Kids heard ‘banging’ coming from room as taekwondo master Kwang Kyung Yoo began his triple-murder spree

WARNING: Disturbing content

A group of children were patiently waiting for their taekwondo instructor, whom they called “Master Lion”, to lead their lessons on a summer evening.

While some children were lying on the cushions, they heard a “knocking” sound coming from the warehouse.

Their teacher was killing a woman they didn’t know about in a closed room a few meters away.

Kwang Kyung Yoo strangled Min Cho to death and then dragged her lifeless body to the office of a North Parramatta taekwondo studio.

The taekwondo master emerged a short time later to greet his students on the mats before returning to the office where Ms. Cho lay dead.

Yoo continued to enter and exit the office several times while lecturing for the next half hour; at one point he took Ms. Cho’s watch and attempted to unlock her phone using her face, and at other times he physically assaulted her body..

About an hour after killing Ms. Cho, he called his wife and said “the car has arrived”; This was a reference to his lies about being given a work car soon. In reality, he killed Ms. Cho and then stole her car.

“The meeting was brief, but his wife thought the attacker sounded happy,” court documents stated.

Soon the seven-year-old was the only one left in the studio with the instructor.

Yoo strangled her to death in the studio’s warehouse.

Child’s murder ‘a serious breach of trust’

A few hours ago, Yoo presented the boy with a new taekwondo belt in front of the class.

At Yoo’s Lion’s Taekwondo and Martial Arts Academy

He also gave the boy and other students Zooper Dooper ice blocks before the murders.

“(The child’s) murder involved a serious breach of trust. He was a student at Mr. Yoo’s martial arts academy and likely looked to him for guidance as ‘Master Lion,'” Judge Ian Harrison said when sentencing Yoo in December.

Harrowing CCTV footage showed the taekwondo teacher moving around his studio with ease on the evening of the murders, communicating normally with students and parents even after killing Ms Cho.

Judge Harrison noted the “stark” contrast between Yoo’s interactions with Ms. Cho and the child and the murders that followed: They had no way of foreseeing the horrific fates of their victims.

Judge Harrison said: “The contrast between the incredible banality of the events that occurred there before these murders and the deaths that occurred is stark.” “Neither Ms. Cho nor (the boy) had, or could possibly have had, any reasonable idea of ​​the terrible fate that awaited them.

“They had each been deceived in the most cynical manner by Mr. Yoo’s casual care in running his affairs, and under the circumstances they were left with the distinct feeling that they had nothing to worry about.”

Murders were ‘senselessly brutal’

After committing the murders at the taekwondo studio, Yoo drove to Ms. Cho’s home in Baulkham Hills, where he stabbed her husband, Steven Cho, to death.

Judge Harrison said Mr Cho was “unsuspecting and defenseless” but managed to stab Yoo in self-defence. Yoo claimed that he gave his victim a knife. Mr. Cho died before he could cause serious harm to his killer.

“Whether taken individually or collectively, these murders were horrific and violent acts, senselessly cruel and cynical, committed without human compassion or respect for (the victims’) dignity,” Judge Harrison said.

Yoo will spend the rest of his life behind bars after being sentenced to life in prison.

At his sentencing in December, he held a Bible and kept his head down as the Chos’ loved ones burst into tears.

The killer’s strange reason

Judge Harrison revealed that Yoo was motivated to commit the horrific crimes to secure the Chos’ money and the BMW.

He was a month behind on rent for his martial arts studio at the time of the murders, and he and his wife owed approximately $10,000 in total debt from various bank accounts and credit cards.

He said that while in custody, Yoo allegedly began thinking about killing the Chos about two weeks before the murders “to get their money.”

The judge found that Yoo prepared the plan at least the afternoon of the crimes because he told his wife that his new car would arrive that day.

“From one perspective, it may seem beyond ordinary people’s comprehension and understanding that such horrific and violent behavior could have been motivated by Mr. Yoo’s deep-seated jealousy of the success achieved by others, whose (Cho’s) success was tragically and innocently representative,” Judge Harrison said.

“As strange as it may seem, there is no other reason suggested or put forward for what Mr. Yoo did.”

However, in the Justice Health reports read to the court, it was stated that the killer “could not explain how he would later get the money.”

“The gains Mr. Yoo hoped for will never materialize,” Judge Harrison said.

“The murders… broke out at an unexpected moment.”

Details of Yoo’s “grandiose” fantasies, which led him to lie about meeting Gina Rinehart and competing in the Olympics, were previously revealed in court.

He also frequently inspected expensive properties and cars to feed his “self-indulgent” fantasy that he was more successful than himself.

Yoo “felt burdened” by educational and cultural expectations that he would achieve “unrealistic levels” of success; However, Judge Harrison noted that Yoo’s experience of this burden was commonplace in Australian society and many other countries. Judge Harrison said this did not diminish Yoo’s moral culpability.

During harrowing victim statements read to the court in November, Ms Cho’s family said they “felt like we were dead” after the murders.

Laughter was replaced by “unbearable pain and endless despair” in the life of his grieving family.

“(We) will spend the rest of our lives in tears and pain, waiting for death,” the moving statement said.

At both his November hearing and his sentencing the following month, Yoo refused to look up and meet the gaze of the loved ones whose lives the Chos had destroyed.