In August 2022 the bodies of two children, Yuna and Minu Jo, were found in suitcases in Auckland, New Zealand. The suitcases were bought from the sale of a storage unit where the bodies are suspected to have been stored for multiple years. In September 2022, Hakyung Lee, the mother of the children, was arrested in South Korea. She was extradited to New Zealand, and has been charged with the children's murder. Her trial started on 8 September 2025. [1] Following a two week trial, Lee was convicted of murdering her two children on 23 September 2025. [2]
The defendant Hakyung Lee, who was born Ji Eun Lee, [3] is the mother of the two victims, who were subsequently identified as Minu and Yuna Jo on September 2023. [4] Lee migrated with her family from South Korea to New Zealand in 1993 at the age of 13. Following the death of her father in 1998, Lee returned to Korea for her university education at the age of 18 years. After two years in South Korea, she subsequently returned to New Zealand to study hospitality and met her future husband Ian Jo at a church, where she also served as a Sunday school teacher. In 2006, the couple married. [5] [6] The couple lived in an apartment before moving to a house in West Auckland. [6]
Lee's daughter Yuna Jo was born in September 2009 while her son Minu Jo was born in March 2012. [4] [7] The son Minu had a speech impediment caused by cleft palate. [8] The couple settled in a house in Papatoetoe following the birth of their children. [6] The children attended Papatoetoe South School. According to teacher Mary Robinson, the children were well-behaved. She described Lee and Ian Jo as "caring parents" who were interested in their children's education. [8] While Jo worked as a supervisor at Auckland Airport, Lee became a homestay mother for their two children. [5]
In November 2017, Ian Jo died from cancer. Lee was grief-stricken following her husband's death and did not inform her children that their father had passed away. In the months following Jo's death, Lee became suicidal, isolated and allegedly insane. Lee also told her mother that she wanted herself and her children to die with her late husband. [5] [9] In December 2017, Lee took her children on a two-month holiday in South Korea, staying at luxury hotels and spending NZ$32,000. In April 2018, Lee also stayed at a Hilton hotel in Taupō. In May 2018, Lee and her children travelled to the Gold Coast in Australia where they stayed at another Hilton hotel. In mid June 2018, Lee and her two children visited Queenstown in the South Island where they stayed at a Hilton hotel and visited several restaurants. [5] The children were last seen by relatives on 26 April 2018. [5]
According to Stuff and Radio New Zealand, the children last logged into Minecraft on 27 June 2018, where they each gained trophies. [10] [5] Minu was later found wearing underwear with "Wednesday" written on it. [11] Lee killed her children around late June 2018 by serving them juice mixed with the antidepressant drug Nortriptyline. The children did not awake from their sleep. Following their deaths, she wrapped and hid their bodies inside suitcases in a storage unit. [9] According to a pathologist, the children died by homicide of unspecified means associated with the antidepressant drug Nortriptyline. Due to the condition of their remains, the pathologist was unable to determine whether the children died from the drug or were incapacitated by the drug, and killed by other means. While both the prosecution and defence agree that Lee caused her children's deaths, they disagree on whether she was insane at the time. [5]
Following her children's deaths, Lee attempted suicide. While Lee said that she later regretted her actions, she claimed that she believed that she was doing the right thing at the time. [9] Due to self loathing and guilt stemming from killing her children, Lee changed her name from Ji Eun Lee to Hakyung Lee. [9] She returned to South Korea on a business class flight in July 2018. [5] According to Stuff, Lee also spent money on beauty treatments in order to start a new life in Korea. [10] While in Korea, Lee went to a clinic where she was diagnosed with depression and prescribed medication. In 2021, Lee began dating a man whom she met via a dating app. Lee described this relationship as traumatic and alleged that the man assaulted her. [9]
On 11 August 2022, human remains were found in two suitcases in Moncrieff Ave, Clendon Park. [12] The suitcases were bought by a family as part of a storage unit auction from Safe Store Papatoetoe. [13] The family brought the suitcases home along with other household objects. [14] They smelled something strange, opened one of the suitcase, discovered a body later identified as Minu Jo, then called the police. [11] New Zealand Police confirmed the family who bought the suitcases were not connected to the children's deaths. [13]
On 26 August, Police said the children may have been dead for up to four years. [15] In late September 2023, interim name suppression of the children was lifted by Coroner Tania Tetitaha. Their names were Minu Jo, who was born in March 2012, and Yuna Jo, who was born in September 2009. At the time of their deaths, the children were aged about six and eight years respectively. [4]
