A mum-of-two has been found guilty of murdering both of her children and covering it up for four years.
Hakyung Lee, 44, murdered eight-year-old Yuna Jo and six-year-old Minu Jo in 2018.
She put their bodies inside suitcases and left them inside a storage unit for four years.
Their remains were found at the unit in August 2022, after Lee ran into financial difficulties and stopped paying the rental fees.
The contents of the locker were auctioned online, and when the buyers took the suitcases home they found the bodies of Yuna Jo and Mina Jo inside.
Both children were fully clothed and wrapped in several layers of plastic bags inside the suitcases.
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.
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 was arrested in September 2022 in South Korea and extradited to New Zealand to face trial.
Lee has now been found guilty of murder at the High Court in Auckland, MailOnline reports.
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.
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.
But the jury returned a unanimous verdict on both murder charges following a more than two week trial and about three hours of deliberations.
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.’
Lee gave no reaction and looked down at the floor as the verdict was delivered. She will be sentenced on November 26.
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