Hakyung Lee, a South Korean-born New Zealand woman, was found guilty in the High Court in Auckland, New Zealand, of the murder of her two minor children, Minu Jo, six, and Yuna Jo, eight.
Lee administered a fatal dose of prescription medication to the children around July 2018. He then stuffed their bodies into suitcases and left them at a rented storage facility in Auckland, RNZ reported.
The remains weren’t discovered until August 2022, four years after her death. The gruesome discovery came after Hakyung Lee stopped paying storage fees due to financial hardship.
The contents of the storage unit were auctioned off, and the new owners discovered the bodies when they opened the luggage in their home. A forensic pathologist testified that, due to the four-year delay in discovery, the exact cause of death was difficult to determine.
It is believed the death may have been related to the medication Hakyung Lee was prescribed for sleep problems, which was not suitable for children. According to the court’s reconstruction, Lee may have given nortriptyline to her two children. The children were found clothed and wrapped in multiple layers of plastic bags.
Following the murders, Lee fled Auckland for South Korea in the second half of 2018. Once back in her home country, she is believed to have changed her name and cut ties with friends and family . She was later located at a hospital by her own mother, where she had been admitted for mental health treatment in 2022.
When asked about her children, she replied, “I don’t have any.” She was arrested that year and extradited to New Zealand to face trial.
Mother convicted of murdering her children in New Zealand
During the two-week trial, Hakyung Lee represented herself, although she followed the hearings via video call from a separate courtroom with an interpreter.
Lee’s defense team argued that she was not criminally responsible due to mental illness. Lee’s attorney, Lorraine Smith, argued that the death of her husband, Ian Jo, from cancer in 2017 had triggered a “profound descent” into mental illness that caused her to irrationally believe the only solution was to kill herself and her children.
Her lawyers maintained that the woman was “deeply disturbed” and feared taking her own life and leaving her children alone to discover her body, believing that killing them was the “morally right” thing to do. Court documents prior to her husband’s death revealed that Lee had already threatened to kill herself and her children if her husband died.
Crown prosecutor Natalie Walker rejected the defense’s argument. Walker maintained that Hakyung Lee’s actions evidenced “deliberate and rational planning.”
The prosecution asserted that the murders were not acts of delusion, but a cold and calculated decision “to free herself from the burden of single motherhood.” “It was not the altruistic act of a mother who had lost her mind and believed it was the morally right thing to do; it was quite the opposite,” Walker said.
She added that Hakyung Lee’s subsequent behavior—changing her name, fleeing the country, and cutting off contact—demonstrated a desire to start a new life without her children, displaying “ruthless rationality.”
After a two-week trial and approximately three hours of jury deliberation, Hakyung Lee was found guilty on both counts of murder. The jury, composed of six men and six women, unanimously reached the verdict in less than four hours.
Superior Court Judge Geoffrey Venning ordered Lee to remain in custody and requested a mental health evaluation. The sentencing hearing was scheduled for November 26. In New Zealand, murder carries a mandatory life sentence, with a minimum non-parole period of 10 years.
