Category: crime & punishment

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. 

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]

He must have been bragging about his dope smoking to have gotten caught like this growing marijuana in his apartment:

A 47-year-old Canadian was caught growing cannabis in his residence and habitually smoking it, South Korean police said Monday.

According to the police, the Canadian national, who had previously been a lecturer at a university in Daegu, smuggled marijuana into Korea from Thailand in August 2010. He then grew it at the balcony in his apartment building, the police said.

The man allegedly set up facilities like a ventilator, electronic heater and reflecting plate on the balcony to grow the weed for years.

He reportedly lost his job as a university lecturer as allegations about him smoking cannabis surfaced at his workplace.   [Korea Herald]

Commuter who walked past actress at Waterloo station cleared of 'bizarre' sex assault claim https://t.co/AOr8nRVv8Y

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) February 7, 2016

It appears that South Korea is getting serious about stopping sexual harassment in the school system:

Suwon District Court has sentenced a high school teacher in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, to six years’ jail for sexually harassing and blackmailing a student.

The teacher, identified as Kim, 38, was also ordered to spend 80 hours at a class for sexual offenders and to have his personal information disclosed for six years.

Kim forced his student, 19, identified only as “A,” to take off her clothes and had sexually harassed her 43 times from August to October last year. He also filmed body parts to blackmail her, police said.

Kim approached the student, offering free personal tutoring, because “A” could not afford private lessons. “A” was preparing for a civil service examination.

The court said it handed down a heavy sentence because Kim forgot his duty as a teacher and treated his student as a sex object.

But the court took into consideration that Kim admitted guilt and had paid 30 million won to the student. [Korea Times]

I had a feeling this was a hoax and sure enough it was:

Police have apprehended a suspect who allegedly planted a fake explosive device with a threatening letter written in Arabic at Incheon International Airport.

The Incheon International Airport Police said Thursday that they detained the 36-year-old Korean man, surnamed Yu, at 11:30 p.m., Wednesday, at his home in Guro, Seoul.

The action came five days after he left the package containing a butane gas canister in a men’s bathroom at the airport on Jan. 29.

“Yu admitted that he made the box at home based on methods described in a film, and left it in the restroom,” Chung Sung-chae, head of the airport police, said in a press briefing. “He said he did so out of a grudge toward society.” [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.