Hakyung Lee named as woman facing murder charges over bodies of children found in suitcases

Hakyung Lee, the South Korean mother accused of murdering her two children whose bodies were found in abandoned suitcases, can be named for the first time.

After a lengthy name suppression legal dispute, the Court of Appeal has this morning ruled against keeping the woman’s name secret.

Lee’s lawyer, Chris Wilkinson-Smith, argued publication could result in extreme hardship or endanger the woman’s safety, and could also affect her ability to engage in court proceedings or medical assessments.

Crown prosecutor Gareth Kayes and lawyer for NZME Tania Goatley disagreed, submitting that there was no evidence that publication sufficiently heightened the defendant’s risk profile.

The 42-year-old has been in custody since she was extradited from South Korea to New Zealand late last year after the discovery of her children’s remains.

Appearing in court in April, Lee spoke up to proclaim her innocence. “I didn’t do it, it’s the truth,” she said, raising her hand to address the court moments before she was led away by security officers.

An Auckland family made the grisly find after opening suitcases they bought in an auction for an abandoned South Auckland storage unit.

Police said the children would have been between 5 and 10 when they died and had been dead for years when their remains were found.

The defendant was born in South Korea, became a New Zealand citizen after moving here, and likely returned to Korea in 2018, according to Immigration records.

She has pleaded not guilty and is set to face trial in April 2024.

During a High Court hearing earlier this year, Goatley told the judge that the woman’s name is already known among Auckland’s Korean community and was published overseas before her extradition. The starting point for criminal cases in New Zealand is open justice, and the onus is on the applicant to show extreme hardship, Goatley said, arguing that the burden hadn’t been met.

In a nine-page judgment released in March, Justice Anne Hinton noted that there must be a “real and appreciable” risk to the woman’s safety for continued name suppression to be considered.

“While it sounds harsh, that is the relevant test,” she wrote. “I have not been provided with evidence showing that [the defendant] would likely be severely affected by the publication of her name or that her safety would be endangered.”

Justice Hinton decided her name could be published, but first Lee’s lawyers had an opportunity to argue the case to the Court of Appeal.

In the 14-page Court of Appeal decision published today, the three-judge panel agreed with Justice Hinton.”We are not satisfied that there is sufficient evidence before the court demonstrating that Ms Lee’s condition would be materially impacted by publication, sufficient to meet the threshold that publication is likely to cause extreme hardship or endanger the safety of Ms Lee,” the Court of Appeal justices wrote.