Jung-Hyun Park, a former Kodansha manga editor, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for the murder of his wife in 2016. Park (48) claimed that his wife (38) committed suicide, but the court said this testimony did not match the evidence at the scene. Park was sentenced to 11 years in prison in a first instance trial, which he appealed. A second instance trial (the Supreme Court ruling) confirmed the verdict in 2019, but the Supreme Court ordered a retrial on the grounds that the case was incomplete, and the case once again ended up before the Tokyo High Court.
According to information presented by prosecutors during the trial, Park killed his wife by strangling her at their home in Tokyo. The defendant said he pushed his wife down on the bed while she was holding a knife and went into another room, then heard a noise and saw her kill herself. The presiding judge rejected this claim, saying it was unnatural for the wife to lose consciousness and then walk away and kill herself. The judge added that Park's statement lacked credibility. Park has maintained his innocence. The couple have a child.
Park joined Kodansha in 1999. As an editor at Weekly Shonen Magazine, Park worked on titles such as The Seven Deadly Sins and GTO: Paradise Lost. He also wrote a children's column for the Asahi Shimbun. Although many media outlets have claimed that Park was responsible for launching and editing the Attack on Titan manga, these claims are false. Shortly after his arrest in 2017, Kodansha's Morning Magazine released a statement, revealing that Park had assisted in starting Bessatsu Shonen Magazine (where Attack on Titan was serialized) and that despite being the magazine's first editor-in-chief, he had not actually launched the manga.
Source: NHK, Mainichi
Featured image for illustrative purposes only: Ace Attorney, © CAPCOM/YTV, CloveWorks