After all the inaccurate reporting by the Associated Press over the No Gun Ri issue in South Korea I keep a healthy bit of skepticism when reading an article like this. There is probably some truth to this especially considering the sexual assaults against deaf students at the Gwangju Inwha School that were uncovered a few years ago. However, how much truth there is to this story I just don’t know. What I do find interesting is how in the Korean media little is being mentioned about this story that is making huge headlines in the US:
In this undated image provided by the Committee Against Institutionalizing Disabled Persons, a civic group representing the former inmates at the Brothers Home, guards unload children from a truck in Busan, South Korea.
The 14-year-old boy in the black school jacket stared at his shoes, his heart pounding, as the policeman accused him of stealing a piece of bread.
Even now, more than 30 years later, Choi Seung-woo weeps when he describes all that happened next.
The policeman yanked down the boy’s pants and sparked a cigarette lighter near Choi’s genitals until he confessed to a crime he didn’t commit.
Then two men with clubs came and dragged Choi off to the Brothers Home, a mountainside institution where some of the worst human rights atrocities in modern South Korean history took place.
A guard in Choi’s dormitory raped him that night in 1982 – and the next, and the next. So began five hellish years of slave labour and near-daily assaults, years in which Choi saw men and women beaten to death, their bodies carted away like garbage.
Choi was one of thousands – the homeless, the drunk, but mostly children and the disabled – rounded up off the streets ahead of the 1988 Seoul Olympics, which the ruling dictators saw as international validation of South Korea’s arrival as a modern country.
An Associated Press investigation shows that the abuse of these so-called vagrants at Brothers, the largest of dozens of such facilities, was much more vicious and widespread than previously known, based on hundreds of exclusive documents and dozens of interviews with officials and former inmates. [Associated Press]
People should be careful who they meet up with through Kakao:
A Korean man in his 20s got arrested for having multiple sexual activities with underage girls that he met through the social network.
Anaheim police department arrested a Korean man Mr. Kim last 29th of March for having sexual relationships and raping teen girls.
According to the Anaheim police, Kim contacted a 13-year-old girl through messaging app on the phone in 2014.
Kim then met the teen girl at a shopping mall in Irvine and took her to his house in La Habra and raped her.
The Anaheim police officers started sting operation and engaged in social network with Mr. Kim, disguised as the girl. Kim, thinking the officers were teenage girl, sent photos of his private body parts and offered her to have sexual activities.
Kim went out to the park in Anaheim not realizing the girl was actually the police officer and was arrested. [Korea Times]
Here is another example of a race baiting article being pushed by the media insinuating that the poor black soldier in this article that could not afford an attorney is some how getting treated unfairly compared to the white soldier who’s family could afford a civilian attorney. The article claims they committed similar crimes and received very different sentences. However, upon closer scrutiny the two crimes were very different and tried in different court systems thus different outcomes not that facts matter in click bait articles like this:
Two soldiers from the same Joint Base Lewis-McChord infantry battalion experienced two very different kinds of justice when they came home from training events a year apart and carried out deadly crimes.
Pvt. Jeremiah Hill, prosecuted in Army court, received a sentence of 45 years in prison for knifing another soldier in the heart on a Lakewood street.
The rookie soldier from a poor Chicago family had an Army-provided defense attorney and rarely showed remorse when he testified.
Spc. Skylar Nemetz, prosecuted in Pierce County Superior Court, last week received a sentence of less than 14 years for causing the death of his wife, Danielle, when he accidentally shot her in the head with a rifle.
His Northern California family reached deep into their savings to hire an experienced private attorney. Nemetz wept on the witness stand and persuaded a jury he didn’t mean to kill his wife.
The disparities in outcomes for two soldiers from the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment show the differences in what can happen when the Army and Pierce County carry out their informal agreement to decide which agency should prosecute soldiers who commit crimes outside of JBLM. [News Tribune]
You can read the rest at the link to learn the details of each case.
