SEOUL: A Korean couple who abandoned two infants nearly two decades ago because they “looked like foreigners” received suspended prison sentences, according to legal circles Sunday (July 12).
The Uijeongbu District Court sentenced the mother to 18 months in prison, suspended for three years, for violating the Child Welfare Act.
Her husband was sentenced to one year in prison, suspended for three years, for the same charge.
According to the court, the woman gave birth to her first child in 2005 while living with the man in Pocheon, Gyeonggi Province.
The man, who believed throughout the pregnancy that he was the child’s biological father, realised after the birth that the baby was biracial.
Concluding the child was not his, he decided to abandon the infant, and the mother complied.
The couple left the newborn on the doorstep of an orphanage in northern Gyeonggi Province less than a month after the birth.
The two reunited in 2008. The woman was pregnant with another child fathered by a foreign man, but the man once again believed he was the biological father.
After the couple legally married, the woman gave birth in a makeshift shed on a farm owned by the man’s parents. They raised the child for about a year.
As the child grew older, however, the man again realized the child was not biologically his.
Fearing confrontation, the woman fled in March 2009, leaving the child behind. The man subsequently abandoned the second child at the doorstep of the same orphanage.
The crimes went undetected for more than a decade and were uncovered only recently during a nationwide government review of birth registrations and temporarily registered newborns, launched to identify unregistered children and possible cases of child abuse or abandonment.
The court did not disclose the identities of the two children but said both were confirmed to have grown up safely.
In its ruling, the court said the mother bore particular responsibility because she fled despite knowing her husband would abandon the child.
“The defendant is especially subject to criticism because she abandoned her duty to protect the child by fleeing after deceiving her husband into believing he was the biological father,” the court said.
The court said it took into account that both children had been confirmed safe and that the defendants had admitted to the crimes in handing down suspended sentences. - The Korea Herald/ANN
