Category: crime & punishment

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.

I had no idea that plant poaching was even a thing:

The leader of an international plant poaching ring has pleaded guilty to digging up thousands of succulents from remote state parks in California to ship to Asia to sell for giant profits, federal prosecutors said.

Byungsu Kim, 46, of South Korea, was accused with two co-conspirators of flying to Los Angeles in 2018, and then driving to small state parks in northern California where they illegally dug up numerous Dudleya plants.

The plants are prized in Asia, but take years to grow in nurseries, so those growing in the wild along the California coast have become a major target for poachers, authorities say. Black market Dudleyas can sell for up to $1,000 each, wildlife experts say.

Market Watch

You can add this as another one of the Only in Korea stories. What a bizarre and horrible murder of this young child:

A woman of Philippine nationality has been detained for allegedly beating to death the three-year-old son of her acquaintance from the United States Forces in Korea (USFK). 

The Pyeongtaek Police said, Monday, that they had detained the 30-year-old suspect and are investigating the case.

According to the police, she and the USFK service member knew one another, and the latter had asked the woman to briefly mind his two sons ― seven and three years old.

She is accused of beating the younger boy to death in her room, provided by a bar where she was employed, at around 7:30 a.m., Sunday. The older child was not harmed.

The bar owner discovered the victim around 8 a.m. and reported it to the police.

The police then began to search for the suspect, but she had been taken into custody at a precinct station nearby as police had received reports of the woman roaming the streets naked.

Korea Times via a reader tip

You can read more at the link, but the woman when she was detained was not only naked, but incoherent. However, despite being incoherent supposedly confessed to the crime. If I had to guess I would say she was likely under the influence of some drug that probably influenced beating the 3-year old child to death. Some advice to all USFK service members, do not leave your kids at the bar to be watched by a Filipina juicy girl.

By the way, any bets what the father was doing while leaving his kids at the bar to be watched by the juicy girl?