Category: crime & punishment

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.

I hope they give this guy some serous jail time because if not this will just encourage other nut jobs to do the same thing.  I think this should be considered attempted murder because someone could have been killed by this bomb:

A South Korean man admitted Tuesday to his involvement in the suspected bombing last year of a public restroom at a Tokyo war shrine in his first court hearing at the Tokyo District Court, news reports said.

The 28-year-old suspect, identified only by his surname Chon, has been indicted on charges of breaking into the premises of Yasukuni Shrine on Nov. 23 and bombing the public restroom.

Chon was arrested in December shortly after voluntarily returning to Tokyo by plane.

In Tuesday’s hearing, prosecutors said Chon attempted to install an explosive device with a digital timer at the main hall of the shrine out of his discontent over the war-linked shrine that honors Japanese wartime leaders who were convicted as war criminals.

But he put it in the restroom instead after failing to do so due to tight security, they said.

Chon’s defense counsel reportedly asked the court to give him a reduced penalty as the incident is not a grave one as no one was injured and he has no chance of repeating the offense as he will find it difficult to enter Japan again down the road.  [Yonhap]

You can read the rest at the link, but the other nut jobs the anti-Korean activist group, Zaitokukai showed up to the hearing to protest against Chon and had a lot of bad things to say about Koreans in general.

The arrest of the three men accused of gang raping a Korean teacher on the remote Korean island Heuksan-do has finally happened.  Due to the public outrage it appears the Korean police are not going to give the perpetrators the benefit of using the “I was drunk excuse” so commonly used in these cases:

Three suspects have been charged with premeditated rape and assault in the investigation of a sexual assault case involving a female teacher in her 20s by three local men from Heuksan Island in Sinan County, South Jeolla.

The three suspects were scheduled to be sent to the prosecution today for further investigation. Each is a father of children in kindergarten, elementary or middle school. The children of two of the suspects are attending the school where the victim worked. They were arrested by police last Saturday, after the victim reported the crime.

One of the suspects, surnamed Park, 49, owns the restaurant where the teacher was having dinner prior to the crime on May 21. He and one other suspect, Lee, 34, are accused of having invited the teacher to join them and getting her drunk.

After the victim became intoxicated, Park brought her to a building at an elementary school at 11:00 p.m in his car while Lee followed. About 30 minutes later, police say, the other suspect, Kim, 38, drove to the elementary school building, as well.

The police initially planned to impose less severe charges on the three since they claimed the rape was not planned.

“The testimonies of the three suspects didn’t match,” said a police officer. “They seemed to have lied when they said the crime was not plotted.”

But given that the three suspects live in the same neighborhood, contacted each other before and after the crime and went inside the building and raped the victim in sequence, the police charged them with premeditated rape.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.  Also for those wondering where Heuksan-do island is located at here is a Google Map of its location:

Incredibly the arrest of one of the suspects surnamed Kim has been linked to a 2007 rape in Daejon.  The DNA found on the teacher matched the DNA found on the victim in the Daejon case.   Due to the victim speaking out about this rape she may have gotten a serial rapist off the streets.  It seems like if someone wanted to lie low and hide out somewhere Heuksando would be a place to go.

I don’t think there is any more danger for women on Korean mountains than there would be in the city.  That is why I don’t think these recent murders should cause people to avoid hiking in Korea:

When a 55-year-old female hiker was found dead this week on a mountain in Uijeongbu, Gyeonggi, police officers didn’t want to think she was murdered.

Just 10 days before and 7 kilometers (4 miles) away on a different mountain, a 60-year-old woman was stabbed to death by a man recently released from prison. Murders are hardly common at spots where people hike, a favorite Korean pastime.

But on Thursday, police acknowledged that the 55-year-old appears to have been choked to death. Autopsy results found bruises “all over her body.”

A sexual assault is also possible.

Police are now wondering whether lone female hikers have become new targets for brutal killings.

“When a murder case unfolds on a mountain, very rarely can you find a witness,” said Lee Yoon-ho, a police administration professor at Dongguk University in Jung District, central Seoul.

The police have no suspects in the alleged murder case on Mount Sapae (1,808 feet), where the 55-year-old was choked, which is one of the most popular hiking destinations in Gyeonggi.

A lot of women say they are less keen to go hiking alone.

On a recent visit to the scene of the crime on Mount Surak (2,100 feet), where the 60-year-old was stabbed, very few people were spotted. Even male hikers admitted they were feeling slightly anxious.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link, but the article calls for CCTV camera to be set up along popular hiking trails to protect hikers.  It seems a bit overboard to me to put up CCTV cameras all over the country to protect against crimes.  If people are so concerned for their safety than carry some pepper spray for personal protection.

Police recommend murder, rape charges for base worker following #Okinawa woman's death: https://t.co/CJeXBSZcAG pic.twitter.com/BOke4H5wBY

— Erik Slavin (@eslavin_stripes) June 9, 2016