Category: crime & punishment

This is just another example of why these military sexual assault cases are not as black and white as the advocates want people to believe:

Members of the defense and prosecution teams made their closing statements Friday, on the third and final day of a preliminary hearing for Capt. Scott Hockenberry, an Army attorney and former special victims prosecutor accused of sexual assault and battery against a former girlfriend.

Hockenberry faces three counts of sexual assault and three counts of assault consummated by battery, based on accusations that he choked, slapped and held a knife to the accuser’s throat, in addition to forcing her to have sex without a condom during the summer of 2016.

This is just another example that South Korea does not have freedom of speech because of its libel laws:

“T,” a Liberian-born resident of Gyeonggi Province married to a South Korean, had an unpleasant experience while riding a bus in Nov. 2016. The passenger in the seat next to her, a man in his sixties surnamed Kim, began harassing T. When passengers tried to stop him, Kim pointed at T and said, “It’s illegal for this girl to be here.” T was not an undocumented foreigner, but a South Korean resident with an F6 (marriage) visa. In Kim’s eyes, however, all foreigners were seen as undocumented migrant workers. T brought her experience up during the Q&A session at a symposium held that Nov. 30 by the Gyeonggi Institute of Research and Development for Migrants’ Human Rights on the topic of racial discrimination and policy measures for its reduction.

One of the symposium’s discussants, attorney Choi Jeong-gyu of the law firm Wongok, took an interest in T’s story.  Choi decided to represent T in a defamation complaint against Kim. It wasn’t easy: Kim kept denying all charges during the police questioning stages, and while the police recognized the incident as a case of harassment in a crowded public setting according to the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment, etc., of Sexual Crimes, they forwarded the case to prosecutors with a recommendation not to press defamation charges. However, in April, the prosecutors delivered Kim for trial on charges of both harassment and defamation.

Judge Hon. Kim Do-hyeong of the eighth criminal division of Suwon District Court’s Ansan branch found Kim guilty on both charges last May and sentenced him to a fine of 2 million won (US$1,840). “In November 2016, the defendant boarded a bus and engaged in harassment while talking to the victim, who was sitting next to him,” the court concluded. “When stopped by other passengers, he declared that it was ‘illegal for this girl to be here,’ and he continued insulting the victim with abusive language even after disembarking.”  [Hankyoreh]

You can read more at the link, but this guy was clearly a jerk for harassing this woman minding her own business on the bus.

This is a bombshell of an accusation if true:

Prosecutors said Wednesday they will indict ousted President Park Geun-hye on additional bribery charges as early as this week over allegations that during her term Park took bribes from the state spy agency.

An official from the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office said that prosecutors are also considering “gradually pressing charges against the others involved.”

Prosecutors have been investigating allegations that the National Intelligence Service (NIS), South Korea’s main spy agency, provided Park with up to 200 million won (US$188,000) in kickbacks every month between May 2013 and July 2016.

Prosecutors suspect that the NIS paid Park around 3.8 billion won in total and that she used those funds personally or to carry out illicit political activities.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but if President Park was receiving that much money every month as a bribe from the National Intelligence Service (NIS) then she needs to receive jail time.  With that said I would love to see what this evidence is because the evidence of all her other supposed crimes has not been very forthcoming during this whole legal process she is going through.

It seems to me having your daughter go missing under your care is worse than having an accidental death due to choking:

Police on Friday found the body of a 5-year-old missing girl on a hillside in the western coastal city of Gunsan following her father’s confession to having disposed of it, officials said.

The Jeonbuk Provincial Police Agency said that at 4:45 a.m., the body of Koh Jun-hee was discovered wrapped in a towel under a tree on the hillside, about a 50-minute drive from where she stayed. She was reported to have gone missing a little over three weeks ago.

The investigation into the case gained traction as her 36-year-old father, who was put under emergency arrest, confessed Thursday to having dumped her body on a hill in the city 270 kilometers south of Seoul in April.

Based on the father’s statement, police presume that Koh died because she choked on food. Her father has said that he concealed her death for fear that it would cause trouble in his divorce settlement with her birth mother.

Police plan to examine her body to find out the exact cause of death, officials said.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

It looks like there is an English teacher job opening at Sahmyook University after one of their professors was fired due to his link to the murder of four people back in Canada:

A former professor at a Seoul-based university is a suspect in a mysterious missing-person case in Canada, according to South Korean broadcaster JTBC.

Canadian Paul Laan taught English at Sahmyook University in Nowon, northern Seoul, from 2014. The university stripped him of his professorship early this month after learning of the accusations in Canada and then terminated his contract.

According to the report, Laan came to Korea in 2006 and earned a living by teaching English at private or public institutes.

According to JTBC and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), he was a suspect in a high-profile missing-person case in Ontario in 1998. A woman in her 70s, known as the “Cat Lady,” was a tenant in his house and disappeared outside Huntsville. Police later found that three other tenants were missing.

Police investigating the case saw Laan as a suspect but they found no evidence, and it became a cold case.

CBC put the case back in the spotlight on its investigative program “The Fifth Estate,” aired in September.

