Source: Radio New Zealand
The children Yuna Jo (left) and Minu Jo (right). Supplied
A failure by the Ministry of Education to report the extended absence of two children from school meant their disappearances went unnoticed for years and only ended when their bodies were found in suitcases.
Ministry documents released to RNZ under the Official Information Act show Yuna and Minu Jo’s absences took years to be referred to the Attendance Service, rather than months.
The ministry has commissioned an external review to discover how the failure happened and to tighten procedures to ensure the failures do not happen again.
The children, aged eight and six respectively, attended a local primary school in Auckland before they were murdered by their mother Hakyung Lee in 2018.
But it was four years before their bodies were found, concealed in suitcases, inside a South Auckland storage locker.
Hakyung Lee was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years, after being found guilty of murder last September.
Hakyung Lee stares downward during her sentencing at the Auckland High Court. RNZ/Marika Khabazi
Her children had attended Papatoetoe South School, and were remembered by teacher Mary Robertson, who gave evidence at Lee’s trial.
Robertson said Lee came to see her in late 2017 to tell her that her husband Ian Jo had died.
Lee told Robertson she had plans to return to Korea where they would all be supported by family, following a vacation to Australia.
It was the last time she would see Lee and the children.
Ministry of Education protocols stipulate that when a student is withdrawn from school, and does not enrol at another school within 20 school days, the Ministry’s ENROL system creates a task, asking the school to fill in a Non-Enrolment form.
“Every principal must ensure a non-enrolment notification form is completed within five school days when a non-enrolment notification task is sent to a school from ENROL.”
Ministry documents show the system failed to require the school to submit a non-enrolment notification.
The children’s school had earlier said they followed the ministry’s processes after 20 days of unexplained absence, and tried to track down the children themselves, unsuccessfully.
Deputy Secretary Helen Hurst told RNZ the ministry had worked internally to analyse how the school attendance systems had operated in Minu and Yuna’s case.
She said issues had been identified and “processes had occurred” that contributed to the gap between the children returning to New Zealand in May of 2018, a month before their murder, and the case going to attendance services in 2020.
“Without those issues, it is likely that the referral would have taken a matter of months following their return rather than years,” Hurst said.
The ministry was not notified at any point that the students were re-enrolled elsewhere, and police were not contacted prior to their investigation, she said.
A timeline showed the Ministry of Education’s efforts to find the Jo children.
The non-enrolement process for both Yuna and Minu was initiated in September of 2020, two years after their murder.
Case notes from the ministry show home visits were made, immigration checks done, and emails were sent to the children’s school and mother, Hakyung Lee.
By June 2021, there had been no response from Lee, who by then was living in South Korea.
By August 2022, a note said there had still been no contact and the ministry did not know where the children were.
Helen Hurst said the ministry had done further analyses of their systems, and had commissioned an external review of how attendance systems and processes operated in the case of Minu and Yuna.
“While the primary role of attendance systems and services is to support students to attend school, we are committed to strengthening the role that the ministry plays, alongside other social sector agencies, in providing a system of support for the safety and wellbeing of children,” she said.
“There is a considerable amount of work underway to improve the support that is provided for school attendance, and any findings from the external review will help us to inform this ongoing work.”
Hurst said work was underway to establish an information sharing agreement with police, to ensure children missing from school are found.
“Work is also underway with police and Oranga Tamariki to provide simplified processes and guidance for steps to be taken any time an attendance service provider has concerns about the welfare or safety of children,” she said.
The ministry had increased the frequency of six-monthly requests to MBIE and Immigration New Zealand, which checks for the return to New Zealand of students who were unenrolled with a reason of ‘gone overseas’.
That process was now done monthly as of August 2025.
“The changes will help improve the timeliness of the Ministry becoming aware of school-aged children who have returned to New Zealand,” Hurst said.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
