Taekwondo instructor who killed a child and a 7-year-old student

A judge on Tuesday sentenced a Sydney taekwondo instructor to life in prison without the possibility of release for murdering a 7-year-old student and the boy’s parents.

Kwang Kyung Yoo, 51, sat with his head bowed as Judge Ian Harrison said he would never be eligible for parole.

The former instructor, who was called Master Leon by his students, did not look at the victims’ family as they cried in court, 9News Australia reported. He held a Bible full of notes during the sentencing, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Harrison said Yoo was motivated by jealousy of the family’s financial success.

“I am satisfied that the level of culpability in the commission of these offenses is so extreme that the community interest in retribution, punishment, community protection and deterrence can only be satisfied by the imposition of a life sentence,” Harrison told the New South Wales Supreme Court.

Harrison said Yoo had no motive to kill the boy or his parents in February last year.

“These murders were horrific and violent, cruel and senseless acts, carried out without a trace of human compassion or regard for the dignity of the Cho family,” Harrison said, according to news.au.

State law prevents child victims of crimes from being identified, so the child’s parents cannot be named either.

Yoo and his victims were all born in South Korea.

Yoo had pleaded guilty to all three murders in a previous court appearance. He had no previous criminal record.

Yoo had strangled the boy and his 41-year-old mother at his Lion’s Taekwondo and Martial Arts Academy in western Sydney. At the time he owed tens of thousands of dollars and was behind on rent for the academy.

He took the mother’s Apple watch and drove his luxury BMW car to the family home where he stabbed the boy’s 39-year-old father to death.

Yoo was injured in the struggle at the home and drove to a hospital where he told medical staff he had been attacked in a supermarket parking lot. The police arrested him at the hospital.

After his arrest, Yoo was unable to explain how he intended to get the family’s money and later detailed his remorse.

While the crimes were planned (with Yoo surveilling the family home beforehand), he made no attempt to hide his crimes from his academy’s CCTV cameras or hide the bodies.

The judge heard Yoo had lied about qualifying for the 2000 Olympics, owning a Lamborghini and living in Sydney’s wealthy suburbs, 9News Australia reported. He sent emails to himself, posing as important people, to impress his wife, the outlet reported.

Harrison noted that Yoo had told a psychologist that his lies became bigger and bigger as his wife and his students asked more questions.

“I wanted to give him hope,” he told his psychiatrist, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. “However, over time it got bigger and bigger and didn’t stop. She was very happy.”

The judge noted that Yoo had been burdened since childhood with unrealistic expectations from his parents and South Korean culture about the level of success he needed to achieve.

Yoo was handed a box of tissues as the judge described his deep remorse for the pain he had caused.

In a letter to the judge, Yoo said he was “captive to sin” and wanted to give himself to Jesus Christ.

“I wish I could go back in time so this didn’t happen,” Yoo wrote. “I pray every day for the people I’ve hurt.”

Yoo’s lawyers had argued that he should be given a minimum non-parole period rather than a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of release. The maximum penalty for someone convicted of murder in New South Wales is life imprisonment, with a standard non-parole period of 20 years for the murder of an adult and 25 years for the murder of a child.