And in the end there were none left. The dreams of the Cho family in Sydney, the most desired of Australian cities, were pulverized on Monday night, at the hands of their taekwondo teacher. The latter, of Korean origin, like the victims, will be questioned by the police once he has recovered from some injuries that forced him to undergo surgery. The starting hypothesis is that of a love triangle that ended badly.
It ended, specifically, with a stabbing, preceded by two strangulations. That of a seven-year-old taekwondo student, Benjamin Cho, and that of his mother, Min Cho, 41, at the end of classes taught by Kwang Kyung Yoo in his own gym on the outskirts of Sydney. The 49-year-old martial arts teacher then took his victim's BMW to her family home, where she stabbed her husband, Steven Cho, also of Korean origin, several times.
As a result of the fight, Yoo - known as Master León by his students - reportedly suffered several cuts to his arms and abdomen, for which he appeared at midnight at a hospital. The subject, who alleged that he had been assaulted in the parking lot of a supermarket, had to be admitted, with the operation scheduled for the same Tuesday. However, his crimes began to unravel yesterday, before noon, when a friend of the murdered family, who could not get in touch with them, called the police.
The agents found Steve's body in his house and, a few hours later, those of the mother and son, inside the martial arts school. Hours before, the parents of other students had received a strange message on their cell phones, warning of the cancellation of taekwondo classes and home pick-up due to the teacher's car accident.
Police plan to read the murder charges against Kwang Kyung Yoo this Thursday, when he has recovered from the operation. Co-workers of his victim, Steven Cho, a mid-level executive nicknamed "The Machine" at a major construction company, are distraught. "They were a lovely family."
Both the culprit and the victims were born in Korea, although both Steven - 39 years old - and his parents had been in Australia for more than twenty years. Through taekwondo, a martial art of Korean origin, they wanted the seven-year-old to be in contact with his roots.
The killer had also been in Sydney for more than twenty years, where, at least according to his resume, he had been part of the Korean team at the 2000 Olympic Games.
