Category: crime & punishment

It seems this guy should face far more serious punishment than what Cho Hyun-ah faced in the Nut Rage Incident:

Police on Tuesday requested an arrest warrant for the man who drunkenly attacked passengers and crew members on a Korean Air flight from Hanoi to Seoul for violating the Aviation Safety and Security Act.

The man, a 34-year-old named Lim Bum-jun, was seated in prestige class (business class) on Dec. 20 when he struck another passenger in the face and attacked cabin crew who tried to restrain him. He was subdued only after the crew and others, including American pop singer Richard Marx, tied him to a seat.

“Police requested an arrest warrant for Lim for wreaking havoc on the plane and violating the Aviation Safety and Security Act,” said a police officer. “This is a graver charge than a mere disciplinary action for violence on a plane.”

The charge is the same that former Vice President of Korean Air Cho Hyun-ah received in 2014, over the infamous “nut rage” tantrum. She was sentenced to one year in prison in her first trial, but in her appeal was sentenced to 10 months with two years of probation. Suspects charged with violating the Aviation Safety and Security Act can be sentenced to up to five years in prison.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link, but Korean Air confirms this is the second time Lim made trouble on a flight and have thus banned him for life from flying on the airline.

It looks like the US military may have its first execution in more than half a century:

A Kansas federal judge has lifted a stay of execution for a former soldier sentenced to death for two killings and a series of rapes, inching the man closer to becoming the military’s first death sentence carried out in more than a half century.

U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten last week sided with the U.S. government in denying a bid by former Fort Bragg, N.C., soldier Ronald A. Gray to block the military from pressing ahead with the execution by lethal injection.

Since a military court sentenced him to die in 1988, Gray has been held at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where the military carried out its last execution when it hanged Army Pvt. John Bennett in 1961 for raping and trying to kill an 11-year-old Austrian girl.  [The Virginian Pilot]

You can read more at the link.

It seems to me if the Foreign Ministry really wants to send a message about the behavior of the former diplomat they should send him packing back to Chile to face legal consequences there:

South Korea’s foreign ministry referred a diplomat to the prosecution on Wednesday over sexually abusing a teenage girl in Chile, officials said.

The councilor, previously posted at the South Korean Embassy in Chile, is accused of committing a sexual offense against a 14-year-old girl in September while teaching her Korean.

Tipped off by the girl, a Chilean television channel filmed and broadcast the diplomat sexually harassing another woman earlier in the month who was acting as a teenage girl trying to receive Korean language lessons.

Holding a disciplinary committee on Tuesday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs dismissed the diplomat surnamed Park from public office.

“Today, the ministry reported Park to the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office and submitted evidence including an indictment bill filed by the victim’s family,” officials here said.  [Yonhap]

Richard Marx and Daisy Fuentes to the rescue?  Via a reader tip, that is what happened on a recent Korean Air flight:

Richard Marx heroically fought off and restrained an out-of-control passenger during a flight from Vietnam to South Korea … and his wife, Daisy Fuentes, captured the whole ordeal.

Daisy took a bunch of pics as Korean Air flight attendants and the ’80s hitmaker teamed up to take down the man. You can see Richard was throwing elbows and even holding the rope tied around the guy.

According to Daisy and Richard … the flight crew was “completely ill trained” for combat. One of the flight attendants had a taser, but had no clue how to use it … at least that’s how Daisy saw it.

She says they battled the attacker for 4 hours, and 2 passengers and a crew member were injured. Seoul police arrested the guy when they landed.  [TMZ]

You can read more at the link, but here is video of the altercation:

I would have to think this guy is either extremely drunk on drugs judging by his behavior which is absolutely ridiculous. I have to give credit to the passenger who was helping to restrain him and kept getting spit in the face. I think many people would have hit the guy in the face after getting spat on repeatedly like that passenger was.

I can understand this guy getting demoted for blatantly violating the UCMJ for many years, but it seems this guy has been punished worse than other senior leaders that have defrauded the government, had highly inappropriate relationships or inappropriately shared classified intelligence.  The ironic thing about this is that if he was having a gay affair it would not have been considered adultery:

The Army has stripped Maj. Gen. David Haight of three ranks, Army Secretary Eric Fanning said Friday, following revelations contained in documents and interviews of Haight’s decade-long extramarital affair and “swinger lifestyle.

A board of his peers called for Haight to be busted to lieutenant colonel, a demotion that will cost him nearly $43,000 per year in pension pay. Fanning, in an interview, said he had accepted the recommendation after a panel of three officers reviewed Haight’s conduct — and his secret second life — and determined that lieutenant colonel was the last rank in which he had served satisfactorily.

Fanning spent hours discussing the case with other general officers and read the investigative report twice before accepting the recommendation, he said.

“He’s going to be retired as a lieutenant colonel,” Fanning said. “Pretty big drop.”  [USA Today]

You can read more at the link.

I think anyone equating Park Geun-hye to Kim Jong-un is a complete idiot.  They are as stupid as the people equating Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler.  With that said this is another example of how Korea’s defamation laws do put limits on freedom of speech:

A South Korean appeals court on Friday confirmed a monetary penalty for a 48-year-old pop artist and his 38-year-old collaborator who distributed leaflets critical of President Park Geun-hye across the country.

