Category: crime & punishment

It looks like having prosecutors go after the Korean left’s political enemies is more important than prosecuting crime for regular Koreans:

The average number of unresolved cases per prosecutor nearly doubled last year, data showed Sunday, partly due to a sharp drop in the number of prosecutors on the job with many dispatched to special counsel probes and more quitting ahead of a massive reform in the prosecution system.

The average number of unresolved cases per prosecutor nationwide rose from 73.4 in December 2024 to 135.7 in November 2025, marking an increase of 1.8 times in 11 months, according to the data compiled by Yonhap News Agency.

The sharp rise in unresolved cases came as more than 100 prosecutors were dispatched last year to three special counsel investigations into corruption allegations involving former President Yoon Suk Yeol and his wife, Kim Keon Hee, as well as the death of a young Marine. Currently, 54 prosecutors remain assigned to the three special counsel teams to support indictments. 

In addition, five prosecutors were dispatched to another special counsel probe in December over allegations involving e-commerce operator Coupang, while 12 were assigned in February to a special counsel team tasked with a second probe into allegations not addressed in the three special counsel probes involving Yoon and his wife. 

Further strain has come from prosecutors opting to resign or take leave amid mounting workloads and declining morale ahead of a planned overhaul of the prosecution system in October.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

How long will it be before they start using children to smuggle drugs into South Korea?:

A, 18 years old, was caught attempting to smuggle 3 kg of methamphetamine and 2.9 kg of ketamine worth 400 million Korean won in wholesale value from Thailand to South Korea on three separate occasions between September and October 2024 and was referred to trial in November of the same year. 

A drug supplier, who exploited the fact that teenagers are less likely to be suspected during immigration processes, proposed through Telegram, “I will pay 1 million Korean won per 100 grams of transported drugs,” which A accepted as a “high-income part-time job.” While A was sentenced to 6 years and 6 months in prison last year, the supplier has yet to be apprehended.

As seen in this case, even when lower-level drug distributors are arrested, their higher-level supervisors often evade law enforcement. This is because as the government strengthens drug crackdowns, drug traffickers are also seeking gaps in the investigative net.

Chosun Daily

I recommend reading the rest at the link, but it gives an interesting look at how drug dealers are distributing drugs within South Korea by taking payments over Telegram and sending grid coordinates to locations in the countryside where the drugs are hidden.

It is pretty amazing that with everything going on in Korea and the world that the top story currently over at Yonhap’s English page is of a bar fight in Hongdae involving an American Soldier:

An American soldier was booked Sunday for allegedly assaulting a South Korean man at a nightclub in Seoul’s Hongdae district, police said.

The 20-something member of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) was apprehended at the scene after allegedly assaulting the man around 3 a.m. on Saturday, according to the Mapo Police Station.

The altercation reportedly began after the victim bumped shoulders with the soldier’s party and resulted in him sustaining a fractured nose.

The soldier was transferred to the USFK in accordance with the Status of Forces Agreement, which governs the legal status of the 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea.

Police said they will decide on the next steps after determining the details of the incident.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but I can remember the days when incidents like this would lead to massive protests due to lies about the SOFA agreement. Fortunately those days appear to be long gone.

This is just a truly weird case and I can only imagine the shock of his command team had when thy had to deal with this:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces in Washington, D.C.

The military’s highest court has upheld the dismissal of a case involving an airman who said he performed sexual acts with a childlike silicone doll in the privacy of his dorm room. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces on Monday affirmed the judgment of the Air Force criminal appeals court, which ruled that Airman Zachary Rocha’s conduct was constitutionally protected.

In the court’s majority opinion, justices wrote they lacked the authority to make their own findings of fact and reviewed an appeals’ court decision for the application of “correct legal principles.” The high court wrote that it was not sure another review by the Air Force appeals court was justified, stating justices answered the most important question when they “stated Rocha had a constitutionally protected liberty interest to privately engage in sexual activities with his doll,” according to court papers.

But in a scathing dissent from the majority, the court’s top judge warned the decision lowers the legal threshold for deviant behavior among personnel and sends a message that the U.S. military’s justice system accepts “the unabashed sexualization of children.” “And so,” wrote Chief Judge Keith Ohlson, “hundreds of thousands of servicemembers who serve in the Air Force and Space Force are now authorized to penetrate … child sex dolls while on base and at their leisure. “ (……..)

