A migrant worker who fatally stabbed a co-worker of the same nationality after an argument has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, with the term now final.
The Supreme Court's Third Division, presided over by Justice Lee Sook-yeon, recently upheld a lower court ruling that sentenced a Philippine national identified as A to 20 years in prison on a murder charge, legal sources said on the 16th.
A was indicted on charges of stabbing B, a Philippine co-worker in their 30s, multiple times at a company dormitory in Yuseong District, Daejeon, on Dec. 1 last year. A, who had been wrongly suspected of speaking ill of B, was drinking with the victim when the two quarreled over the matter and A committed the crime in anger, according to the investigation.
Both the trial court and the appellate court sentenced A to 20 years. The trial court said human life is the highest legal interest the law seeks to protect, and that the loss of a life cannot be restored by any means, warranting commensurate punishment.
The Supreme Court left the lower court's judgment intact. Weighing the sentencing factors on the record — including the defendant's age, character, environment, relationship with the victim, the motive, means and outcome of the crime, and the circumstances afterward — the court said it could not find that the appellate court's decision to uphold the first-instance sentence of 20 years was grossly unjust, even taking into account the mitigating circumstances argued in the appeal.