By Yun Suh-young
A university professor was sentenced to 30 years in prison for killing his wife and dumping her body. His lover, surnamed Choi, also received a 10-year jail term for assisting in the murder, according to the Busan District Court.
“The professor had carefully planned the crime in advance, fabricated an alibi and attempted to destroy evidence by erasing his text messages. He also tried to hide the victim’s body to leave the case undiscovered,” the court ruled. “Taking into consideration the horrible nature of the crime, severe punishment is unavoidable.”
The professor, surnamed Kang, showed no sign of remorse and the victim’s family had requested harsh punishment, the court added.
The prosecution had initially sought life imprisonment for Kang who strangled his wife last April in a hotel parking lot in Busan and threw her body into the Lower Nakdong River from the Eulsukdo Bridge. Choi had assisted in the crime by looking for a place to dump the body, delivering it to the bridge and throwing it into the river with Kang.
Kang was caught 50 days after committing the murder when the victim’s body was found on an island near the bridge.
He and the victim had been fighting over property rights when the crime occurred. They were married in 2010 but were undergoing a divorce suit.
Kang graduated from an elite university and had been working as a professor at the time of the murder.