Here are the USFK court martial results and ROK criminal prosecutions for March 2016. For whatever reason the PAO did not post the February 2016 results. Anyway there was a lot of incidents adjudicated in March which included mostly sexual assault and petty larceny cases. I wonder what all the people convicted of larceny were caught doing?
Results of US Court-Martials for March 2016
On 1 March 2016, at a Special Court-Martial, SGT Eliejaiah I. Belton, Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion, Eighth Army, was found guilty of one specification of abusive sexual contact (Article 120, UCMJ), two specifications of assault consummated by a battery (Article 128), one specification of unlawful entry (Article 134), one specification of adultery (Article 134), one specification of wearing improper uniform (Article 134), four specifications of maltreatment of a subordinate (Article 93), and one specification of violating a lawful general regulation (Article 92). He was sentenced to be reduced to the grade of E-1, to forfeit $687 per month for three months, and to be confined for three months.
On 2 March 2016, at a General Court-Martial, SGT Patrick L. Clark, 6th Ordinance Battalion, Materiel Support Command-Korea, was found guilty of one specification of committing a sexual assault and one specification of committing an abusive sexual contact (Article 120, UCMJ). He was sentenced to be confined for 25 months and to be discharged from the service with a dishonorable discharge.
On 11 March 2016, at a Summary Court-Martial, PVT Richard E. Potter, 6th Battalion, 37th Field Artillery Regiment, 210th Field Artillery Brigade, was found guilty of one specification of assault consummated by battery (Article 128, UCMJ). He was sentenced to forfeiture of $696.00 pay per month for one month and to be restricted for 45 days.
On 12 March 2016, at a Special Court-Martial, SFC Jeffrey L. Cupitt, 1st Signal Brigade, was found guilty of one specification of larceny of government property of a value over $500 (Article 121, UCMJ) and four specifications of false official statement (Article 107). He was sentenced to be confined for four months and to be reprimanded.
On 14 March 2016, at a Special Court-Martial, SGT Maria E. Rosario, 121 Combat Support Hospital, 65th Medical Brigade, was found guilty of two specifications of larceny, each of a value under $500 (Article 121, UCMJ). She was sentenced to be reduced to the grade of E-3, and to be restricted for 60 days.
On 24 March 2016, at a General Court-Martial, SPC Danny J. Jackson, 498th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, Materiel Support Command-Korea, was found guilty of one specification of sexual assault and one specification of abusive sexual contact (Article 120, UCMJ), one specification of false official statement (Article 107), and two specifications of assault consummated by a battery (Article 128). He was sentenced to be reduced to the grade of E-1, to forfeit all pay and allowances, to be confined for twelve months, and to be discharged from the service with a dishonorable discharge.
On 31 March 2016, at a Special Court-Martial, SGM Terrence S. Ellies, Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion, Eighth Army, was found guilty of one specification of larceny of military property of under $500 (Article 121, UCMJ), and three specifications of false official statement (Article 107). He was sentenced to be reprimanded, to pay a fine of $1,200, and to forfeit $4,644 per month for two months.
On 31 March 2016, at a General Court-Martial, SSG Thomas M. Weekly, 194th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, 2d Infantry Division Sustainment Brigade, was found guilty of two specifications of assault consummated by a battery (Article 128, UCMJ) and unlawful entry (Article 134). He was sentenced to be reduced to the grade of E-4, and to be confined for 6 months.
Results of ROK Criminal Prosecutions for March 2016
In Busan District Court, on 2 March 2016, SFC Curtis W. Turner, B Co, 532d MI Bn, was convicted of DUI. His adjudged sentence was a 1,000,000 Won fine.
In Suwon District Court, on 23 March 2016, SPC Shanna C. S. McLaurin, HHC, 304th ESB, USAG Humphreys, was convicted of traffic law violations. Her adjudged sentence was a 3,000,000 Won fine.
