Taekwondo Instructor’s Fantasies of Olympic Glory and Wealth Preceded Triple Murder, Court Hears

A 51-year-old Sydney taekwondo instructor, Kwang Kyung Yoo, has pleaded guilty to the February killings of a 7-year-old student and the child’s parents, a court was told. Prosecutors say Yoo was consumed by grandiose fantasies of fame and wealth — including false claims of meeting billionaires and qualifying for the Olympics — while struggling with debt.

Yoo is due to be sentenced on Dec. 16. State law prevents identification of the child victim, and the parents’ names are not being published in court filings. The court was told that all four individuals involved were born in South Korea.

Evidence presented at the New South Wales Supreme Court described a pattern of fabrication: Yoo allegedly lied about meeting Australia’s richest person, owning a Lamborghini, and qualifying for the Sydney Olympics. To impress his wife he sometimes emailed himself posing as prominent figures and even called himself "Professor Yoo."

“These are a form of fantasy, essentially a grandiose or self-important fantasy that he’s richer, has more social status, has more success in life in different domains than he actually does,”

forensic psychiatrist Andrew Ellis told the court.

In reality, Yoo was heavily in debt and behind on rent for his martial arts school, Lion’s Taekwondo and Martial Arts Academy. Prosecutors say the murders began after Yoo watched the student’s father appear to accumulate wealth and success; he allegedly contemplated killing the family to obtain their money.

According to prosecutors, Yoo strangled the boy and the boy’s mother at the academy after a class, then drove the mother’s BMW to the family home and fatally stabbed the father. The father inflicted a stab wound on Yoo during a struggle. Yoo later drove the BMW to a hospital and told staff he had been attacked in a supermarket carpark; police arrested him at the hospital the next day.

After his arrest, Yoo reportedly could not explain any plan for obtaining the family’s money and later expressed remorse. “I was ... good ... two months ago. Now I’m a murderer,” he told prison authorities, saying he felt shame, guilt and sorrow.

Yoo’s lawyer, Richard Wilson, disputed the prosecution’s view that jealousy or hatred motivated the killings. “There is some evidence that he had perhaps envy of what they had, but in terms of jealousy and hatred … that doesn’t appear to be a motivator here,” Wilson told the court. He argued Yoo should receive a minimum non-parole period rather than life without possibility of release.

Under New South Wales law, the maximum penalty for murder is life imprisonment. The standard non-parole period cited by the court is 20 years for the murder of an adult and 25 years for the murder of a child. Sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 16.