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| The Supreme Court building in Seoul's Seocho District / Korea Times file |
The Supreme Court increased the sentence imposed on a man found guilty of sexually assaulting and killing a 20-month-old baby girl to life in prison, Friday.
The ruling raised a lower court's 30-year prison term for the 30-year-old man, identified only by his surname Yang, who was tried for raping and killing the baby daughter of his live-in girlfriend in June last year.
"It is right to separate the defendant from society forever, given the cruelty of his crime," the court said.
The court also ordered that he be banned from working at child-related facilities for 10 years, wear a tracking device for 20 years and undergo 200 hours of a child abuse treatment program.
However, it rejected the prosecution's requests for chemical castration treatment and the disclosure of his identity.
Yang was convicted of killing the baby by covering her with a blanket, and punching and stomping on her for about an hour while drunk at his home in Daejeon, about 165 kilometers south of Seoul, because she did not stop crying.
He was also convicted of raping the toddler before beating her to death.
Yang and his girlfriend, surnamed Jeong, hid the victim's body in an ice box in their bathroom.
Also overturning a lower court's one-and-a-half year imprisonment ruling, the court sentenced Jeong to three years in prison. (Yonhap)
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