Upholding the previous ruling, the Seoul Central District Court said the act of spreading the leaflets should be distinct from freedom of expression or freedom of art.

The court ordered the artist, Lee Byeong-ha, to pay 2 million won (US$1,700) in fines. Lee, who goes by the stage name Leeha, distributed a total of some 18,000 leaflets in Seoul and other major cities between 2014 and 2015.

A 38-year-old actor, identified only by his surname Han, was also ordered to pay 200,000 won for collaborating with Lee in May last year.

“The defendants said it was a fair expression of their political views, but considering the amount, the location and how the leaflets were spread, their actions cannot be justified,” the court said in the previous ruling.  [Yonhap]

Here is an interesting read from the LA Times about a soldier stationed at Yongsan Garrison that was being charged with the manslaughter of his best friend:

The men were U.S. Army mechanics, and they had arranged to be deployed at the same time in South Korea. Pfc. Royal, 22, was based at the Yongsan Garrison, a major U.S. military base near Itaewon. Pfc. Anderson, 20, was stationed at Humphreys, a rural garrison 55 miles south, and he was visiting for the weekend.

They drank; they played pool; they wrestled like muscle-bound, army-trained puppies, grappling into chokeholds until one or the other cried uncle. They got matching tattoos — “friends forever” swirling down their forearms in blue Korean script.

Chrissy — an energetic young woman from Royal’s North Carolina hometown — went home early, and just after midnight, Royal and Anderson decided to go home too. A taxi dropped them off near Royal’s apartment. Royal and Anderson began roughhousing. Royal pushed Anderson with two hands — a shove to the chest — and Anderson fell backwards.

Thus began the first in a tragic series of unpredictable events that would leave one friend dead, the other on trial, and the military justice system forced to grapple with complex questions about responsibility and punishment in a case whose primary villain seemed to be fate.

It happened in a matter of seconds. Just as Anderson tumbled into the street, a car veered around a corner and blazed through a red blinking light, plowing suddenly over Anderson with both axles — bump, bump. The car stopped. The police arrived. And 12 days later, Anderson died in the hospital, hooked up to a mechanical ventilator.

The Army charged Royal with manslaughter.

The hearing that would determine whether Royal would have to face a full court-martial began on a crisp day in October.  [LA Times]

You can read the rest at the link, but it seems to me that the person most culpable for the accident is the driver that ran the red light in the first place.

This is just another example of why these sexual assault cases are so hard to litigate and not as cut and dry as the activists and politicians want people to believe:

The Seoul High Court upheld Tuesday a lower court ruling that acquitted a former Korean soldier of raping a female American soldier, saying sexual relations between the two did not involve a physical attack or threats.

The Korean soldier, 22, whose name was withheld, was serving as a sergeant in the Korean Augmentation Troops to the United States Army (KATUSA) in Dongducheon, Gyeonggi Province, when he allegedly raped the U.S. soldier, 19, in December.

He was in charge of educating American soldiers new to Korea, and he and his accuser began seeing each other frequently and engaged in sexual relations from last October. However, on one occasion, while kissing at his barracks, the man told her he wanted to have sex and she refused. He then said he would not let her leave the room, and forcibly had sex with her anyway.

During sex, he asked her if it was rape, and as she said yes, he then stopped, and knelt down to apologize. She accepted his apology but later reported it as rape to the military police.

Even though the assailant partially admitted it was rape during the investigation, the lower and high courts did not recognize it as such.

“Although sexual intercourse occurred against the woman’s will, she said there was no physical attack, swearing or anything threatening,” the high court said. “She did not call for help or resist, but rather she undressed on her own volition,” it added. [Korea Times]

Should this be considered rape even though there was no physical attack and she did not resist in any way?  The Korean courts don’t think so, I wonder what a US court would have ruled on this?  I also wonder why the ROK Army did not try this case and instead gave it to a ROK civilian court?

It appears the murder of three Koreans in the Philippines may have been to rob them of the money they had defrauded from people in South Korea:

Police in southern Korea have arrested a suspect in the murder of three Koreans in the Philippines, in a fresh twist to a grisly saga first linked to a spate of vigilante killings.

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency on Thursday said the suspect, surnamed Kim, was arrested in Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province.  (…………..)

Police said Kim lived in the Philippines when the murders took place and had been close to the victims. He returned to Korea on Oct. 13, a day after the murders.

Police are also searching for another Korean man in his 30s surnamed Park, who was also close to the victims and is believed to be still in the Philippines.   (……………….)

“The three victims and the suspects did not know each other in Korea but appear to have met in the Philippines,” a police spokesman said. “We have reason to believe that the two suspects committed the crime to get their hands on the victims’ money.” [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

Further Reading:

https://www.rokdrop.net/2016/10/three-more-south-koreans-found-murdered-in-the-philippines/

The KNPA has recently ended a 100 day crackdown on foreigner crime:

Police booked more than 800 foreigners for allegedly committing crimes during a special 100-day crackdown from July 4.

The National Police Agency said Tuesday 803 foreigners involved in 348 cases were booked and 136 were arrested in the period.

By crime type, violent crime (67 percent) led the way, followed by narcotics (24 percent), sexual violence (5 percent) and gambling (4 percent).

For violent crime, 189 cases (80 percent) occurred among foreigners and 83 percent among compatriots. Police said most criminals who assaulted people were drunk. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.