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:
Raymond Royal, Chrissy Royal, Kathleen Stanfield and Karen Anderson sit in the Royals’ Seoul apartment after Raymond Royal’s two-day preliminary hearing.
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?
Individuals identified as South Korean nationals were found dead on Tuesday in the Philippines, according to South Korean media. (UPI Photo/Jennifer S. Kimball/NVNS)
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]
The KNPA has recently ended a 100 day crackdown on foreigner crime:
Police arrested 800 foreigners from July to October who were involved in 348 crimes. / Korea Times file
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]
I am glad the Korean authorities caught these two because I can’t stand people who steal or leave graffiti everywhere:
Police have arrested two Russians for allegedly vandalizing subway cars in Daegu and stealing clothes from department stores in Seoul and Busan.
Daegu Dongbu Police Station said on Monday that the two men, 22 and 20, allegedly painted the word “ONAS” — meaning “we” in Russian — on two subway cars at a depot in the city’s Dong-gu district around 1:40 a.m. on Oct. 16.
A Daegu department store employee reported the men to police.
After analyzing CCTV footage, police discovered that the graffiti suspects were wanted by Busan Jungbu Police Station on a charge of stealing clothes worth 7.5 million won ($6,620) from department stores in Seoul and Busan on Oct. 11 and 12, respectively.
According to Daegu police, the Russians stole the clothes and vandalized the subway cars “for fun.” [Korea Times]
A rescuer works to get an inebriated woman out of a claw crane for dolls in the city of Incheon, west of Seoul, on Oct. 17, 2016, in this photo released by firefighters. She crawled into the game machine’s exit following frustration over her failure to get any dolls from it. (Yonhap)
Rescuers have removed an inebriated woman from a claw crane game for dolls after she crawled into the game machine’s exit following frustration over her failure to get any dolls from it, firefighters said Tuesday.
The woman, 20, got herself confined inside the machine in the city of Incheon, west of Seoul, around 4:00 a.m. on Monday before being rescued. Rescuers, who were mobilized to the scene after receiving a tip from one of her acquaintances, cut through the machine’s cabinet with a motor drill.
After failing to pick up a doll in several attempts, she managed to enter the machine through its opening with a length and width of just 30 centimeters, but was unable to get back out, they said. [Yonhap]
Here is a really odd story of a gunfight in Seoul with a criminal using six homemade guns. This just goes to show that if a criminal really wants a gun they can get one:
A police officer was killed in a gunfight with a criminal suspect in northern Seoul and the suspect involved in the shooting has been apprehended, law enforcement authorities said Wednesday.
In the gunfight that began at around 6:30 p.m. in front of a tunnel near Beon-dong in northern Seoul, the 45-year-old suspect, identified only by his family name Seong, opened fire with a privately manufactured gun, according to the police.
The police responded to a report that the suspect had attacked his neighbor with a blunt object. He ran into the tunnel after he spotted the police and was carrying six guns, all made of wood, when he was apprehended, a police officer said.
The suspect is presumed to have made the wooden guns based on manufacturing methods available from the Internet.
The suspect cut off an electronic monitoring bracelet that he was wearing due to previous involvement in a sexual offense before he began to run towards the tunnel, the officer said.
A police officer, 54, was shot in the gunfight and was rushed to the hospital for treatment, but died during surgery. The neighbor who was attacked, who also turns out to be the suspect’s landlord, is undergoing treatment for his wounds.
The landlord and the tenant were engaged in an argument before he became violent. The police have begun an investigation into what caused the verbal fight. [Yonhap via a reader tip]
Three Korean victims found earlier this week in a remote sugarcane field in the Philippines with gunshot wounds to their heads were identified as primary suspects in a multi-million-dollar investment fraud, local media reported Friday.
The three Koreans were found dead by a local farmer on Tuesday in a sugarcane field in the rural town of Bacolor, 75 kilometers (47 miles) northwest of Manila.
They were a 48-year-old man, a 52-year-old man and a 49-year-old woman. The victims were confirmed by their fingerprints to be Korean nationals on Wednesday.
The Korean police told local media on Friday that the three victims were suspects of an investment fraud worth 15 billion won ($13.25 million).