The program said the residents’ disappearance was not reported and that pension checks were stolen from them by the Paul family. The youngest of the family was living in South Korea as a professor, according to the program.

“Paul now teaches English at a university in South Korea and travels with his wife extensively, professing their love for God on their family blog,” CBC reported.  [Korea Times]

You can read the whole CBC report on these murders at this link.  The Paul family are all part of a crime family in the Huntsville area of Canada that have a long criminal history culminating in the murder of four people.

Hopefully this will be the last we hear about the Nut-Rage case:

The top court upheld a lower court ruling that acquitted former Korean Air Executive Vice President Heather Cho, Thursday, of the “nut rage” case three years ago that triggered nationwide outrage over the rich and powerful abusing their positions.
Cho is the eldest daughter of Chairman Cho Yang-ho of Korean Air, the country’s largest full-service carrier.

In the first 13-member full-panel ruling deliberated by the 13 Supreme Court justices including chief justice Kim Meong-su after he took the top post, the court said she did not violate aviation law by ordering the plane to change its air route, an offense that carries a maximum penalty of up to 10 years in prison.

“The air route, the point of contention here, should be interpreted as referring to the aircraft’s course when it is flying, not when it is taxiing on the ground,” the court said.
“The lower court’s ruling was apt in making such a determination, and there was no misinterpretation of the law that requires a review.”  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but this whole incident seemed to me to be all about over charging her to appease public sentiment and then quietly letting the appeals court over turn the conviction.  Remember Korea is a rule by law and not a rule of law society.  This case is a perfect example of it.

47 Korean Criminals Deported from Philippines https://t.co/Tn41NQx3P1 pic.twitter.com/4QrRl1673r

— The Chosun Ilbo (@EnglishChosun) December 15, 2017

Maybe they thought South Korea is like Saudi Arabia where the woman would likely get blamed for the sexual assault?:

Two Saudi Arabian students have been arrested for sexually assaulting a woman, Seoul police said Wednesday.

The two brothers, 25 and 23, are suspected of assaulting a Korean office worker in her 20s at their home Saturday. They were detained Monday.

The students, studying here in a university exchange program, met the victim through a chat app and drank together in their room, according to the Seoul Seongbuk Police Station.

The woman made an emergency call to police, and investigators found evidence from CCTV footage taken nearby their residence. The men told police they do not remember what happened because they were intoxicated. [Korea Times]

I find it amazing that this guy was given a command of any unit considering this outrageous behavior with a subordinate officer:

Neuhart testified Tuesday and Wednesday that they discussed having sex at her house before they left the hotel. He said he “waffled” about it because he is married, with five children, and because he was her superior officer — a violation of military fraternization rules.

Tag said the hotel video showed Kristin repeatedly pushing Neuhart away, including keeping her arms up between her body and his as they kissed. Neuhart testified that he recalled “her resting her arms on his chest” in a tender way.

He also said he asked Kristin if she wanted a “safe word,” which he understood would mean that she was feeling safe as their flirting led to sex. Neuhart said she told him “no,” which he took as the safe word she had chosen. He said that in the context of their time together, “no” meant “yes.”

After letting Neuhart into her house, where they kissed and hugged, she ordered him out. He went around to the back door and set up his cellphone to record on video his repeated efforts to get inside again. Neuhart testified that he did so to have proof that, if they had sex, it was consensual.

When the video was shown to jurors, Neuhart is shown loudly knocking on the door and tugging on the handles while Kristin yelled at him to stop and go away. But, she eventually let him in and could be heard crying and screaming for him to stop.

A neighbor who heard her called 911. As San Diego police arrived, Neuhart ran out the back and into a canyon, with his still-recording cellphone in his pocket. He fell — fracturing his leg. Officer caught him and arrested him.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but anyone who has sat through US military sexual assault training knows that no means no when it is said.

The corruption probes and investigations surrounding the expansion of the US military base Camp Humphreys in South Korea continues:

South Korean prosecutors have raided the offices of one of the nation’s largest conglomerates amid allegations it offered multimillion-dollar kickbacks to the US Army in exchange for construction contracts.

Dozens of investigators were dispatched to the headquarters of SK Engineering and Construction in downtown Seoul on Friday to confiscate computer hard disks, documents and other material related to construction projects at a new US army base in South Korea’s Pyeongtaek county.

The prosecutors are investigating allegations that the company — an affiliate of the nation’s third-largest conglomerate, SK — gave almost $3m to a US army officer in 2010 to steer a $420m dollar construction contract in its favour.

The officer, Duane Nishiie of the US Army Engineers Corp, was indicted in September in Hawaii on charges including bribery, wire fraud and money laundering related to the case. Lee Seung-ju, a former officer in the procurement department of Seoul’s defence ministry, was indicted on the same charges.

SK Engineering and Construction declined to comment. US Forces Korea was not immediately available to comment.

“The raid was needed to look into the bribery claims linked to a US military contract,” the prosecutor in charge of the investigation told the Financial Times.   [The Financial Times]

You can read the rest at the link.