SEOUL, Dec. 23 (Yonhap) -- A Seoul appellate court on Friday upheld a 20-year sentence for a medical doctor who killed his pregnant wife during a quarrel, rejecting his appeal to overturn an earlier conviction.

Upholding the lower court's ruling in September, the Seoul High Court found the 31-year-old doctor surnamed Baek guilty of strangling his nine-month-pregnant wife in January after they argued over his heavy computer gaming habit.

"Considering all the pieces of evidence and the circumstances, we found him guilty of killing his wife," presiding judge Lee Tae-jong said, adding "We dismissed his appeal as he has shown no remorse for his crime even after the conviction."

While the prosecution sought life imprisonment for Baek for his murder charges, the lower court sentenced him to 20 years behind bars, citing that his crime was unlikely to have been premeditated.

The rare case of murder by a doctor, which drew heavy media attention, required a group of forensic specialists to prove Baek responsible for the killing.

The doctor first reported his wife's death to the police himself, saying he found her lying dead over a bathtub in their apartment in Seoul after he returned home in the evening. Citing his medical career and knowledge, the doctor claimed his wife might have slipped in the bathroom and the extra weight from her pregnancy could have led to suffocation.

Police and forensic scientists, however, said her death was apparently caused by Baek strangling her, citing marks around her neck and internal bleeding from the strangulation.

A police investigation found the couple had a serious fight early in the morning of the day the woman was found dead. The fight, along with stress from a medical license test Baek took the previous day, led him to commit the crime. He left his home at sunrise for a nearby college library before returning home later in the day to report the death to the police.