On 22 August 2022, New Zealand Police confirmed that they were aware that the children's mother had return to South Korea in 2018. [16] On 15 September 2022 the arrest of the children's mother in Ulsan, South Korea was announced. New Zealand authorities commenced extradition proceedings through the South Korean court system. The woman was arrested by Korean police on suspicion of "crimes against humanity", and will face two murder charges in New Zealand. [17] [18]
In November 2022, the South Korean Minister of Justice Han Dong-hoon approved the suspect's extradition. Earlier, the Seoul High Court had approved the woman's extradition after she had granted written consent. On 29 November, the children's mother was extradited by South Korean authorities, who also submitted "significant pieces of evidence" to their New Zealand counterparts. [19] [20]
On 30 November 2022, the suspect appeared at the Manukau District Court in South Auckland where she entered no plea. She was remanded into custody and the identities of the suspect, her children, and an unidentified relative were suppressed. [19] [20] On 14 December, she pleaded not guilty and was remanded in custody. [21] On 3 May 2023, during an administrative hearing she said "I'm going to prove my innocence". [22] On 8 May, her lawyers argued for continued name suppression in the Court of Appeals. [23]
On 19 July 2023, the suspect was identified as Hakyung Lee, the mother of the two children. The New Zealand Court of Appeal lifted name suppression, rejecting her lawyer Chris Wilkinson-Smith's argument that publishing her identity would result in extreme hardship, endanger her safety, and prejudice her ability to engage in court proceedings or medical assessments. Lee has denied murdering her children and has pleaded not guilty. [24] On 25 September 2023, Coroner Tania Tetitaha lifted interim name suppression for the deceased children. In response to the lifting of name suppression, two New Zealand-based relatives applied to have their names and identifying details suppressed. [4]
Lee's trial was scheduled to start on 29 April 2024, [21] [4] but for undisclosed legal reasons was postponed to 8 September 2025. [25] [26] [27]
On 8 September 2025, Lee pleaded not guilty to two murder charges at the Auckland High Court. Justice Geoffrey Venning indicated that she would raise an insanity defence. She is representing herself with the assistance of two court-appointed lawyers Lorraine Smith and Chris Wilkinson Smith. The Crown was represented by solicitor Natalie Walker and prosecutors Jay Tausi and Jong Kim. [1]
On 9 September, trial proceedings opened with both the Crown and defence delivering their opening addresses. Walker told the court that a toxicology test of the remains of Yuna and Mina Jo had concluded that the children had died "by homicide of unspecified means associated with an antidepressant drug." Walker also told the court that Lee had been prescribed 60 Nortriptyline tablets in August 2017 after telling her doctor that she was struggling with sleeping difficulties. While both the Crown and defence agreed that Lee had caused her children's deaths and placed their remains in the suitcases inside the storage units, Walker disputed the defence argument that Lee was insane during and after her children's deaths. Walker argued that the defendant knew what she was doing was wrong, citing her behaviour following their deaths including hiring a storage unit, hiding their bodies, changing her name and returning to South Korea in July 2018 on a business class flight. The prosecutor also told the court that Lee had told her mother that she wanted herself and her children to die with her late husband. Following her husband's death in November 2017, the defendant also took her children on several expensive holidays to South Korea, Taupō, the Gold Coast and Queenstown while concealing their father's death from them. Walker told the court that family members last saw the two children on 26 April 2018. She said that the Crown would be presenting evidence extracted from the children's Playstation which recorded their last game activity on 27 June 2018. [5]
During the defence opening address, stand-by defence counsel Lorraine Smith argued that Lee was insane when she killed her two children. She told the court that Lee was driven into insanity by the loss of her husband to cancer in November 2017. The defendant became suicidal and isolated over the following months and came to believed that it was best for Yuna and Mino to die rather than face an "an unhappy and parentless future." Smith also gave a brief background into Lee's biography. [5] That same day, the court heard testimony from storage unit "Safe Store" staff member Shi-Hui Cong (Tracey) and the children's former teacher Mary Robertson of Papatoetoe South School. Cong testified that she had assisted the defendant with a new storage agreement after she changed her name, describing it as an unusual request. [8] Robertson told the court that Lee had informed her about the death of her husband in November 2017 and had withdrawn her children from school. Lee had also told Robertson that she had planned to take her children overseas and was unaware whether she would be returning to New Zealand. [8] [28] In 2018, Robertson saw that Yuna and Minu Jo had not been re-enrolled at Papatoetoe South School and assumed the family had returned to Korea. In truth, Lee and her family had returned to their Papatoetoe home. [28]
