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Woman cleared of murdering her cheating husband who ‘raped and beat her every day’

A court has cleared a woman of stabbing her husband to death after she told a jury that he beat her and raped her nearly every day.

Hyojung Lim, 44, moved to a flat in South London with husband Jaesok Lee, 40, after they fled North Korea in 2007.

However, Wood Green Crown Court heard how their relationship deteriorated before Lee’s death when his wife found out about an affair.

Prosecutors alleged that Lim killed her husband as an act of revenge for getting his lover pregnant, saying she had text him “If you do that, you will die all of a sudden”.

Another text, sent five days later, read: “I am as angry as I can be and I feel like making something happen now.”

Killing: Police investigate the flat where Hyojung Lim and Jaesok Lee lived (SWNS)

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The jury heard that Lim knifed her husband in the throat and chest at their home in New Malden, Surrey, with such force the tip of the blade snapped off and embedded in his spinal cord.

She told a flatmate after the killing: “I have revenged him for the past 13 years.”

The court heard how Lim also made similar statements in a blood-stained note scrawled immediately after the killing describing her revenge at apparent wrongs her husband had done to her.

But she told the court she acted in self defence when she stabbed him after suffering years of violence and sexual abuse, both in North Korea and in the UK.

A jury of seven men and five women deliberated for more than 20 hours before acquitting Lim of her husband’s murder and manslaughter.

New life: The couple fled North Korea in 2007 (Getty)

Lim met his lover Yuni Choi, a Korean woman from Leeds, on social media and they had not known each other for long before they spent a weekend in London and some time in Leeds, the court heard.

The prosecutor said: “They spent four happy days together and the only interruption was his mobile telephone, which rang constantly, but he did not answer the calls.”

When he eventually did pick up, Mr Lee’s mistress was shocked to discover it was his wife at the other end who told her he had cheated several times.

Jurors heard that neighbours often heard the two argue but never saw any physical violence.

On the night of her husband’s death, neighbours were woken up by shouting and found Lim sat on the bed next to her wounded husband who lay under the duvet.

During an interview with police on 3 March, Lim said her husband pulled a knife on her in their bedroom after they got back from a meal at a restaurant.

She told them: “I did not wish to kill Mr Lee but I had no choice. It was him or me.”

Top pic: SWNS