Image not related to article. [Getty Images Bank]
Image not related to article. [Getty Images Bank]

A woman in her 40s who killed her newborn daughter and disposed of the body at sea to conceal an extramarital affair is set to stand trial.

According to legal sources Wednesday, Criminal Division 1 of the Changwon District Prosecutors' Office's Tongyeong branch, led by chief prosecutor Han Gang-il, indicted the woman, identified only as A, 47, on murder charges. She is being held in custody.

According to prosecutors, A stopped her vehicle on the roadside in Oesan-ri, Donghaemyeon, Goseong-gun, South Gyeongsang Province, on Jan. 15, 2016, and left her two-day-old daughter on the passenger seat to die of exposure.

The average temperature in the area at the time was about 5.73 degrees Celsius — conditions a newborn could not survive. A had also turned off the engine and left the windows open, investigators found.

The investigation began after a local government agency commissioned a review. While conducting a comprehensive check of temporary newborn registration numbers, the agency found no signs of life for A's daughter. Police launched an investigation and sought an arrest warrant in December 2024, but a court rejected it, citing no risk of flight or destruction of evidence.

Prosecutors received the case without detention in June last year and launched a supplementary investigation, focusing on establishing the causal link between A's actions and the infant's death, as well as her motive.

A was married at the time and had been secretly seeing another man when she became pregnant. Believing the child was her lover's, she killed the baby to keep the affair hidden. A has since divorced her husband, and the man she was seeing reportedly cut off contact around the time of the pregnancy and birth.

During the supplementary investigation, two forensic experts said the evidence sufficiently supported a finding that the infant died of hypothermia. An integrated psychological analysis also established that A's motive stemmed from a combination of her personality traits and a desire to conceal an unwanted pregnancy. Prosecutors used these findings to seek a second arrest warrant, which a court granted, and A was taken into custody.

Charges related to the disposal of the body were not applied because the seven-year statute of limitations had expired. The killing also predated the 2021 enactment of a special law on child abuse crimes — which created a separate aggravated offense of child-abuse homicide — so A faces charges under the general murder statute.

After her arrest, A initially told investigators she had buried her daughter's body, then changed her account, saying she had thrown it into the sea off Goseong-gun.

The child's remains have never been found.


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