A woman has gone on trial in New Zealand accused of murdering her two children and leaving their bodies in suitcases for years before they were discovered.<\/p>\n
Hakyung Lee – who is representing herself in court – denies the murders of six-year-old boy Minu Jo and eight-year-old girl Yuna Jo in June 2018.<\/p>\n
Their remains were found by a couple who bought the contents of an abandoned storage unit in Auckland in August 2022.<\/p>\n
She was extradited from South Korea to face the charges.<\/p>\n
Stand-by counsel Lorraine Smith, who is assisting Lee in her self-representation, told jurors the mother was driven to insanity after her husband died of cancer in 2017.<\/p>\n
Lee, who is a New Zealand citizen, had travelled to South Korea and changed her name in 2018, shortly after the children were believed to have been killed.<\/p>\n
She was born in South Korea and previously went by the name Ji Eun Lee.<\/p>\n
Lee, who is in her 40s, was arrested in September 2022 in South Korea and extradited to New Zealand two months later.<\/p>\n
A jury was chosen on Monday for Lee’s trial at the High Court in Auckland, which is expected to take four weeks.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors have been outlining their case on Tuesday and said they would call 40 witnesses.<\/p>\n
Read more from Sky News: Lee did not speak during the hearing on Monday and shook her head, rather than answering through an interpreter, when asked how she pleaded to the charges.<\/p>\n Not guilty pleas were entered by Justice Geoffrey Venning, who is presiding.<\/p>\n Lee had granted consent in writing to be extradited after a formal request from New Zealand to return her to face trial, South Korean officials said at the time.<\/p>\n South Korea’s Justice Ministry said it had provided New Zealand with unspecified “important evidence” in the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman has gone on trial in New Zealand accused of murdering her two children and leaving their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-411004","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115175557941802275","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Israel ‘not committing genocide in Gaza’, UK says<\/a>
Nepal PM resigns after deadly protests<\/a><\/strong>
Murdoch family reach deal over future of empire<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n