Husband Acquitted of Killing Pregnant Wife... Wins First Trial Claiming "Give Me the Insurance Money"

[Asia Economy Reporter Bae Kyunghwan] A husband who was accused of deliberately causing a traffic accident to receive insurance money for his foreign wife won the first trial in a lawsuit against the insurance company for payment of the insurance money.

On the 28th, the Civil Division 37 of the Seoul Central District Court (Chief Judge Park Seokgeun) ruled in favor of the plaintiff in the insurance payment lawsuit filed by the husband, Mr. Lee, against Samsung Life Insurance, ordering "Samsung Life Insurance to pay Mr. Lee 202.08 million KRW and 60 million KRW to Mr. Lee's children."

Mr. Lee was prosecuted on charges of crashing a van into a parked truck on the shoulder near Cheonan IC on the Gyeongbu Expressway in August 2014. At the time of the accident, his Cambodian wife, who was seven months pregnant, died.

The prosecution applied murder charges based on the fact that Mr. Lee had multiple insurance contracts worth about 9.5 billion KRW in his wife's name and that a sedative component was detected in the bloodstain of his wife.

The first trial acquitted him, stating that the crime could not be proven with indirect evidence alone, but the appellate court sentenced him to life imprisonment based on the fact that Mr. A had subscribed to multiple insurances before the crime. The Supreme Court then remanded the case with a verdict of not guilty, stating that the motive for the crime was unclear. The retrial recognized only the charge of causing death under the Special Act on Traffic Accident Handling as guilty.

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