The three individuals left the country before police formally launched an investigation, the Yonhap News Agency reported.
The victims were executives in an investment corporation that they created last year, and the 48-year-old male victim worked as its president.
They jointly operated the company for approximately one year, using a multi-level marketing investment scheme based on foreign exchange margin trading, police were quoted as saying.
While the president of the firm and the female victim were not married, they pretended to be, police said, luring investors to trust them with large sums of money with the promise of high returns.
Victims of the alleged fraud requested police since the summer to investigate the suspects. One petition was filed at the Songpa District Precinct in August and two more were filed to the Suseo District Precinct in September.
Police said the victims left Korea as the investigation was forming. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but I wonder if they were working for a Korean organized crime group and killing them was a way to keep them quiet after they were targeted to be investigated by authorities?
The police on Jeju have launched a crackdown on Chinese tourists due to them committing 95% of petty crime by foreigners on Jeju island:
A female owner of a restaurant in Yeon-dong, Jeju, lies face-up on the ground (indicated by red circle) on Sept. 9 after she was assaulted by eight Chinese tourists, who refused to pay for their food after the owner told them not to bring in alcohol from outside the restaurant. [JEJU WESTERN DISTRICT POLICE PRECINCT]In downtown Jeju on Sunday night, booming sounds echoed down the streets as three drunken Chinese men pounded on a video arcade in front of a game room. A few passing women were so startled they let out shouts of surprise, but the men only kept on whooping loudly.
“After a Korean woman was murdered in a cathedral in Jeju,” said Park Soo-jung, a 32-year-old resident of Jeju, “seeing big Chinese men scares me.”
On Sept. 22 in Yeon-dong of Jeju, an area often crowded with Chinese visitors, police officers tried to prevent two Chinese tourists from jaywalking.
“Do not jaywalk!” the officers called out to them in Mandarin Chinese.
One of them, a 42-year-old Chinese man surnamed Ma, reportedly answered, “Why are you picking on us when everyone else is jaywalking?”
Ma was charged 20,000 won ($18.26) for breaking the law. He was just one of about 40 found jaywalking within two hours in downtown Jeju.
“After the cathedral incident, we’ve heightened the crackdown against crimes committed by Chinese tourists,” said Kim Chang-hyun, head of a local police team in Jeju. “Once the sun sets, I start worrying what kind of crimes committed by Chinese tourists I’ll be seeing that night.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
This is just a horrible story coming out of Pocheon, north of Seoul:
A middle-aged couple was arrested Sunday for allegedly binding their 6-year-old adopted daughter with duct tape for 17 hours and, when she suffocated, burning her body on a mountain.
The couple denied intentionally killing the girl and said she was being punished for being “too gluttonous.”
Police requested a pre-trial detention warrant Monday for the 47-year-old man and his 30-year-old wife on charges of murder, physical abuse, as well as the mutilation and abandonment of a dead body.
A 19-year-old woman living with the couple in Pocheon, Gyeonggi, was also apprehended on the same charges. Police identified the teenager as a daughter of the father’s close friend, who allegedly took some – if not equal – part in the crime.
The three suspects said during police questioning that they habitually struck the child with their bare hands or a fly swatter because she didn’t obey orders.
Last Wednesday night, they allegedly bound the girl up with duct tape and left home, returning 17 hours later to find her struggling to breathe.
The adoptive mother claimed she performed CPR on the child before she took her last breath. The three moved the body to the couple’s car Friday and drove to a nearby mountain. They allegedly burned the body to hide the evidence. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more of the details at the link, to include how the police determined the adopted parents killed the girl.
![A female owner of a restaurant in Yeon-dong, Jeju, lies face-up on the ground (indicated by red circle) on Sept. 9 after she was assaulted by eight Chinese tourists, who refused to pay for their food after the owner told them not to bring in alcohol from outside the restaurant. [JEJU WESTERN DISTRICT POLICE PRECINCT]](https://i0.wp.com/pds.joins.com/jmnet/koreajoongangdaily/_data/photo/2016/10/04202501.jpg?resize=610%2C379)
