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A man in his 40s drove toward Paldang Dam, just east of Seoul, on March 3, 2025, with his 86-year-old father and his 82-year-old mother, who had spent years bedridden. Late spring snow fell silently outside the car. Wrapped in thick clothes, his mother sat in the back seat and stared at the gray sky. She said nothing as the father and son spoke quietly in the front. It was the family’s last trip together.
The next morning, at about 10:30, the mother died in bed inside an apartment in Goyang, just northwest of Seoul. She had eaten breakfast prepared by her husband, then took a sleeping pill given to her by her son and fell asleep. The National Forensic Service later found that she died of strangulation.
That afternoon, the son jumped into the Han River. A passerby reported him, and emergency responders pulled him from the water. Dazed after the rescue, he said, “My mom asked me to kill her … so I killed her.”
Eleven years earlier, his mother collapsed from a brain hemorrhage. The son had been looking for work, but after that his life revolved entirely around her care. As the third child, he took over caregiving from his older brother and sister. The burden doubled because he also had to care for his elderly father, who had severe hearing loss.
Neighbors and acquaintances saw a son who had given up his youth, stayed unmarried and devoted himself to his parents. They praised him as unusually dutiful. Each month, his older brother and sister sent money for living expenses and hospital bills, and the family endured that way for years.
But the praise also trapped him in the role of “hyoja,” the Korean term for a dutiful son. As caregiving dragged on with no end in sight, the son grew more isolated inside the role others admired. His mother was diagnosed with suspected normal pressure hydrocephalus in March 2023, followed by an Alzheimer’s diagnosis in September that year. In June 2024, she fractured her hip and was paralyzed from the waist down.
What had begun as filial duty gradually turned into anger and despair. The son became consumed by a self-sacrificing fixation, telling himself that no one else could care for his mother except him. The breaking point came when his siblings suggested sending their mother to a nursing home.
Even as her mental state fluctuated, she firmly refused. “Kill me rather than send me to a nursing home,” she said repeatedly, words that her son later treated as a final wish. For the son, who had already endured years of care at home, the refusal deepened his isolation as her caregiver. The court later said the family’s proposal to send his mother to a nursing home made him feel as if he had been stripped of his life’s purpose and left him afraid of reentering society.
The family’s situation worsened in 2024. The older brother, who had supported most of the household’s living costs, lost his job and stopped sending money. The older sister also stopped providing support, citing her own financial struggles.
Then the landlord asked the family to vacate the apartment because the owner planned to move in. With money gone and housing uncertain, the only practical option left for the mother appeared to be a nursing home. The son became consumed by the belief that along with his mother, he and his father were also being abandoned.
To him, the 11 years he had spent caring for his mother seemed to have been erased. Father and son eventually devised a desperate plan. They would kill the mother first because she could not move on her own, then take their own lives. The court said the son felt stripped of his life’s purpose after his family proposed sending his mother to a nursing home, and that he had developed deep fears about economic security and returning to society.
Supreme Court of Seoul / Korea Time photo by Choi Joo-yeon
In court, the son acknowledged the charge of murdering his mother but denied his father’s involvement. Only his DNA was found on the murder weapon, an extension cord.
Prosecutors argued that the father had physically participated in the murder. The court ruled a prosecution interrogation transcript inadmissible — in which the father had partially admitted to the claim — and found him not guilty of physically participating in the strangulation.
But the court said that did not erase the father’s broader criminal responsibility. It found that he had conspired with his son and helped obtain the cord, making him liable for the killing. The key evidence came not from DNA, but from a dashcam recording made after the mother’s death.
After the killing, the father and son drove for about six hours, passing through Paldang Dam and a riverside park in southern Seoul as they tried to carry out their plan to die by suicide. Their conversation inside the car was captured on the dashcam audio.
“I am a bastard who deserves to die. I killed the person I loved most,” the son said in the car. His father replied, “I feel sorry for your mother, but together … we should die.”
The recording also captured language that the court saw as evidence of premeditation.
“I thought you would not agree to killing Mom,” the son said to his father.
His father also referred to the sleeping pills, saying, “We gave her sleeping pills … If we hadn’t given her sleeping pills, it could have been a big problem.”
Those conversations undermined the son’s attempt to shield his father. The court concluded that the father was complicit in the plot, even if prosecutors failed to prove that he was physically involved.
Father and son later jumped into the river but survived. The son faced a murder charge as well as drug charges for the sleeping pills. His father faced a murder charge.
During the trial, the older sister submitted a petition asking the court for leniency.
“For 10 years, while carrying every burden alone, my younger brother’s soul was destroyed. Please show leniency to our family,” she wrote.
A district court in Goyang said the family’s circumstances warranted consideration and sentenced the son to seven years in prison and his father to three years, terms near the statutory minimum.
“For more than 10 years, they carefully looked after the bedridden victim, who had difficulty moving, and endured great sacrifice,” the court said.
It also said the mother’s firm refusal to enter a nursing home and the extreme frustration that followed appeared to have contributed to the tragedy.
The courts did not accept the defense’s argument that the mother’s words amounted to a request or consent to be killed. The appeals court said the father and son were not speaking as if they had acted on such a request.
“The defendants were not speaking on the premise of the victim’s request or consent to killing, but were talking about the fact that they killed the victim against her will and their apology for it,” the appeals court said.
The appeals court also stressed the severity of the crime.
“Murder is a serious crime that infringes on human life, its result is disastrous, and the damage cannot be restored by any means, so severe punishment is inevitable,” it said.
The Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling on May 20, confirming the son’s seven-year prison sentence and his father’s three-year term. The ruling set a legal precedent in a case filled with hardship. The courts recognized years of caregiving sacrifice and frustration, but they refused to treat the mother’s words as consent to be killed.
The case reflects what researchers and courts have increasingly identified as a crisis inside Korean families where care falls on one person. A study by the Korean National Police University’s Police Science Institute examined 228 mercy killing cases with final guilty verdicts from 2007 to 2023.
The study, titled “Analysis of the Reality and Characteristics of Caregiver Killing,” found that 75.8 percent of the cases stemmed from a lack of familial support.
The number of rulings in such cases rose sharply. Courts handed down 36 rulings between 2007 and 2012. In the six years from 2018 to 2023, the number rose to 113, more than triple the earlier figure.
The father will be about 90 when he completes his prison term. After the killing, as he and his son drove in search of a place to die, the dashcam recorded him speaking quietly about the fear that had pushed the family to the brink.
“If your mom suffers more from the illness, it will be even harder … How can we send her to a place where they don’t even properly change diapers and things like that? She will suffer.”
This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.
