South Korea jails doctors for killing baby delivered at 36 weeks

South Korean national flags flutter in the wind at the government complex in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, Feb. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

A South Korean court jailed two doctors on Wednesday for murdering a baby they delivered at 36 weeks of pregnancy and left to die in a freezer.

South Korea has decriminalized abortion but political deadlock has prevented successive governments from passing new laws to regulate the practice.

The infant’s mother, surnamed Kwon, sparked public outrage in 2024 when she posted a YouTube video claiming she had undergone an abortion at 36 weeks, a stage when the majority of babies can survive outside the womb.

The clip was soon deleted but screenshots continued to circulate online, prompting a police investigation into Kwon and the doctors involved in the surgery.

A spokesman for the Seoul Central District Court told AFP on Wednesday that two doctors had been found guilty of murdering the infant.

The head of the hospital where the surgery took place was sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to pay 1.15 billion won ($780,000) in restitution, while the doctor who performed the surgery received four years, the spokesman said.

Kwon, who is in her late 20s, was found guilty of being an accomplice to murder and given a three-year suspended jail term.

The court explained her comparatively light sentence by saying it had taken into account the social and economic difficulties women often experience during pregnancy, the Yonhap news agency reported.

Earlier, the court heard how the two doctors had arranged to deliver Kwon’s baby by Caesarean section before placing it in a freezer to end its life.

“The victim died in a cold storage room without ever seeing the light of day or taking a single breath outside,” the court said in its verdict, according to Yonhap.

“It is difficult to fathom the pain and fear the victim must have faced,” the verdict said.

Neither of the doctors have been publicly named. Kwon has said she only discovered she was pregnant very late in the process.

Until 2019, South Korea was one of a handful of industrialized nations that broadly criminalized abortion, except in cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s health was in jeopardy.

But seven years ago the Constitutional Court ordered the decades-old ban lifted, ruling that the 1953 statute “goes against the constitution.”

It recommended that abortions be allowed up to 22 weeks of pregnancy and ordered the law to be revised by the end of 2020.

But due to parliamentary gridlock, the changes have yet to be legislated, leaving a legal vacuum in place.