A man in his 60s, identified as A, who killed his son with a homemade gun in Songdo, Incheon, is transferred to the prosecution from a detention cell at Incheon Nonhyeon Police Station on July 30 last year. Yonhap News
A 63-year-old man who shot and killed his son with a homemade gun after the son threw him a birthday party has had his life sentence finalized.
The Supreme Court’s Second Division, with Justice Eom Sang-pil as presiding justice, upheld the lower court ruling that sentenced the man, identified only as A, to life in prison, legal sources said on the 7th. He had been indicted and detained on charges of murder, attempted murder, violating the law on the safe management of firearms, swords and explosives, and attempted arson of an occupied building. An order requiring him to wear an electronic tracking device for 20 years was also maintained.
A was indicted and detained on charges of firing two shotgun rounds from a homemade gun at about 9:31 p.m. on July 20 last year on the 33rd floor of an apartment building in Songdo-dong, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, killing his son, identified as B, who had held a birthday party for him.
A prosecution investigation found that after A fired the homemade gun once, B leaned against a wall and pleaded for his life, and A then fired a second shot, killing him. He also faces charges of attempting to kill four other people who were in the home at the time — his daughter-in-law, two grandchildren and an acquaintance of the daughter-in-law — with the homemade gun.
At A’s home in Dobong-gu, Seoul, investigators found 15 flammable items, including plastic bottles filled with paint thinner, along with an ignition device. The device had a timer set to start a fire the day after the killing. Nineteen households were living in the apartment building.
A divorced in 1999 after being indicted and detained for a sexual violence offense, but maintained a common-law relationship with his former wife afterward before ending it around 2015. He then had no steady job and received financial support from his former wife and son over a long period.
It later emerged that for about two years, from August 2021 to September 2023, he had concealed the fact that living expenses were being paid twice over, giving him 6.4 million won a month. From November 2023, his former wife halted the payments for a period matching the duration of the duplicate payments. Facing difficulty with living costs, A fell into a delusion that his former wife and son had deceived him into believing they would keep providing money, leaving him unable to prepare for old age and isolating him, and he decided to take revenge by killing his son’s family, the investigation found.
The trial and appellate courts sentenced A to life in prison and ordered him to wear an electronic tracking device for 20 years. The appellate court said that given the degree of planning and the scale of the crimes, the offense was extremely grave and his culpability very heavy, adding that human life must be protected under any circumstances.
Both courts also rejected the defendant’s argument that the charge of attempted arson of an occupied building was improperly applied. The appellate court said he had prepared batteries and 34 liters of paint thinner in advance in order to blow up his entire residence, and that even though ignition did not actually occur, the fact that he had set an automatic timer meant his actions went beyond mere preparation and amounted to beginning the crime. The court also found him guilty of attempted murder.
The Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s judgment. It said the lower court had not violated the rules of logic and experience in a way that exceeded the limits of the principle of free evaluation of evidence, nor had it misunderstood the legal principles on intent to kill in a way that affected the ruling.
The Supreme Court also affirmed the attempted arson charge. When a fire is set using an automatic ignition device, the court said, if the perpetrator installs the device with the intent to burn a building and completes the settings for its operation, creating an objective state in which ignition occurs automatically with the passage of time and without further action, given the device’s structure and function, and can lead to the combustion of the target, then absent special circumstances he must be regarded as having begun the crime of arson.