A first-trial verdict is due on the 30th for Jang Yun-gi, 23, who is accused of killing a high school girl on the street in a sexually motivated attack.
The 13th Criminal Division of the Gwangju District Court, presided over by Chief Judge Lee Jung-ho, will announce its verdict at 2 p.m. Jang was indicted and detained on charges including rape-murder under the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment of Sexual Crimes.
Jang is accused of stabbing a 17-year-old girl, identified only as A, multiple times with a knife on a sidewalk along a main road in front of a high school in Gwangsan District, Gwangju, at around 12:10 a.m. on May 5 — Children's Day in South Korea — as she was returning home from studying. Jang also allegedly wounded a boy of a similar age, identified as B, who ran toward the scene after hearing the girl scream.
Prosecutors indicted Jang on a charge of rape-murder and sought the death penalty at the final hearing. The indictment also reportedly includes charges that Jang stalked and sexually assaulted a woman who worked with him at a part-time job two days before the killing.
At a second hearing on July 13, Jang said he "admits to all of the charges" when asked whether he acknowledged murder committed for the purpose of rape. He has submitted three letters of apology to the court.
The victim's family has staged one-person protests calling for the death penalty, the maximum sentence under the law, and submitted a petition to the court bearing the signatures of some 100,000 citizens demanding a severe punishment.
