A South Korean appeals court has acquitted a young woman known by her surname Kwon of murdering a newborn following a late-term procedure at 36 weeks of pregnancy, overturning her earlier conviction on the grounds that she may not have known the baby would be born alive. Kwon had initially been convicted in March alongside two doctors — both of whom admitted to killing the infant — and given a suspended sentence, while the doctors' murder convictions were upheld, though their jail terms were reduced on appeal. The case has intensified scrutiny of South Korea's legal vacuum on abortion, which was decriminalised in 2019 but remains without clear parliamentary regulation, leaving pregnant people with no defined rights or limits on termination procedures.