Wellington: A New Zealand woman convicted of murdering her two children and leaving their bodies in suitcases for years will spend at least 17 years in prison.

Hakyung Lee held her head down during Wednesday’s sentencing hearing in the Auckland High Court, as she did for her trial. Justice Geoffrey Venning told her she would begin her sentence as a patient in a locked psychiatric facility but must return to prison when she was well enough.

Hakyung Lee stands in the dock at the High Court in Auckland in September.Credit: AP

Lee was found guilty in September of murdering six-year-old Minu Jo and eight-year-old Yuna Jo, with a jury rejecting her defence of insanity. Her lawyers on Wednesday argued for a reduced sentence because of her mental illness, saying their client felt shame for her crimes and had been isolated and threatened in jail.

However, the judge told Lee that while she was undoubtedly experiencing severe depression when she killed the children in 2018, her actions were deliberate and calculated.

“Your actions were organised and considered over a number of days,” he said, referring to her name change, buying a suitcase, tidying up affairs and sitting a driver’s test. She left the suitcases containing the children’s remains in a storage unit after murdering the children and flew to South Korea on a business class ticket.

The children’s remains were discovered after Lee stopped paying rental fees for the storage unit when she ran into financial difficulties in 2022. The locker’s contents were auctioned online and the buyers found the bodies of the children inside the cases.

Yuna and Minu Jo in April 2018 before they were killed by their mother.Credit: Stuff.co.nz

Lee changed her name once she arrived in South Korea but was arrested and extradited to face trial. She is a New Zealand citizen who was born in South Korea and went by the name Ji Eun Lee previously.

During the trial, Lee’s lawyers conceded that Lee had killed the children by giving them an antidepressant, but lawyer Lorraine Smith said the deaths happened after her client “descended into madness”. Lee had always been “fragile,” Smith said, but her mental illness became worse after her husband’s death. He was diagnosed with cancer in 2017.