In a different world, a 16-year-old Yuna Jo would be preparing for her exams and learning to drive.
On a weekend, she might have wandered through Auckland's Westfield St Luke's mall with friends, picking out what she might wear to a fast-approaching end-of-year formal.
She might have already decided what she wanted to do at university. She might have still been on the fence.
Her little brother, Minu, would be 13 and entering high school for the first time — maybe nervous, maybe excited, maybe ready to follow in his big sister's footsteps.
Both would have had the world at their fingertips and a lifetime of opportunities ahead.
Instead, time stopped for them on an unknown day in June 2018, in a small house in a southern suburb of Auckland.
The two siblings, forever eight and six years old, had their chances at finishing school, experiencing major milestones and building a life for themselves taken from them.
And no-one noticed.
Seven years later their mother, Hakyung Lee, has been found guilty of their murders in a trial lasting just over two weeks.
Warning: This article contains details that may be distressing for some readers.
'Happy, loving family' despite co-dependency
Hakyung Lee, born Ji Eun Lee Smith, moved to New Zealand from South Korea with her parents when she was 13-years-old.
When she was 18, her father died. She moved back to South South Korea to study before later moving back to New Zealand.
It was then that she met Ian Jo, the man who would soon become her husband, at church.
The couple were married in 2006 and moved to a small home in the Auckland suburb of Papatoetoe, welcoming two children in the following years.
Ian Jo worked at the airport. Lee — also known to friends as Jasmine — became a stay-at-home mum.
She had a dependent personality, both family and mental health experts told the court, and relied on her husband.
But despite this, they were a "happy, loving" family.
A teacher at the Papatoetoe South School, Mary Robertson, had met Yuna Jo for the first time when she was just five years old.
She had "a smile that lit up the world" and was "beautifully behaved", Ms Robertson told the court.
Her little brother, Minu Jo, was "joyful" and "bubbling".
He had been born with a cleft palate and had a speech impediment, something Lee worried about and — according to witnesses — felt responsible for.
Their teachers adored them.
"They were such caring parents who were so involved and interested in [Yuna's] education," Ms Robertson said.
"They really wanted to know how they could help."
Suicidal ideations developed after dad's cancer diagnosis
Things went south in early 2017, when Ian Jo was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer.
Lee called her mother in tears, panicked — if her husband died, she said, she would too.
Her mother, Choon Ja Lee, told the court she thought it was a "passing phrase".
"But after hearing it a couple of times again, I was a bit nervous just in case," she said.
[papatoetoe map]It wasn't the time to think like that, she recalled telling her daughter.
"I comforted her a lot, saying, 'don't have such weak thoughts,'" she said.
In the following months, Ian Jo's condition worsened, and a trip to South Korea for treatment left him thin and weakened.
Lee woke early in the morning to be by his side in hospital, leaving her mother with the children and not returning until Minu and Yuna were being put to bed.
Choon Ja Lee told the court, Minu Jo did not understand how sick their father was, but his older sister Yuna knew "to an extent".
She said her daughter would wake up early and leave for the hospital to be with her husband.
Jo's brother, Jimmy Sei Wook Cho, said Lee had to be convinced to let the children see their father in hospice care.
Hospice nurses told the court how, days before his death, Ian Jo took his wife's car keys and drove away.
Distraught and believing he was going to kill himself, Lee texted him: "If you die, I will die with our two kids."
After his death in November 2017, Lee's mother said her daughter wasn't eating and had "no will to live".
"I told her, 'if you really want to follow your husband, go by yourself and I'll take the kids,'" Choon Ja Lee said.
"She told me, 'you don't even speak English, how can I let you look after the kids', and then we laughed it off."
Yuna and Minu stopped going to school.
Their mother told school staff she wanted to make happy memories with them before telling them their father was dead.
Travel used to distract children after their father's death
The day after Ian Jo died, Lee bought two suitcases and over the following months used life insurance money to take multiple holidays.
Lee, her mother, and both children took a trip to the Gold Coast, where Choon Ja Lee said she expressed concern about the spending.
She said her daughter had told her she planned to spend all her money and "die with the children".
