Life imprisonment upheld for man who murdered stranger and used fingerprints to obtain loan

A life imprisonment sentence was upheld for Yang Jeong-ryeol, a man who murdered a stranger and used their fingerprints to obtain a loan.
The Supreme Court upheld a lower court's ruling.

Yang Jeong-ryeol, a man who murdered a stranger, was sentenced to life imprisonment. [DAEGU DISTRICT COURT]

A life imprisonment sentence was upheld for Yang Jeong-ryeol, a man who murdered a stranger and used their fingerprints to obtain a loan.

The Supreme Court upheld a lower court's ruling, which sentenced Yang to life in prison and ordered him to wear an electronic monitoring device for 20 years, according to legal sources on Tuesday. He was convicted of robbery-murder and attempted disposal of a corpse.

Yang was indicted for killing the victim at a studio apartment in Gimcheon, North Gyeongsang, in November last year. After the murder, Yang used the victim’s mobile phone to take out a loan of 60 million won ($40,800). Prosecutors had sought the death penalty.

The district court sentenced Yang to life, saying, “Given the heinous and cold-blooded nature of the defendant’s crime, we cannot avoid imposing a severe punishment. To permanently remove him from society, we impose the heaviest penalty short of capital punishment.”

The appellate court later upheld the life sentence, stating, “He decided to rob an unspecified individual to escape financial hardship, and used a weapon he had prepared in advance to repeatedly stab the victim, demonstrating extreme maliciousness.”

Yang appealed the rulings, but the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal, finding no fault in the lower courts’ judgments.

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 HYEON YE-SEUL [shin.minhee@joongang.co.kr]