On February 11th, 2021, a three-year-old girl was found dead in her house. It was assumed that she had already died several months ago. Her mother had moved to her new house, leaving the baby alone. To introduce the house to the new tenant, the baby's grandparents went into the house. There, they saw their dead grand-daughter and called the police. This incident looked like a tragic caused by child-abuse.

▲ The real mother of the girl arrested by the police

However, the result of the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) examination conducted to testify the kinship revealed a shocking truth; the real mother of the girl was her grandmother. The police are assuming that the real mother gave birth to a baby and exchanged her with her daughter. Due to this unbelievable result, the National Forensic Service had repeated the examination four times, and nothing changed. However, the real mother is denying the result, asserting that she had never been pregnant. She maintains that the DNA examination result is wrong. Then, can this be possible?

▲ Graph of the family relation

The reason we believe in DNA examinations is that DNA is the most scientific identification of human beings. Every single human has its own DNA structure, and this does not change throughout the whole life. In addition, it is almost impossible to have the same DNA structure as another person. In the case of kinship testing examination, we test only about 15 portions of DNA. Despite it looks too small to gain an accurate result, the percentage of error is about one out of a hundred thousand. All things considered, the National Forensic Service claims that the accuracy of the DNA results about the incident above is about 99.9999 percent.

▲ DNA examination used in crime investigation

Nowadays, crimes are becoming more and more elaborate. A lot of facts are hiding behind deliberate tricks. However, science is also developing at an astronomically fast pace, and this advancement reveals hidden truths. With the development of science, there is no doubt that we will move toward a better and just society.

March 25th, 2021 by Yang Ye Won