"I think she said it without intending just because she was upset," Choon Ja Lee said.
The family stayed in five-star hotels — spending $NZ32,000 ($28,726) on the two-months trip which included a trip to South Korea, to attempt to distract them from their father's death.
Spending data also showed Lee and the children staying in multiple luxury hotels and visiting hot springs and restaurants.
[map of where the children travelled]After Lee and the children left for South Korea, their grandmother said she never saw them again.
Lee's brother-in-law took the final photo of the children in April 2018.
"She said she was having a hard time," he told the court.
"She said I'll get better."
PlayStation records show last sign of life from children
Behind closed doors, an expert told the court, things were rapidly spiralling.
Lee told forensic psychiatrist Dr Yvette Kelly she feared she would "spontaneously suicide" and the children would discover her.
"Sometimes we can never know why people do the things they do," Crown prosecutor Natalie Walker said.
"Perhaps the thought of a life parenting her children alone without her husband was too much for Ms Lee."
On June 27, 2018, a PlayStation in the home recorded activity by users "HeroMinu" and "PrincessYuna", updating Minecraft trophies.
According to the Crown, it was the best evidence available as to the children's last day alive.
Lee admitted to giving the children a dose of the drug nortriptyline mixed into juice.
The antidepressant drug had been prescribed to her by her GP a year earlier when she said she had trouble sleeping.
The children, she said, drank the spiked juice without complaint, went to bed, and never woke up.
"She accepts that after they died, she alone was responsible for wrapping each of her children in three layers of plastic bags," Ms Walker said.
"Each of which she tied with a knot before putting them into a suitcase. Each of which she locked, wrapped in a further plastic bag, and sealed with duct tape.
"And finally, she accepts that she alone was responsible for taking the suitcases to Unit 456 of the Safe Store facility in Papatoetoe, which she did in two trips on the 30th of June 2018."
Lee extradited from South Korea to Auckland
The same month it's believed she killed her children, Lee changed her name.
She passed a driving test. She got a beauty treatment. She arranged for movers, she packed up the home, she contacted her landlord to say she would be leaving.
Then she boarded a plane for South Korea and did not return.
There, witnesses told the court, she lived a largely isolated life, not working, at one point allegedly stalked and attacked by a man from a dating app.
It would be four years before a South Korean hospital contacted her mother and a church pastor in mid-2022.
Both of them asked her about the children's whereabouts.
"I have no children," she allegedly said.
She had been in the hospital for several months, during which time she had stopped paying for the storage facility.
Keeping it had cost her more than $NZ16,000 ($14,130) over the previous four years, transferring money from different accounts to make the payments.
When the payment stopped and the facility could not contact Lee, the contents were sold at auction.
The entire unit, including the two fabric suitcases wrapped in plastic bags, was bought for just $NZ401.
When the Auckland family who had bought the unit's contents cut through the layers of plastic and fabric, they called the police.
Yuna and Minu, both lying in the fetal position, were fully clothed and dressed in puffer jackets.
Lee was arrested by South Korean police and extradited to New Zealand in late 2022.
'A disease of the mind' and a 'selfish act'
After two years of suppression orders, psychiatric assessment and pre-trial proceedings, the case went to court earlier this month.
Lee admitted to killing her children — but argued she was not guilty by reason of insanity.
The defence's only witness, Dr Kelly told the jury she was put under "immense pressure" to get a report out on Lee's sanity.
She said said while she was confident Lee had a "disease of the mind", she later reversed her finding Lee was not criminally responsible.
Lee's "delusional beliefs", according to Dr Kelly, left her unable to ask for help or believing she could be helped.
"She subsequently felt the morally right thing to do was to kill the children before she suicided … believing the children would be reunited with their father in death," Dr Kelly said.
Ms Walker argued that the children's murder was a "selfish act" to get out being a single parent.
"It was not the altruistic act of a mother who had lost her mind and believed it was the right thing to do; it was the opposite."
After two weeks of trial, a jury took just over three hours to make their decision.
Hakyung Lee was found guilty of murdering her two children. She has yet to be sentenced.
