SEOUL — South Korean police arrested a woman on Thursday charged with murdering what is believed to be her two children whose remains were found in suitcases in New Zealand last month.
The 42-year-old Korean-born New Zealand woman is suspected of fleeing to South Korea in 2018 after allegedly killing her then 7-year-old and 10-year-old children in Auckland, authorities said.
The woman, who denied the murder allegations, was arrested after global police agency Interpol issued a red notice, the Korean National Police Agency said.
“I did not do it,” she told reporters as she was escorted from a police station in the southeastern city of Ulsan.
New Zealand has to formally seek extradition of the suspect within 45 days for a South Korean court to review whether to send her back, the Ministry of Justice said.
New Zealand police launched a homicide inquiry in Auckland after the remains of the children were found by a family going through the contents of a storage locker they had purchased unseen.
The family who found the bodies were not connected to the deaths.
—Reporting by Soo-hyang Choi and Hyun Young Yi; Editing by Michael Perry