Rocha admitted to purchasing a silicone sex doll, described in court filings as being about 4 feet tall with female prepubescent features. It was discovered in his room about three weeks after he bought the doll during an on-base dormitory inspection. Those who saw the clothed doll on Rocha’s bed said they were startled by its lifelike appearance, according to court documents.

An Air Force investigator testified in 2021 that he “saw a doll that scared (him) because it kind of looked like a child,” according to court filings. Rocha told investigators he benefited emotionally from the doll, whom he named Adele. He also said he engaged in sexual acts with the doll but denied having sexual interest in children, court papers state. Rocha said he stopped his sexual activity when realizing the doll looked childlike, according to court documents.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but I think the way the military can handle this is just issue a sweeping policy letter that forbids these child sex dolls in the barracks.

Fortunately they caught her before anyone else was killed:

A criminal behavior expert says the first attack in the Gangbuk District serial murder case appears to have functioned as a test of sedatives before later killings, pointing to a pattern of escalation rather than isolated acts.

The suspect, a woman in her 20s identified by authorities as X, is accused of poisoning three men with drug-laced drinks, leaving two dead and one injured. She was handed over to prosecutors on Feb. 19 on charges including murder, causing injury and violating narcotics control laws.

Oh Yun-seong, a professor of police administration at Soonchunhyang University, said in a radio interview Tuesday that the first incident involving the suspect’s boyfriend appears to have been an experiment to confirm the effects of benzodiazepine-based sleeping pills prescribed by a psychiatric clinic.

“It was essentially testing the method,” he said, explaining that the suspect appeared to have observed that the drugged victim was unable to move for about four hours before moving on to more serious crimes.

The boyfriend lost consciousness after drinking the beverage but later recovered after being taken to a hospital. Police identified two additional attacks using a similar method that left two dead.

Oh said the suspect targeted men lured by her messages, making them particularly vulnerable. Regarding the third attack, carried out while she was already under police suspicion, he said the possibility that she acted while fully aware she had been identified as a suspect cannot be ruled out.

On the question of motive, he described the crimes as an extreme manifestation of a desire to manipulate and control interpersonal relationships. Citing accounts from X’s acquaintances that she left middle school, was later expelled from high school and had a history of theft and stoking tensions among acquaintances, the possibility of an impulse disorder should also be considered.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

I really cannot feel bad for Yoon when he was stupid enough to launch such an incompetent martial law bid that got him impeached. When former President Park Geun-hye was imprisoned I felt bad for her because the reasons she was jailed were very suspect. I doubt Yoon will do life in prison because he will eventually get pardoned whenever another conservative leader becomes President, but he will be sitting in jail for quite a number of years until that happens:

A court on Thursday sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol to life in prison for his failed bid to impose martial law in 2024, casting the attempt as an insurrection marked by the deployment of troops to the National Assembly.

In the first ruling on the case, the Seoul Central District Court convicted Yoon of leading an insurrection through the martial law bid but handed down a sentence lighter than the death penalty recommended by special prosecutors.

he ruling came 14 months after the former president made the surprise declaration of martial law on Dec. 3, 2024, with the stated aim of eradicating anti-state forces, though the order was lifted six hours later following a vote by the National Assembly.

“It is difficult to deny that former President Yoon inwardly aimed to make the National Assembly unable to function properly for a considerable period by blocking and paralyzing the National Assembly’s activities by means of sending troops to the National Assembly to seal it off and arrest key politicians,” Jee Kui-youn, the presiding judge, said during the hearing attended by Yoon and broadcast live on national television.

“It is also recognized that he staged a riot by sending the military.”

Under the Constitution, an insurrection is defined as an act aimed at removing state authority from part or all of the country or the staging of a riot with the purpose of subverting the Constitution.

The court said the declaration of martial law in itself cannot constitute an insurrection, but that in Yoon’s case, the charge held because he aimed to paralyze the functions of a constitutional body.

It also stressed that at the core of the case was Yoon’s deployment of troops to the National Assembly.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

These two Marines stationed in Japan were are walking crime spree between Hiroshima and Tokyo:

Japanese authorities are investigating two U.S. Marines for possible thefts totaling $65,000 or more since last fall, according to Japanese police and media reports recently. Tokyo Metropolitan Police on Friday forwarded to Japanese prosecutors their case against two Marines, ages 20 and 26, for stealing 27,000 yen, or $175, in cash from two restaurants in Kabukicho, a nightlife district near Shinjuku, between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. Dec. 24, The Mainichi newspaper reported Friday.

