Brooke Davies
Published November 26, 2025 6:42am
Updated November 26, 2025 6:44am
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Hakyung Lee looks down during her sentencing to life imprisonment for the murder of her two children(Picture: AFP)
A mum-of-two has been jailed for life after she murdered both of her children and kept them inside a suitcase left in a storage unit for four years.
Hakyung Lee, 44, murdered eight-year-old Yuna Jo and six-year-old Minu Jo in 2018, but their remains were not discovered until August 2022.
She had stopped paying rental fees on the unit, meaning the contents of the locker were auctioned online.
It was only when the buyers took the suitcases home did they discover the bodies, with both children found fully clothed and wrapped in several layers of plastic.
Lee could be seen looking down at her feet as she is sentenced to life imprisonment at Auckland High Court.
A post-mortem examination was unable to determine their exact cause of death due to the amount of time between their death and the discovery of their remains.
Lee murdered murdered eight-year-old Yuna Jo and six-year-old Minu Jo in 2018 (Picture: RNZ)
The family before the deaths of Lee’s husband and father of her two children
The pathologist found the children had died by homicide by unspecified means, including the use of the antidepressant Nortriptyline.
Lee, a New Zealand citizen, changed her name from Ji Eun (Jasmine) Lee and flew to South Korea shortly after the murders.
She went undiscovered for years, cutting contact with friends and family, but was found by her mother at a hospital in 2022 after being admitted for mental health treatment.
Lee’s mother asked about the whereabouts of her children, to which she chillingly replied: ‘I have no children.’
She had pleaded guilty by reason of insanity. Her lawyers argued she spiralled after her husband died from cancer in 2017 and Lee believed it would be best if they all died together.
Lee ahs been sentenced to life in prison (Picture: AP)
The defence said she tried to kill herself and her children with the antidepressant, but she got the dose wrong, and when she woke up, the children were dead.
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Crown prosecutor Natalie Walker told the court: ‘The Crown suggests that when she gave her two young children nortriptyline, it was a selfish act to free herself from the burden of parenting alone.
‘It was not the altruistic act of a mother who had lost her mind and believed it was the right thing to do; it was the opposite.
‘However unthinkable her actions and killing her children were, you may think there was a cold calculation in them… showing ruthless rationality of action.
‘There is no evidence other than her own self-serving accounts. Ms Lee deliberately, and in sound mind, deliberately murdered Minu and Yuna and the right verdict is guilty of murder.’
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