Motel killer gets life sentence as court rejects claim of self-defense against sexual assault
The Seoul Northern District Court handed down the term for Kim So-young while dismissing claims that she did not know the sedation would kill the victims.
Kim So-young, sentenced to life in prison Thursday for killing two men with drugged drinks at motels in northern Seoul, in a photograph released by prosecutors when they disclosed her identity in March.SEOUL NORTHERN DISTRICT PROSECUTORS' OFFICE
A Seoul court rejected a woman's claim that she drugged two men to death while defending herself from sexual assault, and sentenced her to life in prison Thursday for their murders.
The Seoul Northern District Court also ordered Kim So-young to wear a location-tracking electronic device for 30 years after her release. It acquitted her of aggravated injury in the case of one of the six victims.
The men had met Kim only shortly before they died. Prosecutors said at the final hearing that the victims had expressed romantic interest in her and were defenseless when she took their lives.
Kim had argued throughout the trial that she never meant to kill anyone.
"I only meant to put them to sleep and did not expect them to die," she said. She had laced their drinks with benzodiazepines, sedatives prescribed for anxiety and insomnia.
The court accepted that she may not have grasped the danger at the outset, but found that she understood it by the later deaths.
"[At first] she does not appear to have recognized the specific risk of death, but as she went on giving the drug to several victims she came to understand, through ChatGPT and other sources, the conditions under which the drug could cause death," the court said.
Kim had also told the court she acted out of fear of being touched.
"I deeply regret giving them the drug to stop them from touching me, which I did because I became frightened when a past sexual assault came to mind," she said at an earlier hearing.
A bronze statue symbolizing justice is seen in a courtroom in Ansan, Gyeonggi, on June 9.NEWS1
The court turned to her exchanges with the men on the KakaoTalk messaging app.
"In light of the KakaoTalk messages and other evidence, there were no circumstances of rape, so the claim that she meant to sedate them briefly to fend off sexual violence cannot be accepted," the court said.
Prosecutors had sought the death penalty at the final hearing this month, along with 30 years of electronic monitoring and a period of probation supervision tacked on as a matter of procedure.
"She has shown no remorse at all for the crimes," they told the court.
Kim gave benzodiazepine-laced drinks to three men between mid-December of last year and February of this year. Two of them died and a third was left unconscious. She was detained and indicted in March.
Prosecutors added charges in April after investigators identified three more men injured in similar attacks.
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.
