By Park Si-soo Staff Reporter A court sentenced a Korean who killed his young Vietnamese wife to a relatively heavy punishment in a case involving unpremeditated murder. Daejeon High Court Thursday sentenced the Korean identified as Jang to a 12-year prison term for murdering his 19-year-old Vietnamese bride last June. Under Korean criminal law, the prison term for an individual without a previous conviction for murder criminal record carries a maximum sentence of 15 years provided the deed was unpremeditated. More severe punishment including life-long prison term and execution are usually handed out to those involved in premeditated homicide and other more heinous acts of murder. ``Compared with other similar cases, the sentence could be seen as relatively heavy,'' a court official said. The 47-year-old Korean first met his wife through a Korean matchmaking company in December in 2006 and married her in May last year. Marriages with foreign nationals are prevalent in the rural areas of South Korea. The Vietnamese woman, who suffered abuse at the hands of her husband and was impeded by a language barrier, decided to leave for her hometown on July 26, 2007, after one month of married life in Korea. But her husband, intoxicated by alcohol at the time, beat her to death. In the ruling, the court said ``We saw the tragedy in which an older Korean male selected his wife in a matter of minutes then treated her like an imported product.'' pss@koreatimes.co.kr