NZ News
Suitcase murders-accused wanted ‘to die in New Zealand’, court hears
Warning: This story mentions suicide and deals with mental health and child homicide.
The police officer who extradited a woman accused of murdering her children and hiding their bodies in suitcases back from South Korea says she told him she did not do it.
Hakyung Lee is charged with the murders of her children Minu and Yuna Jo.
The bodies of the six and eight-year-old were discovered in suitcases almost four years after they were killed, when a family bought the contents of an abandoned storage locker in an Auckland auction.
Lee, who was born Ji Eun Lee, is representing herself in the trial in the High Court at Auckland, assisted by two standby counsel.
She admits causing her children’s deaths and putting their remains in suitcases in storage, but argues she is not guilty by reason of insanity at the time of the killings, following a “descent into madness” after the death of her husband Ian Jo in late 2017.
‘So many questions’ on extradition to NZ
On Tuesday, jurors heard from Detective Sergeant Sung Kyu Hwang, who escorted Lee after she was arrested and extradited from South Korea in 2022.
Detective Sergeant Hwang told the court he met Lee at the airport gate, before they boarded a plane back to New Zealand.
“I could see her panicking, and breathing with a paper bag on her mouth,” he said. “I saw a doctor assisting her to calm her down, and I saw Lee taking her medication.”
Lee told Hwang she was concerned about media coverage on her arrival to New Zealand, and was reassured steps would be taken so she was not exposed to reporters.
His duty was to safely escort her back to New Zealand, Hwang told her.
Hwang read Lee her rights on the plane in both Korean and English. Neither of them slept on the 11-hour flight back to the country.
Sat at the very back of the plane, Lee told Hwang she had “so many questions”.
“I was accused of something that I have not done,” Lee told him. “Nobody in Korea has told me about the details of the case, except that my children have been murdered and I am being accused of murdering those children.”
She said she had told Korean authorities she wanted to return to New Zealand as soon as possible and hold a funeral for the children.
Crown prosecutor Natalie Walker clarified Lee was travelling back in Hwang’s custody under an arrest warrant, rather than volunteering to return.
Hwang said Lee told him she was innocent, and made comments about committing suicide.
“I know who did it, but it does not matter,” she said.
“Proving innocence does not change anything, whether I get found guilty or not does not change anything. I just want to say that I did not do it, and I want to die in New Zealand along where my husband and children are.”
Lee told him her children were in an institution or an orphanage in New Zealand, Hwang said.
She told Hwang she had made a suicide attempt, which she reported to the police.
“Why would I reveal myself to the police if I killed my children?” she asked him.
Hwang said they arrived back in the country just after midday. He escorted Lee to an unmarked van and read her her rights once again in English and Korean.
At the police station Lee spoke with a lawyer, and agreed to give a DNA sample to police.
Hwang had also examined a Sony laptop found in the same storage unit as the children’s remains.
He said he found a number of internet searches about hotels and flights to the Gold Coast, twice to Korea and to Taupō, and noted searches relating to children were at a minimum.
Lee’s standby Counsel Chris Wilkinson-Smith cross examined Hwang, asking about more about the laptop and in particular Lee’s searches for renting storage.
Wilkinson-Smith took Hwang through a record where Lee had searched for storage facilities in November 2017.
Photo: Supplied
‘My heart is always with you’
Earlier that morning, jurors heard from a friend of Lee whose evidence was read by Crown prosecutor Natalie Walker.
In the statement, Eun Kyung Christine Cho said she was one of Lee’s close friends, with whom she kept in regular contact, before Cho moved to Australia.
She said the friendship was perfectly normal, talking every few months on a messaging platform and catching up with other friends.
Cho said she did not think Lee had any problems with her mental health.
“From what I know, Ji Eun did not suffer from any mental health issues,” she said. “She was always bright, smiley and joking around, just like any other normal person.”
Lee did not reveal to Cho her husband Ian Jo was sick with cancer, she said.
When Cho discovered Lee’s husband had died, she messaged her hoping to console her friend.
“You know that my heart is always with you right?” she wrote. “My dear sister, my heart aches when I think of your pain. Text me whenever you want to talk, I’ll call you right away.”
The pair met on the Gold Coast shortly after Jo’s death, and went to dinner.
“She looked normal. I think she did not accept the fact her husband had passed away,” Cho said.
“Initially she did not want to talk about her husband. I think she wanted to forget about her husband’s death.”
Photo: Lawrence Smith/ Stuff Pool
Cho said she had to ask several times before Lee spoke about Jo’s death.
While dining, Lee told Cho she wished the plane she and her family flew to Australia on would crash, so she and her children could “die together”, saying she would have been less sad if her children had died instead of her husband.
“I did not take this as anything unusual, I just thought it was part of the grieving process that she was going through,” Cho said.
