Woman indicted for abandoning fetus in freezer has gone missing

A naturalized woman from Vietnam, who was indicted without physical detention for abandoning her newborn in a freezer out of fear that her affair would be exposed, has gone missing.

[YONHAP]

A naturalized woman from Vietnam, who was indicted without physical detention for abandoning her newborn in a freezer out of fear that her affair would be exposed, has gone missing.

According to the legal community on Monday, the Cheongju District Court attempted four times between last November and January this year to deliver an indictment to the woman, but every attempt failed because she could not be located at her registered address.

Once an indictment is filed, an indictment notice is delivered to the defendant, who normally submits a written opinion to the court. Because the court determined that the woman had effectively fled, it issued an arrest warrant ex officio in March. Prosecutors attempted to execute the warrant, but were also unable to find her.

The court decided last month to proceed by public notice and held the first hearing on Wednesday, one year after the indictment, without the woman present. Public notice is used when a recipient’s whereabouts are unknown and the court posts the document on a bulletin board or in an official gazette, deeming it delivered.

The woman was indicted without detention for giving birth to a stillborn child on Jan. 15 last year in the bathroom of her home in Jeungpyeong County, North Chungcheong, then abandoning the body in the freezer compartment of her refrigerator.

On Feb. 14 last year, her mother‑in‑law discovered the body while cleaning and informed her son, the woman’s husband. The husband panicked and buried the remains in a nearby vacant lot, then turned himself in at a police substation the next day. The woman fled by car the night the body was discovered and was arrested the following day on a highway in Naju, South Jeolla.

According to the police, the woman said she had not known she was pregnant, that she suddenly felt abdominal pain and went to the bathroom where she delivered the baby, and that the baby had not been breathing. She added that she hid the body in the freezer because she feared her husband, with whom she hadn't been intimate with for an extended period, would discover her affair, and that she had planned to bury the baby in the mountains soon.

However, police believed there was a possibility that she had killed and abandoned the newborn to conceal the fact that the child was from an extramarital relationship, and they sought an arrest warrant. The court at the time rejected the request, determining that she had been cooperative during questioning and did not pose a flight risk.

Prosecutors and police later requested another arrest warrant in consideration of her prior attempt to flee, but the court again dismissed it, stating that she had been cooperative during the investigation and that there was no further risk of flight.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom. BY JANG GU-SEUL [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]