Category: crime & punishment

Here is another case of a USFK service member ruining his career by drunk driving. I have little sympathy for these drunk drivers in Korea with the abundant mass transit available:

 An American airman stationed in South Korea is under suspicion of driving under the influence after crashing into a parked car and attempting to flee the scene, local police said.

A 42-year-old technical sergeant assigned to Osan Air Base is under investigation from the Gangnam Police Station in Seoul, a senior police officer told Stars and Stripes by phone Tuesday. The officer declined to provide the service member’s name due to the country’s identity protection laws.

Police said the airman is suspected of hitting a parked car in a backstreet of a neighborhood shopping area frequented by foreigners and young adults at around 8:55 p.m. Friday. The owner of the parked car, an unnamed Korean man, drove after the service member while calling the police.

“I am chasing a hit-and-run foreigner,” the caller said, according to the senior police officer.

Authorities apprehended the airman roughly 10 minutes after the crash, the police officer said, adding that the service member was compliant but had “much alcohol on his breath.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

This is one of these cases where the is guy is guilty of something for causing the death of his girlfriend while driving drunk, it is just a matter of determining what he is guilty of:

The prosecution has asked a local court to hand down a sentence for a 15-year jail term to a man who “intentionally” caused a car crash on Jeju Island which led to the death of his girlfriend in the passenger seat. 

Lawyers representing the man, however, claimed the prosecution lacks sufficient evidence for him to be found guilty of murder.

During a hearing at the Jeju District Court, Monday, the prosecution sought the jail term for the man, 34, alleging willful negligence on his part. 

On Sept. 10, 2019, the man was driving a convertible car with the victim, 28, as a passenger, during their trip to the resort island. The man was found to be driving under the influence with a blood alcohol level of 0.118 percent, far above the level that warrants cancellation of a driver’s license. The car hopped a curb and rammed into a farming vehicle parked on the side of the road. The woman, who was not wearing a seatbelt, was thrown from the car as the roof of the convertible was open.

She suffered severe head wounds and underwent surgery three times after the accident but remained unconscious until she died on Aug. 23, 2020.

The bereaved family and the prosecution claimed the man caused the accident deliberately because she had refused his demands to end the relationship multiple times. The couple were quarreling over the issue moments before the accident, with their conversation recorded on the victim’s phone.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

The Stars & Stripes has an update on the case of the Filipina bartender who murdered a 3-year old son of a USFK service member left in her care:

 Jamaica Eblacas, 30, a Pyeongtaek bartender who admitted killing a U.S. soldier’s 3-year-old son, is refusing a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation or to cooperate with her defense attorney, the attorney told Stars and Stripes on Wednesday.

“We’re frustrated,” attorney Jung Wang Jae told Stars and Stripes in an interview Thursday. “We feel a bit bad for our client. This is a big case, and she has a baby as well.”

At her arraignment Nov. 5, Eblacas admitted killing Noa Calhoun, the son of Army Pvt. James and Kourtney Calhoun, after his father left the child and his 7-year-old brother in her care two months earlier. 

James Calhoun is assigned to the 61st Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Company at Camp Humphreys.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but in court she admitted to stabbing and beating the young boy. Other news is that she got into an unrelated fight with an elderly Korean man before this incident and her ex-husband who is Korean says she is not mentally well. No word on what the U.S. Soldier was doing leaving his kids in the care of a juicy girl that night though we can speculate.

This guys breaks into a home where he finds his wife cheating on him with another man and pulls out his camera to record it. This causes they guy to be convicted of being a sex offender:

A man was found guilty of a sex crime for filming his wife as she engaged in an extramarital affair. The couple was in the midst of divorce proceedings.

The appellate department of Ulsan District Court sentenced a man in his 50s to a fine of 1 million won ($850) and 40 hours in a sexual violence treatment program for the violation.

The man was indicted for breaking into a studio apartment in Ulsan on an early morning in August of last year, inflicting violence on his wife and the man who was with her, and filming them with his smartphone. He used a ladder to climb up to the window and gain entry to the premises. 

He had secretly followed his wife, who had left home after an argument. He then broke into the premises she had entered and was infuriated to find her with the man, both in their underwear. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but this is just another example of a bizarre court ruling that comes out of the Korean courts at times.

It looks like a lot of people may be seeing jail time for selling drugs at massage parlors across South Korea:

Nearly 50 people, including foreign nationals, have been apprehended in recent police crackdowns on a drug trafficking ring based at massage parlors across the country that hired foreigners, police said Monday.

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said it has detained 24 members of the drug trafficking ring for selling methamphetamine and other banned substances at massage parlors with foreign employees nationwide from February to last month and 23 other people who bought the drugs from them.

