80-year-old man sentenced to 12 years in prison for killing wife in drunken, jealous rage

An 80-year-old man has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for killing his wife on a baseless suspicion that she was cheating on him.

The Jeonju District Court’s Jeongeup branch sentenced the man to 12 years in prison on murder charges, according to the legal community on Monday.

The man was accused of beating his 68-year-old spouse with a soju bottle and fatally stabbing her at their home in Jeongeup, North Jeolla, at around 11:38 a.m. on Feb. 17, during the Lunar New Year holiday.

After the crime, the man called his son and told him, “I killed your mother,” before being arrested by responding police officers.

According to the court, the man committed the crime after suspecting his wife — who had devoted more than 48 years to supporting the family — of having an affair. The man was reportedly obsessed with the delusion that his spouse was seeing other men and frequently assaulted and verbally abused her based on the assumption.

“The man’s crime caused the children immense grief from suddenly losing their mother and inflicted irreversible shock and pain, making severe punishment unavoidable,” the court said.

“However, the sentence was determined in consideration of the fact that the crime appears to have been committed impulsively while the man was intoxicated and that he is 80 years old.”

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.

BY HYEON YE-SEUL [[email protected]]