Suitcase killings: Mum gets life sentence for murdering children, hiding bodies

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Hakyung Lee appears at the Auckland High Court for sentencing after being found guilty of the murder of her two children. It's been two months since a jury found her guilty, rejecting the defence's bid for an insanity finding. The bodies of Yuna Jo, 8, and her little brother, Minu Jo, 6, were found inside suitcases that were removed Lee's abandoned storage facility in 2022 - four years after Lee, according to her own statements to a psychologist, gave them a fatal overdose of sleeping pills dissolved in juice.

Hakyung Lee stares downward during her sentencing at the Auckland High Court. Photo: RNZ/Marika Khabazi

The woman convicted of murdering her children and hiding their bodies in suitcases has been handed a life sentence.

Hakyung Lee faced two charges of murder over the deaths of her children Yuna and Minu Jo in 2018. On Wednesday, she was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years.

The bodies of Minu Jo and Yuna Jo, aged six and eight at the time of their deaths, were discovered in suitcases almost four years after they were killed, when a family bought the contents of an abandoned storage locker in an online auction.

Lee's standby counsel argued she was insane at the time following a "descent into madness" that began with the death of her husband Ian Jo from cancer in 2017.