Police Cover Up Video of Vice Justice Minister Assaulting Taxi Driver
It appears the Vice Justice Minister was given some special treatment by the Korean police:
![Vice Justice Minister Lee Yong-gu, right, who is in hot water over allegations of assault against a taxi driver, accompanies outgoing Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae out of the ministry's headquarters in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi on Monday. [YONHAP]](https://i0.wp.com/koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2021/01/25/a477762e-75e2-45be-9375-076166fea4c4.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
The National Police Agency issued an apology Monday for misleading the public about the existence of footage capturing Vice Justice Minister Lee Yong-gu allegedly assaulting a taxi driver in November.
Joong Ang Ilbo
Choi Seung-ryul, acting chief of the police’s newly formed National Investigation Headquarters (NIH), admitted his earlier briefing on Dec. 28 last year suggesting there was no dashboard camera footage of the incident was “partly incorrect.”
Lee, who was appointed the No. 2 figure at the Justice Ministry in December, has been in the hot seat after opposition politicians claimed police may have let him off the hook for the incident.
According to police, Lee took a taxi to his home in Seocho-dong in Seocho District, southern Seoul, on Nov. 6. He fell asleep in the car, and the driver woke him up when they reached the destination. Lee allegedly hurled insults at the driver and grabbed him by the collar.
The driver called the police to report an assault, and a unit went to the scene and took his statement.
The taxi driver reached a settlement with Lee the next day and informed the police that he did not want to press criminal charges. The police closed the case without a criminal investigation.
But controversy flared up again after media reports surfaced there was in fact footage from the taxi, and that the taxi driver had shown the video in question to a police officer through his mobile phone in a police investigation on Nov. 11.
The taxi driver claimed the officer watched the approximately 30-second-long video, then said he was going to “pretend [he] never saw” the footage.
You can read more at the link, but this appears to be another one of those incidents where the cover up was worse than the crime.
Coverups are always worse than the crimes. It’s almost always just something “embarrassing” to some wannabee “yangban”…
Leftist going to left….typical behavior for them.
“The taxi driver reached a settlement with Lee the next day and informed the police that he did not want to press criminal charges. The police closed the case without a criminal investigation.”
Although this doesn’t happen in most western societies, settlements like this are common in Korea. It has its good and bad aspects. It’s good because the two parties can quickly settle things and be done with it. It’s bad because people can go around committing crimes and paying their way out of trouble without any police record.