Category: crime & punishment

If restaurants are lowering prices as well as closing down due to the new anti-corruption law just how many public servants are being bought off each day with free meals in Seoul?:

The implementation of a controversial anti-corruption law is scaring the retail and restaurant industries, who fear that gifts and free meals will become illegal.

The so-called Kim Young-ran law, named for a former Supreme Court Justice and Chairwoman of the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission who inspired it, was promulgated and signed by President Park Geun-hye in March 2015 and will be implemented from September 28. It forbids people in a range of professions from accepting meals that cost over 30,000 won ($26), gifts valued over 50,000 won and cash payments over 100,000 won.

Public officials fall under the law but also teachers, professors and even journalists. They are considered “public” professions by the lawmakers who passed the bill.

“A lunch menu at our Chinese restaurant is priced at 39,500 won,” said Oh Hee-jin, a manger at the Ritz-Carlton Seoul. “We are looking into lowering this to 30,000 won.”

Lotte Department Store is looking at reducing the size of gift sets to get their price tags below 50,000 won each.

But lowering prices is not a viable option for everyone.

“Hotels are supposed to take pride in providing the best services and food,” said a manager at the Shilla Hotel. “We can’t do that anymore if we start lowering prices on everything.”

Some restaurant owners are closing stores altogether. Some 30 vacant sites in Insa-dong, central Seoul, were once restaurants.

“Since April, restaurants have been closing one after another,” said a real estate agent near Insa-dong. “Restaurant owners used to rent space and pay a 200 million won premium. Now they won’t sign a deal even when I’ve lowered the premium to just 100 million won.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but it is interesting that a private sector employee like a journalist is able to fall under this bill and be considered a public profession.  I am surprised no one in the media has challenged this law yet.

You would think the adultery charges this guy is facing would be the least of his troubles considering he is charged with rape as well:

Lawyers for a Schriever Air Force Base colonel argued Monday that a half-dozen adultery charges against him should be thrown out because the military’s law banning extramarital sex discriminates against heterosexuals.

Col. Eugene Marcus Caughey is headed for an August court-martial on charges of rape, assault, taking a dirty selfie and the adultery counts. He was in court Monday for a formal reading of the charges and to argue pretrial motions.

Maj. Keith Meister, one of three attorneys defending Caughey, told Air Force judge Col. Wes Moore that the military’s definition of adultery as sex between a man and a woman hasn’t keep place with its definition of marriage, which now includes same-sex couples. That’s because the military’s adultery law requires “sexual intercourse” as an element of guilt, which the Pentagon defines as an act between a man and a woman.

“A homosexual man or woman couldn’t commit adultery as defined,” Meister argued.

Caughey’s defense team maintains that because gay people get a pass, the charges violate the colonel’s rights under the 14th Amendment, which mandates equal protection under law.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read much more at the link, but one way to look at this is that the defense lawyer thinks the rape charge is weak and needs to get the adultery charges dropped because that is what the Air Force could use to really crush this guy.  It will be interesting to see how this case turns out because it could lead to an entire redefinition of what is adultery in the US military.

Considering the age of consent in South Korea the only way these two could be charged with a crime is if these teenagers were coerced into the relationships.  Considering the position of authority of a police officer you would think this would be coercive:

Two policemen in Busan resigned after it was found they had sex with high school students they were in charge of monitoring, but they faced no punishment and even received their severance pay.

One policeman surnamed Kim, 33, had sex with a 17-year-old high school student he was supposed to look after and guide, inside a car after school on June 4.

The case came to light as the student reported what had happend to the school nurse, who then alerted a female officer who was managing students at another school, who then passed the case to Busan Saha Police Station.

The Saha Police Station’s section chief verified and confirmed the facts with Kim and the school, however, closed the case without reporting to higher authorities by advising Kim to resign.

Kim handed in his notice the next day, on June 9, saying he had “decided to continue his parents’ business.” He received no punishment and received his severance pay.

