Supreme Court Overturns and Remands Original Sentence, Sentencing Biological Mother Seok Mo to 8 Years in Prison for 'Gumi 3-Year-Old Girl' Case

The biological mother, Ms. Seok (49), of the 3-year-old girl who died in Gumi, Gyeongbuk, leaving the Daegu District Court Gimcheon Branch on August 17 last year after being sentenced to 8 years in prison in the first trial.

[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Seok-jin, Legal Affairs Specialist] The Supreme Court overturned the original sentence of 8 years imprisonment given to the biological mother of a '3-year-old girl' who died in a villa in Gumi, Gyeongbuk.

On the 16th, the Supreme Court's 2nd Division (Presiding Justice Lee Dong-won) overturned the original sentence of 8 years imprisonment in the appeal trial of Seok (49), who was detained and prosecuted on charges of kidnapping a minor and attempted concealment of a corpse, and remanded the case to the Daegu District Court.

The court stated, "Although there is a DNA test result confirming that the girl in this case is the defendant's daughter, the evidentiary power does not directly extend to proving that the defendant kidnapped the victim by swapping her with the girl in this case."

Seok had pretended to be the deceased girl's maternal grandmother until the time of the incident but was revealed to be the biological mother during the investigation, causing shock.

Seok is accused of swapping the child born to her biological daughter Kim (23, currently serving a sentence) with the child she gave birth to (the deceased 3-year-old girl) at an obstetrics clinic in Gumi between the afternoon of March 31, 2018, and the next morning, and then secretly taking her daughter's child somewhere.

Additionally, Seok is accused of attempting to bury the deceased 3-year-old girl by placing the body in a box and moving it from the villa where her daughter lived on February 9 of last year, one day before reporting the girl's death to the police, but abandoned the attempt.

Throughout the investigation and trial, Seok consistently denied giving birth, but after four rounds of testing, the results showed a 99% or higher probability of a biological relationship with the deceased girl.

Previously, the first and second trial courts sufficiently recognized through various indirect facts that Seok had swapped the children, and judged that Seok, who had not had sexual relations with her husband for over 10 years, committed this crime to hide her affair and to keep the child she gave birth to close by.

However, the Supreme Court found it difficult to accept the evidentiary power of the crime of kidnapping the child based solely on the DNA test result that the deceased girl was Seok's daughter, without confirming a convincing motive or purpose for the crime.

Meanwhile, Kim, Seok's daughter, who actually raised the baby?who was her younger sibling?as her own child and neglected her, leading to the child's death, was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment up to the second trial and gave up on appealing, finalizing her sentence.

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