A man in his 50s who fatally stabbed his wife in front of their 4-year-old daughter and then hid her body in a livestock shed has been sentenced to 25 years in prison.
The first criminal division of the Suncheon branch of the Gwangju District Court, presided over by Judge Kim Yong-gyu, handed down the 25-year sentence to a 59-year-old man, identified as A, who was charged with murder, concealment of a body and violation of the Child Welfare Act, according to legal sources on the 24th.
A was indicted on charges of assaulting his 44-year-old wife, identified as B, before stabbing her to death at their home in Boseong County, South Jeolla Province, at around 9:30 p.m. on December 9 last year.
Investigators found that A had suspected his wife of an affair after B, a naturalized citizen originally from Vietnam, shared information about a tree-cutting propagation method with an acquaintance from the same country.
On the day of the killing, A began beating B after overhearing her on the phone with a police officer, mistakenly believing she was reporting him, and ultimately stabbed her to death, according to the investigation.
After the killing, A moved B's body to a livestock shed about 15 meters from their home. He was also charged with hiding the body by covering it with sacks of rice husks. A turned himself in immediately after the crime by calling the 112 emergency line.
The couple's 4-year-old daughter was at the scene at the time. Prosecutors applied the additional charge of violating the Child Welfare Act, finding that letting the young girl witness her mother being killed and the body being moved amounted to emotional abuse.
At trial, A denied the child abuse charge, saying his daughter had been asleep when the crime occurred. But the court rejected the claim, finding the child's statement credible.
"The defendant killed the child's mother and concealed her body in front of the victimized child, forcing his young child to witness a horrific scene," the court said.
Noting that A had also been subject to four prior investigations and dispositions, the court said he "did not seriously reflect on his own wrongdoing and eventually went as far as to commit murder."
Explaining the sentence, the court said, "Murder is a grave crime that deprives a person of life itself, and the responsibility is extremely heavy in that the harm cannot be recovered by any means." It added that "even taking some circumstances into account, severe punishment commensurate with that responsibility is necessary."