At least the Korean courts have decided to keep this dirt bag in jail. I can remember the days when the Korean courts were so weak on sexual assault that they were letting rapists routinely go free:
The Seoul High Court turned down a sexually abusive stepfather’s appeal for a lighter sentence Sunday.
The convicted, 48, was charged for abusing his sleeping stepdaughter, 25, and later threatening her with physical violence in an attempt to prevent her from alerting authorities.
In the original trial he received five years in prison for incestuous sexual assault, but later appealed, saying his sentence was too heavy.
The appeals court turned down his plea in a decision saying, “The nature of the defendant’s crime is malignant as he had not only sexually assaulted his own stepdaughter, but also threatened her with a weapon to cover up his crime.” [Korea Herald]
More bad news for US Forces Japan. The strangest thing to me about this story is how do you assault someone for 90 minutes on airplane?:
A Navy lieutenant was arrested Friday following allegations that he groped and punched a female passenger aboard a Japan-bound flight, police and Navy officials said.
The lieutenant, 33, assigned to Naval Air Facility Atsugi, is suspected of touching the 19-year-old college student’s clothed thigh, then punching her in the head several times during a flight from San Diego to Narita International Airport, an airport police spokesman said.
Police allege the officer assaulted the woman for about 90 minutes aboard the Japan Airlines flight, beginning around 11 a.m. Thursday, according to police and media reports.
The woman changed seats after another passenger reported the incident to a flight attendant, police said.
The officer had been drinking on the flight, though how much he had consumed is unclear, the police spokesman said.
Police arrested the lieutenant and took him into custody shortly after midnight, following an investigation that began after the plane arrived Thursday afternoon. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read the rest of this crazy story at the link.
The audit of children not attending school in South Korea has led to yet another murdered child. For some reason I am dubious that all the blame for the murder of this child goes on to the mother:
Police arrested Sunday a middle-aged man in Cheongju, North Chungcheong who admitted to secretly burying his four-year-old stepdaughter’s body on a mountain five years ago.
A day before, the girl’s 36-year-old mother asphyxiated herself after being questioned about the girl’s disappearance by police. She left a suicide note admitting to killing the girl but not saying how.
The case was the latest discovery of a child murder by an ongoing government campaign to find missing kids, which was sparked by the escape in December of an 11-year-old girl who had been imprisoned in her own house for two years and almost starved.
In Cheongju, the girl’s biological mother, who has only been identified by the surname Han, was unmarried when she gave birth to the girl. In May 2011 she married the man in the case, who is surnamed Ahn and is now 38 years old.
Eight months after the wedding, the girl died at the age of four.
According to Cheongju police, Ahn puts all the blame on his late wife. At a press briefing on Sunday, they say he claims his wife was angry at the daughter’s slow progress in toilet-training.
Allegedly, the mother shoved the girl’s head in a tub filled with water “several times” because she wouldn’t obey her orders. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read the rest at the link, but I wonder what the results in the US would be if each kid that did not show up for school was investigated like they are doing currently in Korea?
Here we go again, hopefully the hotel has security cameras that caught exactly what happened in the hotel lobby:
(CNN)A U.S. serviceman has been arrested in the southern Japanese prefecture of Okinawa on suspicion of raping a Japanese tourist, local police have confirmed to CNN. The alleged attack took place in the serviceman’s hotel room in Naha, the prefectural capital.
The man, identified by Okinawan police as 24-year old Navy sailor Justin Castellanos, stationed at Camp Schwab in Okinawa, allegedly took the victim, a 40-year-old woman from the Japanese prefecture of Kyushu, to his room after finding her asleep, drunk, in the hotel’s lobby before raping her. [CNN]
You can read the rest at the link but it does bother me how the media names the accused sailor in the article before he even goes to trial.
