A court sentenced a Korean-American professor to 25 years in prison, with 10 years to serve, for tying her husband’s hands and feet, binding him to a chair, and suffocating him to death.
The bereaved family cried as the judge handed down the sentence, appearing unable to accept the ruling.
The Des Moines Register, a local Iowa newspaper, reported on April 26 that Gowun Park, 45, a former assistant professor of economics at Simpson College, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the February 2020 murder of her husband, Sung Woo Nam, who was 41 at the time, at a sentencing hearing in Dallas County Court. The judge also ordered Park to pay $150,000 in restitution to the family.
However, the judge granted the defense’s request to serve charges concurrently for voluntary manslaughter, third-degree kidnapping, and domestic violence, setting the prison term at 10 years.
In the closing testimony before the ruling, Nam’s sister said, “The pain of our family continues to endure since his tragic death for the last four years.”
Before the sentencing, Park said, “I carry sincere grief and regret for my husband’s death,” adding, “I did not want to hurt him. I loved him.”
Park was accused of gagging and strangling her husband, Nam, to death in February 2020 at their home by tying him to a chair with a rope, tying his hands and feet, placing a towel over his head, securing it with tape, and then stuffing clothes into his mouth, leading him to suffocate.
Investigators determined Nam’s cause of death was strangulation. Park allegedly tried to hide evidence of her husband’s restraints after the crime. Park reached a guilty plea agreement with authorities on April 4.
BY YEOL JANG, HOONSIK WOO [jang.yeol@koreadaily.com]
