of their deaths, were discovered in suitcases almost four years after they were killed, when a family bought the contents of an abandoned storage locker in an online auction.<\/p>\n

Lee’s standby counsel argued she was insane at the time following a “descent into madness” that began with the death of her husband Ian Jo from cancer in 2017.<\/p>\n

The Crown, however, argued Lee’s actions after the deaths of her children – including hiring a storage unit, moving the bodies, changing her name and fleeing to Korea – showed she knew what she was doing, and knew it was wrong.<\/p>\n

In court on Monday morning, forensic accountant Andrew Yoon told jurors he had gone through the couple’s bank accounts.<\/p>\n

He said Lee’s total credit card spending went up by 1397 percent after her husband’s death, from about $800 a month in the roughly 10 months leading up to his passing to $11,992 a month in the eight months after, excluding funeral costs.<\/p>\n

“From the credit cards, they have purchased a lot of international flights and 5 star hotels overseas, and lots of expenses and shopping overseas, that was observed.”<\/p>\n

Lee took her children and mother to the Gold Coast in Australia shortly after her husband’s death, where her mother\u00a0took notice of her expensive spending.<\/p>\n

Yoon was asked by Crown Prosecutor Jay Tausi about the travel expenses before this holiday and Jo’s death, between January and November 2017.<\/p>\n

There was $4071 spent, which included flights Ian Jo took to South Korea, Yoon said.<\/p>\n

Jurors heard earlier that Jo had gone to Korea for medical treatment, but\u00a0came back after it was unsuccessful.<\/p>\n

Yoon calculated after Jo’s passing, Lee spent $33,593 – more than $4000 a month – on holidays and travel alone.<\/p>\n

Tausi and Yoon went through payments made by Lee to Safe Store, where the children’s bodies were kept until their discovery in 2022.<\/p>\n

Lee paid a total of $16,330 to Safe Store between July 2018 and April 2022, Yoon said.<\/p>\n

Yoon said Lee would move money between different bank accounts to make storage payments when her primary account got low.<\/p>\n

Yoon was cross examined by Lee’s standby counsel Chris Wilkinson-Smith, who asked about the family’s spending prior to Jo’s diagnosis, which Yoon said appeared normal, if not modest for a single income family.<\/p>\n

Wilkinson-Smith asked about the period Lee left to South Korea, shortly after when the Crown claimed she had murdered her children.<\/p>\n

She had transferred $152,900 to her Korean bank account, Yoon said.<\/p>\n

In the four year period she was in South Korea, Lee would have a little more than $3000 a month to spend.<\/p>\n

Wilkinson-Smith asked if through his observation there had been any spending related to children after 23 June 2018, which Yoon said there had not.<\/p>\n

“You also confirm that you were unable to locate any expenditure that related to the children from the period 23 June 2018 to the 29th of July 2018,” Wilkinson-Smith asked.<\/p>\n

“Correct,” Yoon replied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Finn Blackwell of RNZ A forensic accountant has told the High Court at Auckland the spending of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-24119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}