Category: crime & punishment

Here is a horrible murder story that happened down in Changwon:

Changwon Seobu police are hunting two people who allegedly abducted and killed a woman.

The suspects, Shim Cheon-woo, 31, and Kang Jeong-im, 36, allegedly targeted the woman, 47, who was leaving a golf practice facility in Uichang-gu, Changwon, in South Gyeongsang Province, about 8:30 p.m. on June 24. A man, identified as Shim, 29, also was involved, police said.

They said they caught Shim hiding under a car in an apartment parking lot in Haman, in the same province, about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday. They have sought an arrest warrant for him on a murder charge.

Police found the victim’s body in a bag under Jinsu Bridge in Jinju about 6 p.m. the same day. It was sent to the National Forensic Service.

Police have seized an SUV used in the crime. They put the suspects on a wanted list Wednesday, with a 5 million won ($4,390) bounty.

The crime’s motive remains unknown.  [Korea Times via Reddit Korea]

The article says the motive remains unknown, but according to the below Yonhap video the woman’s credit card was stolen and over $4,000 withdrawn.  This makes me wonder if these are a couple of druggies trying to get money for their next hit?

With the leftists emboldened every GI crime incident now has the potential to be blown up in the media.  So far this one has been kept pretty low key considering it happened back on April 1st and we are hearing about it now:

An American soldier faces a charge for sexual assault, the Gangnam Police Station said Monday. The soldier, part of the United States Forces Korea stationed at Osan Air Base in Gyeonggi Province, allegedly raped a woman after taking her to a hotel at 7:30 a.m. near a club where they met in Gangnam, April 1.

According to police, the woman had been intoxicated when she was taken to the hotel and then raped. She reported the incident to the police the same day, claiming she believed she was raped.

After about a month-long police investigation, in which the police analyzed video footage from the club and hotel, the police identified the soldier as the culprit. The police summoned the suspect for questioning June 17 and indicted him June 20, following the protocol of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), a mutual defense treaty between Korea and the U.S.  [Korea Times]

Just like with all the other criminal cases involving US GI’s this soldier will be prosecuted through the Korean court system and if found guilty will be put in Korean prison.  It will be interesting to see in the coming months if the currently emboldened anti-US groups in Korea will try to revive the narrative that GIs are committing all these crimes and then flying home with no punishment.

Choi Soon-sil is likely just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to college admissions corruption so prosecutors are probably trying to send a message to other people trying to do this with this sentence:

The Seoul Central District Court handed Choi Soon-sil a three-year prison term in the first trial Friday over charges she made Ewha Womans University provide favors for her daughter in admissions and grading.

This was the first court ruling for Choi over the influence-peddling scandal, which removed her longtime friend former President Park Geun-hye from office in March.

Hearings are taking place for other cases including allegedly pressuring conglomerates for funds and receiving bribes from Samsung in return for granting it business favors.

Choi has been detained and indicted on charges of work disturbance for making the school’s faculty change rules to admit her daughter Chung Yoo-ra and give her passing grades despite her absence from school. The independent counsel team led by Park Young-soo had sought seven years for that charge.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

This woman is just absolutely horrible:

A woman confessed to having let her newborn babies die and then storing the bodies in her home refrigerator for fear that her live-in lover would leave if he found out about the births, police said Tuesday.

Police apprehended the 33-year-old woman, only identified by her family name Kim, after the bodies were found wrapped in black envelopes in a freezer in a house in the coastal city of Busan on Saturday.

The Busan Southern Police said Kim tried to conceal her baby deliveries because she feared her partner might leave her if he knew that she gave birth to babies whose father was uncertain. Both babies were daughters.

Kim and the man, who got to know each other five years ago, started to live together last April. The man told investigators that he had no idea of her pregnancy or her disposal of the babies.  [Yonhap]

You can read the details at the link of how she killed her two babies before putting them in the refrigerator.

Here is another case of people being caught smuggling gold into South Korea in their underwear:

Two Vietnamese flight attendants working for Asiana Airlines, Korea’s second largest carrier, have been detained after trying to smuggle 19 kilograms of gold into the country, the Korea Customs Service (KCS) said Thursday.

According to the KCS Incheon office, the attendants were concealing 1-kilogram-gold bars ― 10 on one and nine on the other ― in their underwear when they arrived at Incheon International Airport on June 5 from Vietnam.

The KCS said this was not their first smuggling attempt, saying it has confirmed that the two succeeded in smuggling 13 kilograms of gold into Korea on three occasions in April.

They will face charges of attempting to smuggle 32 kilograms of gold, worth about 1.5 billion won ($1.33 million), into the country.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but I wonder if the flight attendants were dressed like this?

https://www.rokdrop.net/2017/05/over-2000-kilograms-of-gold-caught-hidden-in-the-private-parts-of-51-koreans/

Via a reader tip comes this news of the murder of high rise building window worker:

A 41-year-old man was arrested for murder in Yangsan this morning after he cut a worker’s safety cord because the music playing from his cell phone was “too loud”.