After Lee returned to New Zealand, Cho said the two messaged one another in the following months.
Then, in June 2018, the messages stopped.
Cho messaged Lee again over the next five months, repeatedly with no reply. She asked if she had changed her name after noticing it was different on the messaging channel.
In her last message in November, she checked in with Lee after not hearing from her.
“Sis.. Are you doing alright? I am starting to get worried.”
The trial continues on Wednesday.
Where to get help:
- Need to Talk? Free call or text 1737 any time to speak to a trained counsellor, for any reason.
- Lifeline: 0800 543 354 or text HELP to 4357
- Suicide Crisis Helpline: 0508 828 865 / 0508 TAUTOKO (24/7). This is a service for people who may be thinking about suicide, or those who are concerned about family or friends.
- Depression Helpline: 0800 111 757 (24/7) or text 4202
- Samaritans: 0800 726 666 (24/7)
- Youthline: 0800 376 633 (24/7) or free text 234 (8am-12am), or email talk@youthline.co.nz|
- What’s Up: free counselling for 5 to 19 years old, online chat 11am-10.30pm 7 days/week or free phone 0800 WHATSUP / 0800 9428 787 11am-11pm
- Asian Family Services: 0800 862 342 Monday to Friday 9am to 8pm or text 832 Monday to Friday 9am – 5pm. Languages spoken: Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi and English.
- Rural Support Trust Helpline: 0800 787 254
- Healthline: 0800 611 116
- Rainbow Youth: (09) 376 4155\
- OUTLine: 0800 688 5463 (6pm-9pm)
If it is an emergency and you feel like you or someone else is at risk, call 111.
Source: RNZ
Latest News
Opportunities to mitigate multi-million-dollar RNZ budget blowout likely missed – experts
Multiple opportunities to identify and mitigate a multi-million-dollar budget blowout at RNZ appear have been missed, according to the former executive director at Audit New Zealand.
The public broadcaster on Monday revealed a near $12 million shock financial loss after a litany of financial blunders, which will now lead to sweeping job cuts.
The $11.8m loss is more than 25 times the $470,000 RNZ had expected to lose over the year to June.
CEO Paul Thompson took responsibility for the result, and said internal reports gave an inaccurate picture of the finances, meaning the scale of the loss only became clear in October.
RNZ’s former chief financial officer Hilary Parker resigned unexpectedly in early October.
The board said it would commission an independent review into what went wrong.
Independent contractor Stephen Walker, who left the Audit Office earlier this year, said the size of the loss was surprising, as was the length of time it took to identify it – months after the financial year ended.
Supplied / OAG
“Probably more of a concern is that they had seemingly been unaware that they were running up a significant deficit until they were in the preparation stage of their annual report in October.”
Walker said public entities typically produced monthly financial reports.
An interim audit also took place before the end of the financial year, he said, but if the organisation hadn’t identified significant losses at that stage, the auditor could also be in the dark.
“It seems that there’s a real weakness in forecasting and budgeting that’s occurred here and that the monthly accounts, when they’re produced, either haven’t identified these significant variances against budget or the magnitude of them really hasn’t come to light until right towards the end of the financial year,” Walker said.
“And really at that point, there’s no opportunity for the chief executive, the leadership team to take, and the board to take, any corrective action because the year has effectively been completed.”
Walker said the “significant miss” was difficult to account for given it was more than 10 percent of RNZ’s total funding.
He said based on RNZ’s annual report, financial complexity didn’t appear to be a factor.
“This $11.8m loss isn’t made up of one particular item … it seems to have been contributed to by a number of separate expense lines running over budget. So I don’t think it’s necessarily to do with complexity.”
Among the errors, RNZ wrongly counted $2m from land sales as income in its budget. Staff costs also came in $3.2m over budget, including $1.4m in redundancy payments.
Professor at Auckland University’s business school Norman Wong said based on media reports the issues identified were “significant and troubling”.
Supplied / University of Auckland
“But recognising the sale of land as income in their budget is a basic error that one would have expected to have been caught and corrected well before it got to this point.”
With funding reductions at RNZ over the past two years, Walker expected greater scrutiny of financial results.
“Virtually every public entity has had their annual budget reduced. And so you would expect … the leadership team on a monthly basis and board – I’m not sure how frequently the board will consider the information – but you would expect them to be interrogating the results on a regular basis throughout the year,” he said.
Walker said initiating an independent review was the correct course of action and that he’d want to understand what information the leadership team and the board were regularly receiving.
He said he’d “love to say” surprising financial results were rare, but conceded they occured on a semi-frequent basis during his time leading the Audit Office.
“The benefit of independent scrutiny by the Audit Office – and the auditors providing that support to the Auditor General – [is] that the reporting is fairly presented at the end of the year, whether it’s good, bad or ugly.”
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