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Sorry - this page has been removed. South Korean soldier sentenced to death for murder of five comrades
(4 months later)
This could be because it launched early, our rights have expired, there was a legal issue, or for another reason. A South Korean court martial has convicted a soldier of the murder of five comrades in a grenade and gun attack and sentenced him to death, according to a military official.
The conscript, identified as Sgt Lim, killed five members of his unit and wounded seven last June at a guard post near the border with North Korea.
For further information, please contact: After a 24-hour standoff with troops and despite pleas by his father to give himself up, Lim shot himself in the abdomen before being captured and taken to hospital.
“The death penalty is inevitable for such a violent crime of killing innocent comrades at the point of a gun,” the judge was quoted by Yonhap news agency as saying.
A military official at the command post in Wonju, about two hours east of Seoul where the court martial was held, confirmed the sentence on Tuesday.
Lim, in his early 20s, was described by an official as an introvert and the military said there had been concerns about his mental health, but he was deemed fit enough to be sent to the outpost.
The military has been criticised for lax discipline in some units and failure to prevent cases where soldiers with personal problems have attacked fellow soldiers. South Korea maintains a military of about 630,000, many of them conscripts who serve about two years of mandatory service.
The South is still technically at war with North Korea because only a truce was signed to end their 1950-53 conflict, not a treaty.
In 2011, a South Korean marine was sentenced to death for killing four fellow soldiers in a shooting attack. A military court also handed down the death penalty on a soldier for killing eight troops in a 2005 rampage.
The country last carried out executions in December 1997, when 23 people were hanged, according to the justice ministry.