Category: crime & punishment

Every time I go to Itaewon I can’t help but see the building that once housed the Burger King and remember what happened there:

Arthur John Patterson, who was convicted of the “Itaewon Burger King murder,” has been punished for secretly exchanging food and other items with United States Forces Korea inmates, according to a local media report.

Patterson, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence at Cheonan Correctional Institution in South Chungcheong Province, was caught in August exchanging food by tying a cord to a bag and lowering it out the window, according to a report published Thursday by legal news outlet The Sisa Law.

The bag was used to pass items to and from USFK inmates housed on the floor below, out of the sight of prison officers, the report said.

Cheonan Correctional Institution is a correctional facility specializing in housing foreign male inmates, including those convicted in cases covered by the Status of Forces Agreement.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link, but according to the SOFA the USFK prisoners have a small kitchen to cook their own food which the other foreign prisoners do not have access to. Patterson was likely smuggling to get access to American food instead of the Korean food offered at the prison.

This is how it starts, you let the criminals out of jail and crime starts to go up. We have seen how this has played out in certain cities in the U.S.:

The number of inmates released on parole before serving 60 percent of their full sentence has increased due to prison overcrowding, a lawmaker said Sunday.

A total of 634 inmates who had served less than 60 percent of their full sentence were granted early parole in the January-August period, Rep. Joo Jin-woo of the main opposition People Power Party said, citing justice ministry data.

The figure is around 3.7-fold bigger than the annual total of 172 in 2025, according to the lawmaker.

The number of inmates who were released before fulfilling 60 percent of their sentence remained below 40 between 2022 and 2024 but sharply jumped last year.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The long arm of the law caught up with this alleged British criminal:

A British man in his 30s who fled to his home country after stabbing a woman in Seoul has been arrested in the United Kingdom, Korean police said Saturday.

The Korean National Police Agency said the suspect was arrested in the UK on Thursday, local time, in cooperation with the UK’s National Extradition Unit (NEU).

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

If this is the type of crime that Korea is worried about, as a society they are overall doing pretty good. Can you imagine what would happen to an unstaffed shop in a major U.S. city? It would be far worse than accidentally forgetting to plug back in a freezer:

Frozen desserts at an unstaffed shop were left melted after a woman unplugged a freezer to charge her phone and left without plugging it back in.

The shop owner on Monday vented the frustration in a post on FMKorea, a major South Korean online community and internet forum, sharing a photo of a notice posted inside the store. (…..)

“Reported for obstructing business. Turned off the freezer to charge her phone,” the notice read. It added that the melted ice cream could no longer be sold and had to be thrown out.

A similar incident occurred in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province, in March 2022, when a woman in her 60s unplugged a freezer at an unstaffed ice cream shop, causing about 500,000 won ($375) worth of ice cream to melt.

The woman received a four-month prison sentence, suspended for one year, as she reportedly had a history of similar offenses.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

The major GI crimes in Japan always seem to happen on Okinawa. A 20-year old Marine has allegedly brutally murdered a 39 year old Japanese woman::

A U.S. service member was arrested on suspicion of murder and robbery after a Japanese woman’s body was discovered in a hotel in Okinawa, local officials said, describing the alleged killing as a “heinous” incident that prompted the Japanese government to lodge a protest with the United States.

Shinjiro Koizumi, the Japanese minister of defense, said a U.S. Marine lance corporal was arrested on Sunday after the woman’s body was found early on Saturday in Naha, the capital city of the Okinawa prefecture.

GMA

You can read more at the link.

With so many people turning up missing you would think this guy would have become motivated to do his job. Hopefully he ends up spending time in jail for this to send a message to other lazy policemen:

A police officer, center, who was detained on charges including dereliction of duty and forging public electronic records, is transferred to the prosecution at Jeju Dongbu Police Station in Jeju City, Tuesday. Yonhap

The Jeju Provincial Police said Tuesday that an officer who prematurely closed multiple missing person cases on the island admitted to closing them to avoid the extra workload involved in keeping the cases open.

The controversy erupted after it emerged that the officer had closed the missing person case of Jang Mi-ran, a 37-year-old woman missing for months, without confirming her whereabouts. Last week, police said they had removed all four officers in the chain of command at Jeju Seobu Police Station from their duties, pending an investigation.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

I wonder what is causing a rise in crime on Jeju? 🤔

The concentration of cases, and the local police’s failures surrounding some of them, has unsettled residents and visitors alike.

“Many people come to Jeju to stay for several months at a time. I’ve heard that some tenants are canceling their leases following the recent incidents.” a Jeju resident surnamed Cho, who runs a short-term rental business, wrote on Instagram. (…….)

Tourism businesses in Jeju are particularly on edge as the island is already grappling with a decline in domestic visitors.

According to the Jeju Tourism Organization, 963,401 domestic travelers visited the island in July, down 12.4 percent, or 136,620, from 1,100,021 a year earlier. It marked the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020 that Jeju’s monthly domestic visitor count fell below 1 million.

The downward trend continued into August. From Aug. 1-23, Jeju received an average of 35,295 domestic visitors per day, about 300 fewer than the 35,575 recorded during the same period last year.

According to data from the Korean National Police Agency, the island recorded the country’s highest crime rate in 2024, at 4,539.6 crimes per 100,000 people. The rate is calculated based on Jeju’s resident population of around 663,000, while the island receives millions of visitors each year.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

It will see if the premature closing of the missing person cases was nefarious or just laziness on the investigator:

 A police officer suspected of closing a missing person case without confirming the woman’s safety has been placed under emergency arrest, police said Sunday.

The officer was detained without a warrant the previous day on suspicion of dereliction of duty, falsifying official electronic records, and obstruction of official duties through deceptive means, according to the Jeju Provincial Police Agency.

The emergency arrest was made after the officer was found to have closed another missing person case prematurely, revealed through the discovery of the man’s body on Saturday.

The missing woman, 37-year-old Jang Mi-ran, has yet to be found, more than three months after she was initially reported missing by her family.

In both cases, the police officer is suspected of arbitrarily closing them after telling the families that the missing people were safe.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Considering how calculating her murders were it would seem she would deserve the death penalty:

Prosecutors on Tuesday sought the death penalty for a woman accused of killing two men and injuring four others by giving them laced drinks.

Kim So-young faces charges of giving drinks spiked with benzodiazepine, a depressant, to three men between December 2025 and February this year. Two died, while one recovered.

She faces additional charges of causing bodily injury to three more men using similar methods.

The prosecution requested the Seoul Northern District Court to sentence her to death during the final hearing of her trial. 

Kim has claimed that she handed the drinks to stop the men from touching her.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.