Yong Jeong-ryeol, the defendant in the “Gimcheon officetel murder case,” was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing a male peer whom he had never met before and taking out a loan using the victim’s fingerprints. According to the legal community on the 9th, the Supreme Court’s first division (Presiding Judge Noh Tae-ak) recently confirmed the lower court’s decision, which sentenced Yong Jeong-ryeol, 32, to life imprisonment and ordered the attachment of an electronic monitoring device for 20 years for charges including robbery, murder, and attempted concealment of a corpse.
Yong Jeong-ryeol was prosecuted for killing the victim, Mr. A (then 31 years old), who he had no prior acquaintance with, at an officetel in Gimcheon, Gyeongsangbuk-do, in November of last year, and for taking a 60 million won loan using the victim’s mobile phone. The prosecution sought the death penalty, the highest legal punishment. The first trial sentenced him to life imprisonment, stating, “We cannot overlook imposing a heavy sentence commensurate with the defendant’s heinous and cruel crime,” and “In order to permanently isolate the defendant from society, we are imposing the heaviest penalty after the death penalty.”
The second trial also upheld the life sentence, stating, “With the intent to overcome a difficult economic situation, the defendant premeditatedly decided to rob an unspecified individual and brutally stabbed the victim multiple times with a prepared weapon, making the nature of the crime extremely heinous.”
Yong Jeong-ryeol appealed the decision, but the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal, finding no error in the lower court’s judgment.