Jeong Yoo-jeong, convicted of murdering ex-husband, sentenced to life imprisonment... acquitted of charges in step-son's death case

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Baek Kyunghwan] The life sentence was confirmed for Ko Yoo-jeong, who was tried on charges of murdering her ex-husband and stepson. However, she was acquitted of the charge of killing her stepson.

On the 5th, the Supreme Court's 1st Division (Presiding Justice Kim Seonsu) announced that it upheld the original sentence of life imprisonment in Ko's appeal trial, who was indicted on charges of murder, corpse mutilation, and corpse concealment.

Ko was indicted for allegedly giving sleeping pills to her ex-husband Kang Mo at a pension in Jeju City in May last year, stabbing him to death with a weapon, mutilating the body, and then abandoning it. During this process, it was confirmed that Ko threw the mutilated body into the sea from a passenger ship or disposed of it at an apartment waste separation facility.

Throughout the trial, Ko claimed that she only stabbed Kang impulsively to defend herself from an attempted sexual assault and did not plan the crime.

However, both the first and second trials recognized premeditated murder. The absence of sexual assault traces, Ko's purchase of sleeping pills and a weapon before Kang's death, and her internet searches for "how to erase bloodstains" were key factors in the judgment. It was investigated that Ko decided to commit the crime because, although she taught her son, whom she had with Kang, to regard her remarried husband as his biological father, she could not avoid visitation with her son due to Kang's demands.

The first trial stated, "The victim's family petitions for severe punishment due to the sorrow of not even finding the body, and the biological son lost his father due to this tragic crime," and sentenced her to life imprisonment, saying, "The defendant ignored the pain of the victim and the family and shifted the responsibility of the crime onto the victim." The second trial also sentenced Ko to life imprisonment, recognizing that she deliberately killed Kang.

The Supreme Court also ruled, "The defendant's statement that the victim tried to sexually assault her on the day of the incident is not credible," and "It is sufficiently recognized that Ko meticulously planned the crime by searching for the crime tools and methods, obtaining and purchasing zolpidem in advance, and then killed the victim according to the plan, mutilated the corpse, and concealed it."

However, the Supreme Court did not recognize the charge of killing the stepson. Ko was also indicted for allegedly suffocating the son (then 4 years old) of her remarried husband's ex-wife while he was sleeping in March last year, but both the first and second trials acquitted her. This was based on the judgment that the possibility of so-called 'positional asphyxia,' where the child was suffocated by sleeping on the father's leg, could not be excluded. It was also considered difficult to specify the motive, cause of death, or time of death based solely on the prosecution's evidence.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.