Doctor gets 20 years for killing wife

The Seoul High Court confirmed its original verdict on a doctor charged with strangling his pregnant wife to death, sentencing him to 20 years in prison Friday.

The Supreme Court had earlier returned the case to the high court for reexamination, citing a lack of concrete evidence _ it will also review a new appeal by the defendant.

The 32-year-old doctor, surnamed Baek, has claimed innocence, saying his wife died in an accident at their home in Dohwa-dong, Mapo-gu, Seoul.

His wife, who was nine-months pregnant, was found dead in a bathtub filled with water on Jan. 14 last year. The prosecution claimed Baek accidentally killed his wife during an early-morning quarrel.

“There are sufficient reasons to conclude that the victim was murdered,” Judge Yoon Seong-won of the Seoul High Court said. “Bruises found all over her body and some marks on her neck suggest that she was beaten and strangled. Baek also showed suspicious behavior on the day of her death.”

The trial has drawn keen public attention, and a lot of speculation has been raised about the wife’s death.

According to the prosecution, the husband was not in contact with his acquaintances for several hours on the day of the murder; and there were no signs of intruders entering the house on the day.

Their neighbors said the couple had frequent arguments. The prosecution said, on the day of her death, a quarrel took place when the wife complained about Baek’s online gaming habit. He was under severe stress at the time because he had just taken a state-run medical qualification test a day earlier.

The doctor reported his wife’s death to the police himself, saying he found her lying dead in a bathtub after he returned home in the evening. Baek claimed his wife might have slipped in the bathroom and possibly suffocated due to the extra weight from the pregnancy. <The Korea Times/Na Jeong-ju>