When the case belatedly erupted over social media on Friday, the section chief denied having had any knowledge of the incident prior to Kim’s resignation.

A 31-year-old police officer at Busan Yeonje Police Station also had a sexual relationship with a high school student he was supervising. The teenager reportedly contemplated taking her life after the incident. Whether the two had sex more than once is yet to be confirmed.

The case was discovered by a teenagers’ welfare organization that had had a consultation session with the student. When the organization attempted to verify the case with Jeong, he filed for resignation from his post on May 17, claiming that being a police officer did not “fit his aptitude.”  [Korea Herald]

You can read the rest at the link.

Here is a general safety note to everyone, do not let strange people into your apartment that you just met in the elevator:

The 36-year-old sex offender arrested last Saturday for allegedly murdering a 60-year-old woman in Gaepo-dong, southern Seoul, did not know his victim as he claimed.

Police now say he stalked a complete stranger, sneaked into her house to rape her and then killed her so he wouldn’t get caught.

After his arrest on June 18, the suspect, surnamed Kim, claimed he met the victim while working at a real estate agency and had known her for about a month. He told police he asked her to lend him money and murdered her when she refused.

But investigators found no record of calls or texts between the two.

Under questioning, Kim changed his story. According to police, Kim saw the victim in a parking lot on June 14, two days before the murder. Security camera footage caught him in the same parking lot as the victim.

He tailed her as she drove to her residence because he wanted to develop a “good relationship” with her, Kim said, according to police. He followed her into the apartment building elevator and introduced himself as an insurance salesman, a profession he had started to study.

He asked to come inside her apartment to tell her about policies and she agreed. When she punched the code into the security keypad of her apartment, he noted the combination of numbers.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link, but this guy was out on parole after being jailed for 10 years for a prior sexual assault and was forced to wear an ankle bracelet.  However, it broke and no one was tracking him when he committed the crime.

A night of drinking on a South Korean fishing boat led to the murder of its captain and chief engineer in the Indian Ocean:

Korea Coast Guard officers have taken into custody two Vietnamese crewmen who allegedly killed the Korean captain and chief engineer of a fishing boat.

The detention was made at Port of Victoria in Seychelles, in the Indian Ocean, Thursday night, as the Korean vessel arrived there four days after the alleged killings.

The coast guard officers are now bringing the suspects to Korea.

According to the coast guard, seven of its officers boarded the vessel, Kwang Hyun 803, with local police when a pilot was boarding around 10:10 p.m. local time. The coast guard gained control of the ship and had the vessel steered to the pier. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but the two suspects have been flown back to Korea from the Seychelles to be investigated.

Here is a strange story of a Korean movie director who broke a promise to an actress to not release a topless scene in the movie and now is facing a sexual violence crime for not keeping that promise:

Prosecutors have indicted film director Lee Soo-sung for allegedly releasing a “director’s cut” of an adult movie without agreeing with the actress who was nude in it.

The Seoul Central District Court has charged Lee with infringing the sexual violence crime punishment laws and making a false charge in his counter-accusation against Kwak Hyun-hwa, the actress.

Kwak, who starred in Lee’s movie “House With a Good View” in 2012, did not want to be part of any nude scene. Lee persuaded her that he would consider cutting out such scenes when editing the film and insisted she go topless, to which she agreed. [Korea Times]

You can read the rest at the link.

Here is an update on the aftermath of the Gangnam murder case:

Korea on Wednesday unveiled a series of measures aimed at creating a more equal society for women, about a month after a woman was killed by a stranger in a high-traffic neighborhood in Seoul.

The murder sent a shockwave through a nation that has made strides in recent years but apparently leaves much to be desired in areas of gender equality.

The measures announced Wednesday focus on preventing hate crimes against women, better protecting victims of such crimes and raising awareness for gender equality in the country, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family said. It held ministerial-level talks with the Ministry of Education and the National Police Agency.

