A South Korean man with a U.S. law license was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Friday on charges of cruelly murdering his estranged wife last year.
The 51-year-old lawyer, reported to be the son of a former lawmaker, was indicted on charges of repeatedly striking his wife’s head with a weapon and strangling her to death in their home in Seoul’s central Jongno in December.
The wife, who had been living separately after filing for divorce, was visiting to pick up some belongings.
The husband initially claimed to have inflicted injuries that unintentionally resulted in death, but eventually admitted to murder after an audio recording of the scene was disclosed at the court.
Right after the crime, he left his employer, one of the biggest law firms.
The Seoul Central District Court delivered a 25-year prison term to the lawyer, saying that the method of the murder was “too cruel.”
“It’s beyond normal people’s imagination that a human being was beaten to death, as humans typically don’t die that easily,”
the court said.
The court also underlined the particular brutality of the murder, saying that the murder took place within hearing distance from their son.
Prosecutors had demanded life imprisonment.
Source: Yonhap News Agency