Yangsan police say the man went to the top of the 15 story apartment and cut the two men’s safety cord with a knife at 8:13 a.m. this morning who were applying silicon sealant on a 12th floor window.

A 46-year-old worker plunged to his death, while a 36-year-old worker survived as his rope wasn’t completely cut. [Busan Haps]

You can read the rest at the link, but unsurprisingly the suspect who cut the cord was an unemployed drunk.

Via reader tip comes this story of a Yonsei University professor injured by a homemade bomb.  Hopefully this professor was not too seriously injured and is able to recover quickly:

A homemade bomb containing screws, gunpowder and batteries went off at Yonsei University in western Seoul on Tuesday morning, injuring a professor after he opened the mysterious box that had been left hanging on the doorknob of his office door.The professor, surnamed Kim, who works at the School of Mechanical Engineering, arrived at his office on the fourth floor of Engineering Hall 1 on Tuesday morning and found a paper bag hanging on the doorknob to his office. Inside was a box.

Kim brought the bag into his office, took out the box, and opened it. The bomb went off immediately. It was around 8:40 a.m.

He suffered first and second degree burns on his wrist, arm, chest and neck, and was treated at Severance Hospital next to the university campus.

About 70 police officers were dispatched to the university. They quarantined Engineering Hall 1, but did not find any more bombs and ended the quarantine at 1 p.m.

The culprit was not identified as of Tuesday afternoon. Police have begun examining the CCTV camera footage from the building, but said the scope of the two cameras on the fourth floor of the building does not entirely cover the door to Kim’s office.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but don’t bother because the article speculates whether this was an ISIS terrorist attack.  I doubt ISIS has a mechanical engineering professor at Yonsei University high on their hit list.  This more than likely had to have been linked to a disgruntled student.

Here is a picture of the homemade bomb:

This photo provided by a Yonhap reader shows the explosive device that went off at a Yonsei University campus building on June 13, 2017. A professor suffered minor burns from the blast traced to a delivered parcel that was left outside his office. Witnesses said they saw nails fly in the air when the parcel exploded. (Yonhap)

Hopefully authorities are able to get fingerprint or other physical evidence from the bomb fragments.

It will be interesting to see if this drug arrest and possible dishonorable discharge from the ROK military will effect his K-Pop career:

T.O.P of K-pop boy band BIGBANG was officially suspended from mandatory military service on Friday after being indicted for smoking marijuana on multiple occasions.

T.O.P, whose real name is Choi Seung-hyun, is accused of smoking the banned substance four times with a trainee female singer, 21, at his home in Yongsan-gu, Seoul last October.

Choi, who began his military service as a policeman in February, was indicted without detention Monday. He was admitted to Ewha Womans University Medical Center in Yangcheon-gu, Seoul the next day suffering from an apparent overdose of benzodiazepine. He became unconscious.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

This guy sounds creepy if the accusations are true:

A native English teacher at a high school in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, is under investigation for allegedly sexually harassing the female students, according to Heungdeok Police Station Thursday.

The teacher, whose identity is unknown, is accused of hugging the girls as a lesson in “foreign greeting.”

The school has suspended the teacher from teaching.

The students told police the teacher sexually harassed them verbally and physically.

The teacher denies the accusations, saying they are the result of misunderstanding cultural differences.  [Korea Times]

Here is a power tip for everyone, don’t be giving unwanted hugs or having sexual conversations with high school students especially if you are a teacher.

Considering that this woman had to be extradited from France, that leads me to believe that she knows her money was embezzled, but we will see what the courts decide:

A local court issued an arrest warrant on Friday for a daughter of a late businessman who controlled the operator of a sunken ferry that killed hundreds of passengers in 2014.

The Incheon District Court issued the warrant for Yoo Sum-na, the daughter of Yoo Byung-eun, the de facto owner of Cheonghaejin Marine Co., in light of risks that she “might flee or destroy evidence.”

She was arrested on charges of embezzling 4.6 billion won (US$4.09 million) from Cheonghaejin, the operator of Sewol.

The 51-year-old, who was extradited from France earlier this week, is said to deny the charges levied against her, claiming that the money her design company had received from her father’s company was “fair compensation for consulting services.”

She ran the company from June 2011 till December 2013 with a woman surnamed Ha who was close to her father. She is suspected to have coerced Cheonghaejin to pay her 2.5 billion won under the pretense of providing design consulting.

In another case, she is also accused of making another company of hers pay 2.1 billion won to a company founded by her brother without a justifiable reason.  [Yonhap]