AUCKLAND - A mother who murdered her two children and stuffed them into suitcases stashed inside a storage locker was on Wednesday sentenced to life imprisonment in New Zealand.
Hakyung Lee, a New Zealand citizen originally from South Korea, was earlier this year found guilty of killing her children in a grisly crime dubbed the country's "suitcase murders".
High Court judge Geoffrey Venning sentenced Lee to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years, saying she had killed children who were "particularly vulnerable".
The 45-year-old showed little emotion as she sat in court, bowing her head with eyes fixed to the floor as the judge handed down the sentence.
Lee killed her son Minu Jo and daughter Yuna Jo, aged six and eight, in 2018 by lacing their fruit juice with an overdose of prescription medication.
Stricken with grief following her husband's death from cancer, Lee said she had planned to kill herself alongside the children but got the dose wrong.
She wrapped her dead children in plastic bags before stuffing them into suitcases that were then hidden at a suburban storage warehouse on the outskirts of Auckland, New Zealand's largest city.
The bodies sat in storage until 2022, when an unsuspecting family pried open the contents of an abandoned storage locker they bought in an auction.
Police used DNA and other forensic evidence to piece together who the children were, how long they had been dead, and ultimately who had killed them.
Lee, who had long since changed her name and fled the country for her native South Korea, was eventually tracked down and arrested in the port city of Ulsan.
She was extradited to face trial in New Zealand.
The sentencing hearing on Wednesday heard how the murders had left deep emotional scars on Lee's family.