On 10 September, the Court heard testimony from Lee's brother-in-law Jimmy Sae Wook Cho, Cho's wife Bo Ram Lim, Lee's friend Gina Min, New Zealand Institute for Public Health and Forensic Science forensic toxicologist Helen Poulsen, the family's doctor Doctor Rama Velalagan, and the nurses Lin Ni, Kayleen Palatchie, and Natalie Woodward. [8] [28] Cho testified that Lee was unwilling to inform her children about her husband's illness and had to be convinced to let the children visit him in the hospice prior to his death. Cho also told the court that Lee had emotional difficulties. [8] In April 2018, Cho and his wife Bo Ram Lim raised concerns with Lee about her children not attending school. Several months later, Cho discovered that Lee had vacated her rental property. Cho also testified that the defendant was reluctant to communicate in early June 2018, in the weeks prior to her children's death. [28]
Gina Min told the court that she met Lee during a visit to South Korea in January 2018. Min testified that Lee had closed down her social media accounts following her husband's death and prioritised her husband over her children. [8] Poulsen told the court that her toxicology examination was unable to determine the level of nortriptyline in the children's body due to the passage of time. [8] Dr Velalagan, who had prescribed Lee nortriptyline medication in 1 August 2017, testified that Lee had not disclosed any issues relating to suicidal thoughts and depression. Velalagan only learnt about Lee's mental health issues after receiving a letter from the Counties Manukau District Health Board in November 2017 that Lee had intended to kill herself and her children after her husband's death. [8] The nurses Ni, Palatchie and Woodward testified about her husband Ian Jo's admission to Tōtara Hospice due to his cancerous condition. Ni and Woodward told the court that Lee had sent her husband a text threatening to kill herself and her children after he left for the hospice without alerting her. [8] [28]
On 11 September, Lee's mother Choon Ja Lee told the court that her daughter had confided about having suicidal thoughts following her husband's cancer diagnosis. She thought that her daughter's references to death were a passing phase and also testified about her relationship with Lee. Choon Ja Lee told the court that Lee had been overcome by grief following Jo's death and had withheld the information about his passing from the children. She testified that Lee had told her that her and her children's life was not worth living following her husband's death. The mother also told the court that she last saw her grandchildren before they left for South Korea on Christmas Day 2017 and only later learned they had returned to New Zealand via her son-in-law's family. [29] [6]
On 15 September, forensic accountant Andrew Yoon told the jury that Lee's total credit card spending had risen by 1,397 percent in the months following her husband's death, rising from an average of NZ$800 per month in the ten months leading to his death to an average of NZ$11,992 per month in the eight months after his death. These figures excluded Jo's funeral expenses. Yoon testified that Lee spent a total of NZ$33,593 of credit card funds on international flights, five star hotel bookings, and various shopping expenses. In addition, Lee paid a total of $16,330 to the Safe Store storage unit facility between July 2018 and April 2022. [30]
On 16 September, Crown prosecutor Walker read evidence submitted by an Australian-based friend of Lee named Christine Cao. Cao had met with Lee in the Gold Coast after Jo's death. Cao was unaware of the defendant's mental health problems and Jo's cancer. [3] Later that day, the court heard testimony from South Korean Detective Sergeant Sung Kyu Hwang, who escorted Lee after she was arrested and extradited back to New Zealand in 2022. When Hwang met Lee at the airport gate, he recalled that the defendant was panicking and anxious. Lee disclosed to Hwang that she was being accused of murdering her children in New Zealand. Lee maintained her innocence and stated that she wanted to die with her husband and children. Prosecutor Walker told the court that Lee had been travelling back to New Zealand under an arrest warrant rather than returning voluntarily. Following the 11 hour flight to New Zealand, Hwang told the court that he escorted the defendant to a police station where Lee spoke to a lawyer and agreed to give a DNA sample to the NZ Police. While examining a Sony laptop found in the same storage unit as the children's remains, Hwang found several Internet searches related to hotels and flights to the Gold Coast, South Korea, and Taupō. He observed that Lee made few searches relating to children. [3]