The newspaper cited the police as a source, although a Tokyo police spokeswoman declined to confirm the report by phone for Stars and Stripes on Tuesday.  The Marines may be linked to multiple thefts last fall with losses exceeding $65,000, The Mainichi reported, citing an unnamed investigative source. Two Marines from Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni and under suspicion by Japanese authorities of “criminal misconduct” are in Marine Corps custody, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing spokesman Maj. Joseph Butterfield said by email Tuesday.

Stars and Stripes

You can read more at the link.

It looks like Cambodia’s top export to South Korea will be deported South Koreans:

Dozens of South Koreans suspected of involvement in scam operations in Cambodia will be repatriated to Korea, officials said Thursday, in the largest overseas transfer of Korean scam suspects.

According to presidential spokesperson Kang Yu-jung, a pangovernmental task force formed to combat transnational crime has coordinated the return of 73 Korean suspects accused of defrauding 869 victims of approximately 48.6 billion won ($33 million).

The task force was established in October following a summit between President Lee Jae Myung and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

Over the weekend former President Yoon learned that he will spend five years in jail for charges related to his martial law decree:

Former President Yoon Suk Yeol was sentenced to five years in prison Friday on charges that included the obstruction of investigators’ attempt to detain him last year.

The Seoul Central District Court handed down the sentence in the first ruling on charges stemming from Yoon’s short-lived imposition of martial law in December 2024.

Chief among the charges in Friday’s case was that the then president had ordered the Presidential Security Service to block investigators from executing a warrant to detain him at the official presidential residence in January last year.

Judge Baek Dae-hyun, the presiding judge, chastised Yoon during the hearing attended by the jailed former president and televised live.

“He effectively privatized the armed forces through the public servants of the Presidential Security Service who are loyal to the Republic of Korea for his personal safety and interests,” he said.

“Considering the need to restore the rule of law damaged by the defendant’s crimes, a severe punishment that matches the guilt is necessary.”

The sentence was half of what special counsel Cho Eun-suk’s team had requested last month, saying the former president committed a “grave crime” by “privatizing” state institutions with the aim of concealing and justifying his criminal acts.

In addition to obstructing his detention, Yoon was accused of violating the rights of nine Cabinet members who were not called to a meeting to review his martial law plan, and drafting and later destroying a revised proclamation after the martial law decree was lifted.

He was also charged with ordering the distribution of press statements containing falsehoods about the declaration and the deletion of records from secure phones used by then military commanders.

The judge said Yoon was guilty of all charges except with regard to the rights of two of the nine Cabinet members and the order to distribute false press statements.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

As long as the CSAT remains such an important factor in determining which colleges Korean students can attend, this corruption will continue:

Math instructor Hyun Woo-jin. 

Hyun Woo-jin (39) and Cho Jung-sik (44), both “top-tier instructors,” have been indicted for allegedly paying large sums to current teachers in exchange for mock College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) questions and other materials. It was confirmed that they provided up to 180 million Korean won to teachers, with some transactions conducted through spouses’ accounts.

According to the indictment obtained by this newspaper through People Power Party Representative Park Joon-tae on the 14th, math instructor Hyun transferred a total of 179.09 million Korean won in 20 installments from March 2020 to May 2023 to Teacher A, who has been a private high school math teacher since 1995, in exchange for math exam questions. Hyun also paid 167.78 million Korean won in 20 installments from March 2020 to April 2023 to Teacher B, a high school teacher since 1997, and 75.3 million Korean won in 37 installments from March 2020 to June 2023 to Teacher C, a teacher since 2015. Teacher C was found to have used a spouse’s account for transactions.

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office Criminal Division 7 (headed by Choi Tae-eun) non-custodially indicted Hyun and the three teachers last December for violating the Anti-Graft Act. Under the law, private school teachers are prohibited from receiving more than 1 million Korean won per instance or 3 million Korean won annually from a single person unrelated to their duties, with both givers and receivers subject to punishment.

Chosen Ilbo

You can read more at the link.