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Former Kodansha Editor Jung Hyun Park Loses Appeal in Murder Conviction

Warning: this article contains statements about a possible suicide. If you or anyone you know is suicidal or having suicidal thoughts, please reach out to a suicide prevention organization in your country. In the United States, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available by calling 988. In Japan, the TELL LifeLine service is available at 03-5774-0992, and an English counseling service is available at 03-4550-1146. In Canada, Crisis Services Canada is available at 1-833-456-4566.

The Tokyo High Court upheld the Tokyo District Court's conviction and 11-year prison sentence on July 18 for Jung Hyun Park, a 48-year-old former assistant editor-in-chief of Kodansha's Morning magazine and former editor of Kodansha's Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine, for the murder of his wife. The judge commented that the defense's claim that Park's wife had committed suicide were "unlikely" due to inconsistencies in Park's testimony.

Park fatally strangled his wife, then 38-year-old Kanako Park, in the early morning of August 9, 2016 at their Sendagi home in the Bunkyō ward of Tokyo. At around 2:45 a.m. that same morning, Park called emergency services and told them that when he arrived home, he had found his wife collapsed at the bottom of the stairs near the first floor entrance to their home. She was rushed to the hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival.

In a statement that Park made after the death of his wife, he claimed that his wife had killed herself, but an autopsy allegedly found signs of strangulation on Kanako's neck.

The Tokyo District Court had handed down a guilty verdict to Park in a trial in March 2019. A key piece of evidence in the trial was saliva mixed with blood found in the Park couple's bedroom, seemingly contradicting Park's claim that his wife Kanako had committed suicide. The Tokyo High Court upheld the decision in a later trial in 2021. Park claimed in these trials that the blood found in the bedroom was supposedly due to Kanako acting unstable while holding a knife. Park claimed that he had to hold her down before he moved to another room. He claimed that a short while after that, Kanako committed suicide.

The Supreme Court ordered this newest trial in November 2022 after deeming some of the evidence related to Park's claim of his wife committing suicide were not properly examined. In the latest trial, the court further determined the unreliability of Park's claim of Kanako's suicide when he did not inform emergency services that arrived at his home of the supposed suicide, only claiming that his wife committed suicide after this. Park intends to appeal the decision.

Park was part of the staff that launched Kodansha's Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine in 2009, the home of the Attack on Titan manga. He was also a former editor for The Seven Deadly Sins manga.

Source: Mainichi Shimbun