Below are the January 2016 USFK Court Martial and ROK criminal prosecution results results from the USFK website. Really nothing of interest this month other than a Lieutenant Colonel being convicted of larceny and fined $20,000. The results did not specify what he did, but I would not be surprised if it was BAH fraud. You can read the rest below:
Results of US Court-Martials for January 2016
On 5 January 2016, at a Summary Court-Martial, Private (E-2) Emanuel C. Morrison, 94th Military Battalion, Material Support Center-Korea, was found guilty of one specification of committing abusive sexual contact (Article 120, UCMJ). His adjudged sentence was to be reduced to the grade of E-1; to forfeit $1,049.00 pay for one month; and to be confined for 30 days.
On 12 January 2016, at a Special Court-Martial, Staff Sergeant Kenneth S. Clark, 121 Combat Support Hospital, 65th Medical Brigade, was found guilty of one specification of larceny (Article 121, UCMJ). He was sentenced to be reduced to the grade of E-4, to forfeit $1,200 per month for three months, and to be confined for 90 days.
On 14 January 2016, at a General Court-Martial, Lieutenant Colonel Halbert Brown, Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion, Eighth Army, was found guilty of two specifications of larceny (Article 120, UCMJ), and four specifications of false official statement (Article 107). He was sentenced to be reprimanded and to be fined $20,000.
On 20 January 2016, at a Summary Court-Martial, Private (E-1) Kiwon C. Butts, 304th Expeditionary Signal Battalion, 1st Signal Brigade, was found guilty of one specification failure to go to formation (Article 86, UCMJ), and two specifications of disobeying a lawful general order or regulation (Article 92). He was sentenced to forfeit $1,044.00 and to be confined for 30 days.
Results of ROK Criminal Prosecutions for January 2016
In Uijeongbu District Court, on 7 January 2016, SPC Myeshia M. Hendrix, 618th Dental Co, USAG Casey, was convicted of traffic law violations. Her adjudged sentence was a 700,000 Won fine.
In Seoul Central District Court, on 8 January 2016, PFC Vaughn W. Herrald, E Co, 2-2 AHB-16, was convicted of Intrusion upon Habitation. His adjudged sentence was a 500,000 Won fine.
In Suwon District Court, on 13 January 2016, Capt John M. Pulli, 303d IS, Osan Air Base, was convicted of DUI. His adjudged sentence was a 3,000,000 Won fine.
In Suwon District Court, on 18 January 2016, SSG Jerill JC Cotton, 630th CCT, 411th CSB, Osan Air Base, withdrew his request for a formal trial and thus the DUI conviction and 5,000,000 Won fine through the summary order became final.
In Seoul Central District Court, on 22 January 2016, 1Lt Daniel J. Brom, 8th FW, Kunsan Air Base, was convicted of Destruction and Damage of Property. His adjudged sentence was a 1,000,000 Won fine.
In Seoul Central District Court, on 27 January 2016, MSG Channon W. Green, HHC, MSC-K, USAG Daegu (Carroll), was convicted of traffic law violations. His adjudged sentence was a 4,000,000 Won fine.
In Suwon District Court, on 28 January 2016, PV2 Audrea N. Johnson, C Co, 304th ESB, USAG Humphreys, was convicted of Infliction of Bodily Injury. His adjudged sentence was a 1,000,000 Won fine.
This is one of these crime stories just begging for a picture, but I could not find one unfortunately:
Yongsan police have arrested a man who dressed as a woman to steal money and valuables from drunken people in Itaewon.
The man, identified as Kim, 44, allegedly stole a credit card, an identification card and a smartphone from a man, identified as Choi, 46, when he fell asleep at 2 p.m. on Jan. 28.
The two had been drinking together at a pub in Itaewon, police said.
Kim allegedly stole 1.5 million won from three men in Itaewon and the Incheon area last December.
Police said Kim dressed like a woman and befriended men to steal money when they were drunk. He allegedly used stolen identity cards to obtain credit cards, and also bought smartphones. [Korea Times]
