An unsuspecting family discovered the decayed remains of six-year-old Minu Jo and eight-year-old Yuna Jo after purchasing an abandoned storage unit in an auction online
For four years, the bodies of six-year-old Minu Jo and eight-year-old Yuna Jo lay hidden in the darkness of a storage unit, packed into suitcases in an attempt to hide their bodies.
When an unsuspecting family bought the contents of the abandoned locker at an online auction in 2022, they opened the luggage expecting to find household goods. Instead, they uncovered one of New Zealand’s most horrific crimes – a discovery that launched an international manhunt and unravelled the twisted story of their mother Hakyung Lee.
On Wednesday, the final chapter of this grim saga closed as Lee, 45, was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years. But the court heard that the path to the murders began long before 2018, spiralling from a “happy little family” into a nightmare fuelled by grief, cancer, and a disturbing wish.
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Hakyung Lee – then known as Ji Eun Lee – lived a quiet life in Auckland with her husband, Ian Jo, and their two children. Friends described them as a normal, happy unit. But in late 2017, their world collapsed. Ian was diagnosed with aggressive cancer, and his death sent Lee into a “deep descent” of depression.
The court heard that Lee had relied heavily on her husband. When he became sick, her behavior changed drastically. She stopped eating, became “full of woe,” and struggled to cope with the reality of his impending death.
Justice Geoffrey Venning, sentencing Lee, noted that the children likely became painful reminders of the life she had lost. “You could not cope when [your husband] became seriously unwell, and perhaps you could not bear to have the children around you as a constant reminder of your former happy life, which had been cruelly taken from you,” he said.
As her mental state deteriorated, Lee’s grief morphed into a terrifying desire to end everything – not just for herself, but for her children too. During the trial, a chilling conversation was revealed. A friend, identified as ‘Cho’, testified that while dining on the Gold Coast shortly after Ian’s death, Lee made a disturbing confession. She told Cho that during a flight with her family, she had secretly wished for the plane to crash so that she and her children could “die together.”
She reportedly told her friend she would have been “less sad” if her children had died instead of her husband. In mid 2018, just months after her husband’s death, Lee turned those dark thoughts into reality. She administered a lethal overdose of prescription antidepressant medication to Minu and Yuna, with prosecutors saying she had hidden the medication in juice.
Her actions were described in court as “calculated” and “deliberate.” After killing her children, she placed their small bodies into suitcases and moved them into a storage unit in South Auckland. To the outside world, she maintained a facade, telling her family in South Korea that the children were fine, or that they were being cared for by others.
She then fled New Zealand, returning to her native South Korea and changing her name to Hakyung Lee. The children remained missing, but were not reported for years. It wasn’t until Lee stopped paying the fees on the storage unit in 2022 that the locker was auctioned off.
The innocent family who dragged the heavy suitcases onto their trailer had no idea of the horror inside until they unpacked them at home. Lee was tracked down in Ulsan, South Korea, arrested, and extradited to New Zealand to face trial.
While her defense team argued she was not guilty by reason of insanity, citing severe depression and a “crisis of faith,” the jury rejected this. The judge acknowledged her mental health struggles but ruled that she knew exactly what she was doing.
“The steps you took immediately prior to killing the children… the method of killing them, and the steps you took immediately after showed a clearly measured approach,” Justice Venning said.
Lee showed little emotion as she was sentenced. She will begin her term in a secure psychiatric facility for treatment before being transferred to prison.
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