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| ▲ This photo shows Jeon Joo-hwan, a former Seoul Metro employee sentenced to life behind bars on charges of stalking and murdering a female co-worker in the ladies' room at Sindang subway station in Seoul in September of 2022. (Yonhap) |
subway murder-sentence
Life sentence finalized for man in stalking murder of co-worker in subway station restroom
SEOUL, Oct. 12 (Yonhap) -- The top court finalized life imprisonment Thursday for a former Seoul Metro employee charged with stalking a female co-worker and murdering her in a public restroom at a subway station in central Seoul last year.
The life sentence given by the Supreme Court was the same as the lower court's decision on the 32-year-old Jeon Joo-hwan indicted on charges of stabbing the woman to death in the ladies' room at Sindang subway station in Seoul in September last year.
The killing took place a day before Jeon was set to face a court ruling on separate charges of stalking the victim on 351 occasions, and illegally filming and blackmailing her in late 2021.
The two had known each other since they began to work for Seoul Metro, the operator of Seoul's subway system, in December 2018.
District courts had handed out a 40-year prison term for Jeon in the murder case and another nine-year term in the stalking case before the two cases were combined for an appellate ruling.
At the time of the murder, he had been relieved of duty as part of a disciplinary action taken in response to the stalking case, but he illegally broke into the company's intranet to locate the victim's address and gain access to her work schedule.
Prosecutors had demanded capital punishment for Jeon.
"It is highly necessary to ensure crimes like this never happen again by proclaiming that anyone who, with unjust intention and purpose, infringes upon another innocent person's life will be made to pay the price," the top court said, upholding the life sentence.
The top court also maintained the lower court's order for Jeon to wear an electronic location monitoring device for 15 years.
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