Are children under the age of 3 safe?
On the 7th, SBS 'I Want to Know' (hereinafter referred to as 'The Egg') shed light on the body abandonment case that took place last year under the subtitle 'Twelve Layers of Lies - Kimchi Cask Body Disposal Mystery'.
In November of last year, a shopping bag was found on the roof of a villa in Seoul.
It was wrapped in a total of 12 layers, including a shopping bag within a shopping bag and vinyl inside, and the identity of this was a kimchi container.
Also inside was the body of a child weighing 1.7 kg.
Ha-eun said that the child went missing a while ago.
And it was Ha-eun's birth mother Seo and her father Choi who abandoned and concealed her body.
Had she been alive, she would have been 5 years old, but an autopsy revealed that she had died at 15 months of age.
Seo, the birth mother of Ha-eun, who testified that Ha-eun's absence was revealed through a complete survey of 3-year-old children in foster care, and that she abandoned the child.
Ms. Seo insisted that her child died and that she abandoned her body, but that she did not kill the child.
Then she said she did it because she was afraid that her child's death would be her fault.
However, her biological father, Mr. Choi, was imprisoned at the time of Ha-eun's death, and even though she was divorced from Mr. Seo, she participated in Ha-eun's body dumping, arousing her doubts.
In particular, it was revealed that Ms. Choi changed her child's address and that she carried a shopping bag with her child's body whenever she went out, which shocked her.
And during the interview, the existence of Ji-hwan, who is 4 years older than Ha-eun, was also revealed to them.
Ji-hwan walked around the neighborhood wearing clothes that were not suitable for the season, and neighbors reported Mr. Seo to the police.
Around the time Ha-eun died, it was revealed that Seo, who had known a man through a dating app, had been with him from the evening two days before Ha-eun's death to the daytime the next day.
And after Ha-eun's death, when the police were protecting Ji-hwan due to reports from neighbors, it was revealed that Seo was with her lover.
And an even more shocking fact was revealed.
It turns out that Seo and Choi had another child besides Ha-eun and Ji-hwan, and the child died around the 100th.
Ha-eun's brother, who died suddenly at 102 days after birth, was treated as a simple death at the time.
However, the doctor at the hospital who treated the child at the time said otherwise.
X-rays taken to determine the cause of his death revealed a fracture in his head.
In particular, the extent of the fracture was so great that the doctor called the police.
In addition, the autopsy revealed a large number of fractures at different times in the ribs and elbows as well as the skull.
At the time, Mr. and Mrs. Seo, who claimed that the child fell from the bed and suffered a fracture, said that the fracture in the child's arm was caused by his older brother Ji-hwan accidentally stepping on it.
However, an expert who analyzed the child's data said, "This is abuse, and it seems that this level of shock has been applied to the child, so that if he is beaten to that extent, he will die."
In particular, in the case of skull fractures, it was found that adult males were able to hit hard while the skull was fixed.
It is said that these fractures occur only when there is an external force similar to that of a professional boxer's fist.
However, the result of the autopsy at the time was unknown.
The possibility of abuse is visible, but it is not a direct cause of death, and it is difficult to conclude a causal relationship between skull fractures and death, withholding judgment.
And the police investigation was also closed.
Mr. Seo and Mr. Choi stubbornly refused to testify about abuse and lie detector tests, and the case came to a halt.
Experts said that the deaths of siblings had something in common.
The lack of the occipital bone in Ha-eun's skull, which means that if Jimin's body had been siraptized, the skull fracture would have looked like this.
In response, the expert said, "If you look at the second Jimin, you can see evidence of prominent abuse. It is more reasonable to see the skull of Jimin, who died first, and see Ha-eun as the same mechanism." He was killed. The biggest feature of this case is that it has the meaning of actual serial murder."
Seo, the mother of the children, was a lie in her daily life.
In response, the expert said, "The type who creates lies depending on the situation is lying pathologically."
Mr. Seo deceived people with lies and took advantage, and was sentenced to 1 year and 2 months in prison for fraud along with Mr. Choi.
However, Mr. Seo escaped imprisonment by citing childcare as the reason.
Even after his arrest, Mr. Seo's lies continued.
He said he was pregnant while submitting a medical receipt to the court, but this was not true.
In response, the expert analyzed, "A baby is a necessary existence, a usable existence, a means and a method only for self-interest."
Then, what is the reason for Choi's participation in the crime?
The expert said, "There must have been a reason why Mr. Seo continued to interview Mr. Choi. It seems that he was worried that Mr. Choi would talk about an additional conspiracy or an incident in which he was involved." said there would be
Lastly, experts lamented the social system that was not properly equipped.
The expert said, "Before that, a child had already died at about 100 days old, and the older child was wandering around, and if that was reported, there must be punishment or education and counseling for these parents in some way." "
In addition, he regretted that it was too late for Ha-eun's death, which was revealed during the entire investigation of 3-year-old children.
The expert said, "We have to go back and review the meaning of confirming that everyone is alive safely at the time of 3 years after not intervening at all for 3 years." He pointed out that there must be a lot of intervention.
It was an incident that clearly showed that the safety of infants and toddlers under the age of 3 can be in a blind spot. With this incident as an opportunity, they said that they needed continuous support and monitoring from the time they were born, just like overseas.
In addition, it seemed necessary for related organizations to establish a network and improve the system.
Currently, Mr. Seo and Mr. Choi are on trial on charges of child abuse, murder, and concealment of a corpse.
And the issue of the trial is to prove the causal relationship between abuse and death.
It is possible to sentence up to life imprisonment for child abuse and death, but if Seo's intentionality is not proven, only concealment and neglect of the body will be punished.
Lastly, through the investigation and trial, the broadcast earnestly prayed that the truth about Ha-eun, who was shunned by her parents even after death, and Jimin's brother and sister, who were treated for simple deaths, would be revealed.
(Editor Kim Hyo-jung of SBS Entertainment News)