The measures are a follow-up to the first batch announced earlier this month when Korea decided to seek the maximum default sentence for hate crimes against women and actively appeal sentences that fall short.  [Korea Times]

You can read the rest at the link, but the murder of the young Korean woman in Gangnam reminds me so much of the Orlando shooting debate.  The scale of the two murders is no where near the same, but both led to false national debates.  For the Orlando shooting the debate has centered on banning so called “assault rifles” though no one has shown any evidence the terrorist would not have shot up that night club if every AR-15 in the country was confiscated.  The real problem appears to be once again a person with a history of mental trouble that was easily influenced by radical Islamic extremism.

In the Gangman murder the national debate in Korea has been about hate crimes against women when the murderer for years was in and out of mental hospitals and became homeless because his family could no longer handle caring for him due to his mental illness.  In my opinion the national debate to respond to both murder incidents does not address the core problems, but instead have been hijacked by activists to push pet political causes.

These African scammers sure are creative and their victims seem to get dumber and dumber:

African con artists have found another way to swindle Koreans, this time by selling pieces of regular paper that they claim are actually U.S. banknotes.

In this so-called “black money” or “money wash” scam, unsuspecting victims are persuaded that stacks of banknote-sized black pieces of paper are $100 bills that have been dyed black and smuggled from a U.S. relief fund for Africa. Wide-eyed victims then pay large amounts of money for heaps of black paper and a dye-remover machine or liquid, believing they have purchased U.S. dollars far below the exchange rate.

Last month, a 45-year-old Korean businessman was strolling through Itaewon, a popular neighborhood in Seoul known for its many cafes, bars and foreign restaurants, when a Liberian approached him and said he had a lucrative business proposal. After leading the Korean to a nearby parked van, he fed a piece of black paper into a small machine, and soon the device spit out a crisp $100 bill. The businessman took the bill to a bank, where he was told that it was genuine.

He paid 540 million won ($463,100) for the machine and a sizable portion of black paper. He borrowed the money from associates.

The machine was a simple paper dispenser previously loaded for the demonstration with a genuine banknote.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link, but it seems the victim is just as bad as the con artist if they though they were receiving stolen African aid money.

It is good that the police have arrested the man who murdered a Uijongbu woman on a mountain outside the city:

The suspect in the murder on Mount Sapae in Uijeongbu, Gyeonggi, changed his story and admitted he initially tried to rape the victim.

Uijeongbu police announced on Tuesday that they found problems with the suspected culprit’s denial of rape in the initial questioning.

“While conducting analysis at the crime scene and reconstructing the crime, we found some contradictions with the culprit’s testimony,” an official in charge said. “We then used a lie detector to find out that he actually had attempted to rape the victim before killing and robbing her.”

The suspected culprit, surnamed Jeong, confessed to having initially denied raping the victim in order to avoid heavier punishment. The 45-year-old turned himself in on Friday after strangling a 55-year-old woman to death and robbing her of cash on Mount Sapae on June 7. The body of the woman was found on Thursday morning by hikers.

According to police, Jeong brought a bottle of soju to the mountain in misery after finding out he only had 14,000 won ($11.87) left in his pocket. While roaming the mountain drunk, he allegedly spotted the victim sitting on a bench by herself and approached her from behind with the intention of raping her. Police say that after strangling her with his left arm and punching her in the head twice, he undressed her from the waist up and pulled down her pants, but when he realized the victim was dead he ran away with her wallet, which contained 15,000 won and a credit card.   [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

Despite being convicted of embezzling nearly a million dollars, the CEO of the largest foreign language business in South Korea, Pagoda has received no jail time with her entire sentence being suspended:

PAGODA Academy CEO Park Kyung-sil was found guilty of embezzlement and breach of trust, an appellate court said Tuesday.

The Seoul High Court sentenced the 61-year-old leader of Korea’s major foreign language institute to two-years-and-six months in prison with the term suspended for three years.

The ruling was made after the court reviewed the case at the request of the Supreme Court, which found faults with the grounds for the appellate court’s ruling.