Man sentenced to 25 years for killing wife loses appeal
Published: 03 Feb. 2026, 09:18
![[KOREA JOONGANG DAILY]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2026/02/03/91fcdd52-88a4-49ad-809a-f245f45b4821.jpg)
[KOREA JOONGANG DAILY]
A man sentenced to 25 years in prison for killing his wife because she refused to have sex following a miscarriage lost his appeal, according to legal sources on Monday.
The Seoul High Court upheld the 25-year prison sentence for the defendant, the same term imposed in the first trial.
The defendant was accused of strangling and killing the spouse while intoxicated at their home in Gangseo District, western Seoul, last March, just three months after the marriage.
Prosecutors said the defendant repeatedly demanded sex even when the spouse was in the early stages of pregnancy and continued to do so while the spouse was receiving hospital treatment after a miscarriage. The investigation found that the defendant became enraged after being served with divorce papers in January 2025, and also after reading messages from the spouse saying the spouse was struggling due to excessive sexual demands and regretted the marriage, leading to the killing.
The defendant was arrested by police after acting as the chief mourner at the spouse’s wake. The defendant initially denied the charges but later claimed the killing was accidental after police presented evidence.
During the appeal trial, the defendant argued that he reported the crime himself, which amounted to circumstances equivalent to voluntary surrender, and that his late wife had provoked the crime by refusing sex and speaking negatively about the defendant to acquaintances. The court rejected those arguments.
The court pointed to the fact that the defendant gradually changed statements in line with objective evidence presented by investigators and coached the victim’s family to make statements in an apparent attempt to mislead authorities into believing the woman died from an overdose of sleeping pills, concluding that the defendant “actively attempted to conceal and disguise the crime,” the court said.
Regarding the claim that the victim provoked the killing, the court said the victim was in a particularly vulnerable state at the time of the incident.
"Even if the circumstances alleged by the defendant were accepted, they could not be considered grounds to attribute responsibility to the victim for the killing," the court said.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY KIM EUN-BIN [[email protected]]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
To write comments, please log in to one of the accounts.
Standards Board Policy (0/250자)