Former Editor of Kodansha’s Attack on Titan, Park Jung-Hyun, has been sentenced to prison for 11 years for the alleged murder of his wife. The High Court decided to rule against him in his case after a retrial last week on July 18, 2024, because his testimony was seen as untrustworthy due to differing versions of what happened. The murder reportedly took place in August 2016.
The editor was arrested in January 2017, and this was his third trial that was ordered by the Supreme Court, as it determined that multiple portions of the evidence had not been adequately examined and studied in the previous trials. However, Park is still not convinced by the ruling and plans to appeal against it in the future.
Park has been denying allegations by the prosecution since the beginning and has claimed that his wife committed suicide, but his story having different variations led to the court ruling out the claims of suicide. Following the hearing, Park gave a statement, and according to his comment, he still believes that the decision is wrong.
Who is Park Jung-Hyun?
Park has worked with Kodansha since 1999 and was the first editor-in-charge of Attack on Titan, serialized in Bessatsu Shonen Magazine in 2009. He has also worked on other popular manga series like Seven Deadly Sins and GTO: Paradise Lost. He later became an editor at the Weekly Morning in June 2016.
According to Mainichi Shimbun, Park was arrested in January 2017, with the prosecution seeking a 15-year sentence because Park had a strong intent to kill his wife. The defense, on the other hand, argued that his wife committed suicide. According to the court, Park strangled his 38-year-old wife, Kanako, at their home in Bunkyo City, Japan, on August 9, 2016.
The court dismissed Park’s claims as implausible. Presiding Judge Kazunori Kayoku dismissed the allegations, claiming the defendant’s testimony was inappropriate and the prospect of suicide was unrealistic.
The Different Versions of Park Jung-Hyun’s Story
According to the Tokyo Reporter, Park’s version of the story has two different narratives that contradict his case. He initially stated that Kanako had fallen down the stairs, but after that, he made the revelation that it was a suicide. Kanako’s body was found by the ambulance attendants at the foot of the staircase, and the cause of death was revealed to be suffocation.
However, when the crime scene was investigated, Kanako’s blood stains were found in their bedroom. Park claimed that his wife had a knife and acted violently; thus, he had to restrain her because she wanted to kill him too. Later on, he heard something outside and found out that his wife had killed herself.
According to Park, his wife took her own life by hanging herself with his jacket on the railing of the stairs, but he could not tell his children that their mother had committed suicide. Mainichi Shimbun reported that Park gave a statement after the ruling:
It’s wrong. I’ll make sure I make sure it’s corrected. I cannot help but suspect that this is the core of the guilty verdict. This is extremely unfair, and I feel indignant.
Even Park’s mother claimed that the ruling was wrong as her son got along well with his wife and cared for their children. She even stated that the ruling was too cruel and they could not accept it.