Of the 47 drug trafficking suspects, 33 people, including foreigners, were put under arrest on charges of violating the Narcotics Control Act, the police agency said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Another pervert has been uncovered and this time it was a school principal spying on his own female teachers:

Teachers’ groups are calling for a thorough investigation and heavy punishment for an elementary school principal who was arrested for allegedly installing a hidden camera in a restroom for female faculty members. 

Members of the Korean Federation of Teachers’ Associations and its Gyeonggi Province branch issued a joint statement, Friday, calling for strong punishment of the principal to discourage others from committing such voyeuristic sex crimes. (…..)

Meanwhile, a local court issued an arrest warrant for the 57-year-old, whose name was withheld, Saturday, for violating the law on sex crimes, saying he was likely to flee or destroy evidence, according to Anyang Dongan Police.

The principal allegedly installed a spycam inside a tissue box beside a toilet in the restroom for female teachers at his school in Anyang, Gyeonggi Province, which was found by a teacher.

The principal allegedly tried to dissuade teachers from reporting the incident to police, but the teachers reported it anyway. 

The police, suspicious of the principal’s reluctance, talked with him and found out he installed the camera. He claimed he bought the camera for security purposes and installed it the previous day to check if it works, and he had no intention to commit a sex crime, according to the police.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but besides being a pervert this guy is a total idiot if he thought no one was going to notice that easily spotted camera in the restroom.

It did not take long for this case to come to its inevitable conclusion of a guilty verdict:

 A Marine officer pleaded guilty on Thursday to several criminal charges in connection with viral videos he posted criticizing senior officials during the messy U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying that he knew he was being disrespectful and wanted to call out what he perceived as “incompetence.”

Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller, a combat veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, testified that he knew he was defying orders and that his life began “spiraling” after he posted his first video in August. He said his wife left him, fellow Marine officers turned their backs on him and the Marine Corps opened an investigation into his actions. Scheller said he continued posting after receiving positive feedback from backers, including elected officials.

“Many Gold Star families, junior enlisted Marines and members of Congress reached out to support my statements,” Scheller said, referring in part to the families of service members who died in the line of duty.

Scheller pleaded guilty to charges that include disrespect toward superior commissioned officers, willfully disobeying a superior commissioned officer, and dereliction in the performance of duties. An agreement reached between Scheller and the Marine Corps holds that a military judge, Col. Glen Hines, can sentence him to no more than a letter of reprimand and a seizure of two-thirds of his pay for up to 12 months, which would cost Scheller tens of thousands of dollars.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Just think former President Park was impeached and jailed for far less and the police can’t even get an arrest warrant for this guy that cheated the Seongnam government out of $92 million:

A Seoul court on Thursday rejected an arrest warrant for a key suspect at the center of a snowballing regional development corruption scandal, dealing a blow to the investigation into the case that has become the hottest topic in South Korean politics.

The Seoul Central District Court denied the prosecution’s request to arrest Kim Man-bae, owner of an asset management firm, Hwacheon Daeyu Asset Management, on bribery and other charges, citing an insufficient explanation of the need to detain him.

Kim, a former journalist, has been under investigation in connection with how his previously little-known firm reaped massive profits from a 2015 project to develop the Daejang-dong district in the city of Seongnam, south of Seoul, into apartment complexes.

The former journalist allegedly colluded with Yoo Dong-gyu, then acting president of Seongnam Development Corp. in charge of the project, to engineer a contract between the two sides to remove a clause limiting the amount of profits that the firm could take from the project.

Prosecutors alleged that Kim caused more than 110 billion won (US$92 million) of losses to the Seongnam city government by removing the clause. He was also accused of giving Yoo 500 million won as part of a deal to pay him a total of 70 billion won.

Yoo is considered a close aide to Gyeonggi Gov. Lee Jae-myung, the ruling party’s presidential nominee, and Lee served as Seongnam mayor from 2010-2018. Kim also interviewed Lee seven months before setting up his asset firm.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Has anyone ever gone outside to smoke a cigarette and been attacked by a ninja? Well that is what happened to a Special Operations soldier while training in California:

Nonlethal rounds failed to stop a sword-wielding man dressed as a ninja who authorities say injured two special operations soldiers, then brandished his blade at sheriff’s deputies last month at a California airport, according to authorities. 

Deputies from a Kern County Sheriff’s Office substation in Ridgecrest, Calif., responded to a call of an assault with a deadly weapon Sept. 18 at Inyokern Airport, the office said in a statement posted Friday on Twitter. The airport is located in the Mojave Desert, near Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake. 

When deputies arrived on the scene, they found some 26 special operations soldiers training at the airport “hunkered down” in the hangar after an attack by a man dressed as a ninja, Ridgecrest Police Department records show. Stars and Stripes first reported details of the incident, which was revealed in a military report leaked on social media, earlier this week.

Officers discovered the suspect had assaulted one victim with a sword and hit another victim after tossing a rock through a hangar window, the sheriff’s office said.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but the wannabe ninja assassin was arrested after the attacks and appears to be a nutjob.