On 17 September, the court heard evidence from Crown witness Detective Sergeant Ryan Singleton. He told the court that Choon Ja Lee had visited the Auckland Central Police Station in December 2018 and a Hamilton police station a few days to query into the whereabouts of her daughter and grandchildren. Since Choon Ja Lee had not specified any safety concerns concerning her daughter or grandchildren, the Police declined to report them as missing persons. Singleton told the court that an immigration check completed on Lee showed that she had left New Zealand in July 2018. He confirmed that no immigration checks were conducted on her children since their dates of births were not supplied and their names were not given correctly. [31]
The final Crown witness on 17 September was police senior digital forensic analyst Damian Govender, who had analysed the PlayStation found at the South Auckland storage unit. Govender testified that the children's accounts "Princess Yuna" and "Hero Minu" had received MineCraft trophies on 6 June but had received updates on 27 June. He theorised that either the children last played MineCraft offline on 6 June and it was updated on 27 June, or that both users last accessed their accounts on 27 June. [31] That same day, the stand-by defence counsel told Justice Venning that the defence would be opening their case on 18 September with expert evidence. [31]
On 18 September Lee's standby-counsel, Lorraine Smith, opened the defence's case. The defence's sole witness, Dr. Yvette Kelly, argued that Lee met the criteria of insanity under Section 23 of the Crimes Act 1961. [32] [9] Kelly testified that she had interviewed the defendant five times. During one of these sessions, Lee had confessed to killing her children by dissolving the anti-depressant drug Nortriptyline in juice, which she served to them. Kelly testified that Lee believed she was cursed due to her husband's death from cancer and her son Minu's cleft palate. Following her children's death, Lee had attempted suicide. Kelly told the court that Lee now believed that killing her children was morally wrong but at the time believed "that it was the right thing to do." Kelly told the court that the defendant's guilt and self-loathing had led her to change her name from Jie Eun Lee to Hakyung Lee on 27 June 2018. During cross-examination by Walker, Kelly acknowledged that Lee was not always truthful, describing her as an "unreliable historian." [9] [33] Walker also told the court that Lee had visited a Mitre 10 store on 27 June 2018 to buy two sets of wheelie bin liners, garden bags, and duct tape, material which the Crown has argued the defendant used to wrap the children and conceal the suitcases containing their remains. [33]
Kelly continued giving evidence on 19 September where she was questioned by the Crown about the timing of Lee's actions before and after the children's deaths. Kelly said that she was not made aware of the full sequence of events prior to publishing her report. [32] That same day, the Crown brought in forensic psychiatrist Erik Monasterio to rebut Kelly's testimony. He questioned Lee's insanity defence, stating that it "would be extremely rare for someone to harbour auditory hallucinations for eight years without a mental health professional noticing." He also testified that Lee had claimed to hear four or five different voices in three different languages but was unable to provide detailed examples of what was said. Monasterio also explained that people with schizophrenia did not describe thoughts in their head but rather "heard them." He told the jury that they had to decide whether Lee's reported voices were "made up or not" but concluded that Lee's voices were not attributable to psychosis or a mental condition. Monasterio concluded that the defendant was suffering from a major depressive disorder or prolonged grief disorder following her husband's death. [34]
On 22 September, the court heard closing arguments from both the Crown and defence. Prosecutor Walker argued that Lee was not insane when she killed her children, citing her actions following their deaths including changing her name, accessing a storage facility, cleaning and vacating her rental property, and booking a business-class flight to South Korea. She also pointed out that Lee had told several lies to her family, police and doctors about her children's deaths. Walker also argued that Lee had lied about her suicide attempts. She also cited Monasterio's testimony that the defendant did not display symptoms of psychosis or indicate that she was unaware that her actions were morally wrong. [35]
Defence stand-by counsel Smith told the court that Lee had been mentally unwell throughout her life and that her mental state had deteriorated following the death of her husband. Smith said that Lee had made three previous suicide attempts including one following her father's death when she was 18 years old. She argued that Lee's mental health deteriorated in the seven months following the death of her husband. Consequently, Lee came to believed that the only solution was killing herself and her children. Smith argued that Lee's belief that she had caused her father and husband's death, and her son's cleft pallet demonstrated that she was "disconnected from reality." [35]
The jury began deliberating on 23 September. [36] After three and half hours of deliberating, the jury convicted Lee of murdering her two children Yuna and Mina Jo. Justice Venning confirmed the verdict and remanded Lee into custody until her sentencing on 26 November. [2]