This provided photo shows a refrigerator in a house in the coastal city of Busan on June 17, 2017, where the bodies of two babies were found the same day. (Yonhap)
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:
The gold bars and the underwear two Vietnamese flight attendants working for Asiana Airlines attempted to smuggle into the country. /Courtesy of the Korea Customs Service
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?
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 special police force unit enters Engineering Hall 1 at Yonsei University in western Seoul on Tuesday after a homemade bomb detonated in a professor’s office on the fourth floor. [YONHAP]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]
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:
Yoo Sum-na, the daughter of the late Yoo Byung-eun, the de facto owner of the Sewol ferry, arrives at the Incheon District Prosecutors’ Office on June 7, 2017. (Yonhap)
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]
Via a reader tip comes this example of the absurdity that sometimes occur with South Korea’s defamation laws:
Korea’s Constitutional Court has ruled that saying “You are f—ing crazy” in English may be derogatory but not defamatory.
The ruling came after two men from an apartment building in Gyeonggi Province argued in May last year over the watering of flowers at a nearby garden. Lee, 62, and his neighbor, 43, sued each other for physical violence and false accusation.
The pair clashed again days later, after the neighbor failed to address Lee respectfully ― a social norm in Korea when there is a large age difference.
But when an apartment warden approached, the neighbor changed his tone and used honorifics to address Lee. The neighbor’s sudden change frustrated Lee and he said to himself: “You are f—ing crazy.”
The neighbor heard it and sued Lee for defamation. But prosecutors rejected the filing because, while admitting Lee’s criminality, it was hard to indict him based on the circumstances.
The issue was then referred to the Constitutional Court.
The court ruled unanimously, saying:
“‘F–ing’ elaborates ‘crazy,’ like ‘very,’ while ‘crazy’ has many meanings like ‘unnatural,’ ‘absurd’ or ‘passionate.’ [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but it is amazing that this went all the way to the Constitutional Court for a final ruling.
When I first read this article I was wondering if it was a Duffel Blog entry, but the person who leaked Top Secret information really is named Reality Winner:
Accused NSA leaker Reality Winner.
The alleged leaker accused of feeding a classified report to an online news site has a colorful history on social media that lays bare her political leanings as an environmentalist who wanted to “resist” President Trump.
Reality Winner, 25, is a contractor with Pluribus International Corporation assigned to a federal facility in Georgia, where she allegedly leaked a classified intelligence report containing “Top Secret Level” information. The report, according to the Department of Justice, contained classified defense information from an intelligence community agency.
While the DOJ did not say which site published the information, the charges were announced just as The Intercept published details of a National Security Agency report on Russian hacking efforts during the 2016 presidential election.
According to the Justice Department, Winner admitted to printing a classified intelligence document despite not having a “need to know,” and with knowledge the report was classified. Winner further admitted removing the report from her office space and mailing it to the news outlet, according to the criminal complaint. [Fox News]
You can read more at the link, but it appears she was motivated by politics because of her anti-Trump Facebook postings. What is clear though is that she needs to receive the maximum sentence possible for leaking Top Secret information to the media because this leak is absolutely ridiculous.
What makes this even more pathetic is that this information was already known to the media. CNN reported back in October 2016 that federal officials told them that Russia may have compromised the personal information of Florida, Illinois, and Arizona voters. This leaked document is just the source for the information that federal officials already briefed the media. So Reality Winner has likely thrown her life away for providing information the media already knows and did not change one vote during last year’s election.
Location where the three dead South Koreans were discovered in the Philippines.
A Seoul court on Friday sentenced a South Korean man who shot three compatriots to death in the Philippines last year to 30 years in prison.
The Seoul Central District Court convicted the man, identified only by his last name Kim, of murdering three Koreans — two men and one woman — who were found in a sugar cane field in Bacolor, some 70 kilometers northwest of Manila, on Oct. 11. All three had gunshot wounds to their heads.
He killed the victims following a proposal from another South Korean, surnamed Park, in return for money.
Kim was also convicted of abandoning the bodies and siphoning off 2.4 million won ($2,100) from the victims.
Prosecutors accused Kim of stealing another 720 million won from their account, but the court acquitted him of the charges, citing a lack of evidence. [Korea Times]
