Finn
Blackwell, Reporter
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.
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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protocols stipulate that when a student is withdrawn from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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