When the Lee Jung-hee Scandal broke I thought it seemed strange and sure enough it was all as expected a hoax. This just shows how these campaigns passed around on social media I have little faith in because they are mostly not true and this scandal is just another example:
As we know now, this was all a hoax. The monstrous former husband, who was supposedly blocking the police investigation because he was so well-connected with powerful people, was no more than an old pizza delivery man living in a crappy studio apartment. Lee led to the journalists to a rural village, claiming that her perpetrators lived there–not just one or two of the perpetrators, but according to Lee, the whole village was a sex colony that raped her and her sons. (But why would these allegedly rich and powerful men who assaulted her and her sons live in a crappy rural village?) The police did investigate the former husband when Lee initially claimed sexual assault to the police. After four months of investigation, the police did not find any nefarious orgy picture or video, nor did they find any sign of drug use from the former husband.
The real story was simpler and made much more sense. Lee and the former husband were indeed married, and were in the process of divorce. The former husband did beat Lee and the children, which resulted in a favorable divorce for Lee. It was when the husband appealed the decision by the divorce court that Lee began claiming sexual assault. Her story fell apart as soon as the more serious Korean media began their investigation. Earlier this month, Lee was arrested on the charges of malicious litigation and child abuse; Lee’s children were separated from their mother and were placed in protective services. [Ask A Korean]
You can read more of Ask A Korean’s take on this issue at the link which I agree with.
It amazes me that after already being convicted of forgery that no one scrutinized his divorce paperwork before letting this guy off the hook and allowing him to retire:
Prosecutors in South Korea have reopened the case of a U.S. soldier who allegedly tricked a local woman into a bigamous marriage and left her $50,000 in debt when he returned to his wife in America, according to South Korean news reports.
Rachel Lee, 43, a divorced mother from Chuncheon, said a friend introduced her to Master Sgt. Scott Fuller, 40, in August 2013 when Fuller was serving with the Korea-based 2nd Infantry Division. The pair hit it off and married in a traditional Korean ceremony just four months later. However, documents Fuller submitted to have the marriage recognized in Korea, including Army and U.S. Embassy certifications of his single status, turned out to be forged, she said.
“He’s a con, and he killed my soul and broke my heart,” Lee said of the deception, which was discovered only after Fuller abruptly returned to the U.S. in May 2014. “He just left without saying anything. He totally ruined my life.”
The Army returned Fuller — who was stationed at Fort Drum in New York — to South Korea when it discovered the forgeries.
In October 2014, a South Korean court found him guilty of forgery and sentenced him to eight months in prison. The Army knocked him down in rank to sergeant first class after an Article 15 hearing, according to documents provided by Lee to Stars and Stripes. The details of the case were then verified by a U.S. military official in Korea.
Fuller then convinced Lee, the Korean court and the Army that he had, at last, divorced his American wife after producing what he claimed was a divorce judgment document from a New York court. His sentence was reduced on appeal to a $10,000 fine with no prison time, and his rank was restored. Fuller also used the document to obtain a dependent identification card for Lee that listed her as his spouse.
It wasn’t until August of this year that she found out — from Fuller’s American wife, Marianne — that the divorce document was also a forgery. The Army quickly determined that the document was likely not genuine. Nonetheless, U.S. and Korean officials declined to take further action, Lee said. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read the rest at the link, but what a mess.
The plagiarizers in Korea are not even trying very hard any more to hide their deception when they are just changing book covers:
Prosecutors said Tuesday they would charge 200 professors for copyright violations next month, suspecting them of changing the covers of existing books by other people and publishing them in their own names.
The Uijeongbu District Prosecutors’ Office called in 200 professors from 50 universities for questioning over the past three months. As most of the accused, including well-known lecturers, admitted to the charges, they will be indicted next month, prosecutors said. [Korea Herald]
What I have learned this week is that you can rape teenagers in Korea as long as you say you love them, but if you touch a minor inappropriately and film it you will go to jail:
A man who asked his girlfriend to harass sexually her eight-year-old son was sentenced to three years and six months in jail.
According to Suwon District Court, the man, 43, identified as Park, incited his 40-year-old girlfriend, identified as Kim, to abuse her son sexually and film it on her smartphone.
Park said he wanted to see Kim touching her son’s bodyparts while he was asleep, and asked her to send a video in December 2014. Kim and Park had been having an affair for three years since 2012.
Kim filmed her son and sent the video to Park.
Kim was indicted for filming a minor, and also sentenced to three years with five years probation. [Korea Times]
For anyone that wants to commit statutory rape in Korea, just say that you loved the victim and the Supreme Court will find you not guilty of the crime:
The Supreme Court will review the case of a man, 46, who was found not guilty of raping a teenage girl, Yonhap has reported. Prosecutors appealed the Seoul High Court’s “not-guilty” ruling on Thursday.
But the nation’s highest court is unlikely to change its stance on the case, which it has reviewed before, legal sources said.
The man, identified only as “A” and owner of an entertainment company, was indicted for allegedly raping a middle school student 27 years his junior.
According to evidence given at lower court trials, the man had sexual relations with the woman, identified as “B,” many times and got her pregnant in 2011. “B” was 15 at the time.
“A” was indicted after “B” reported to police that she was raped.
“A” was found guilty at the first and second trials.
But last November the Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s decision, as “A” kept insisting he had loved “B.” It sent the case back to the lower court, which ruled on Oct. 16 that he is not guilty of rape. [Korea Times via the Marmot’s Hole]
How would you like to be the Company Commander for the unit this guy belonged to and got the phone call from authorities about what this guy did? The most frustrating part of the article is that the shooter says his military training took over to explain what he did. I’m not sure where shooting people driving by in a truck and holding a gun to a woman’s head was part of military training? I hope he enjoys the corrective training he is going to receive in a federal penitentiary:
Pierce County prosecutors said Monday they believe the man who was shot is in critical condition, in a medically induced coma, and they were not sure of his prognosis.
Spc. Jesse Suhanec, 22, of the 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, is charged with first- and second-degree assault, three counts of attempted first-degree robbery and one count of attempted first-degree burglary.
Suhanec is based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.
He pleaded not guilty Monday, and Court Commissioner Meagan Foley set bail at $1 million. Court records did not list an attorney for Suhanec.
According to charging papers:
The 30-year-old victim was on his way to discuss a parenting plan with his ex-wife when she heard multiple gunshots near her house about 10:10 a.m.
The man was shot the 15100 block of Grant Avenue Southwest and drove to a nearby fast-food restaurant, where he sounded the horn of the truck.
Two soldiers found him with gunshot wounds to his head and shoulders. At the hospital, doctors took out one bullet and left others as they treated him.
Meanwhile, Suhanec, who had checked out a van from his military unit, left the vehicle behind and headed down the street from the shooting.
He put a gun to a woman’s head in her driveway and said he’d kill her if she didn’t give him her car keys. [News Tribune]
You can read the rest at the link, but it only gets worse.
So basically when it was all said and done Lieutenant General Franklin who was forced to retire because of this was actually right:
An Air Force sexual assault case that spanned two investigations, a lieutenant general’s forced retirement and a finding of unlawful command influence ended after more than three years Wednesday with the acquittal of Airman 1st Class Brandon T. Wright.
A military jury made up of officers and enlisted personnel — six men and one woman — found Wright not guilty at Joint Base Andrews, Md., after three hours of deliberation.
The accuser’s former Special Victims’ Counsel said the verdict, although disappointing, was not a complete loss.
“I’m disappointed that the panel did not convict him; however, I am happy that the Air Force finally took the case seriously, as it should have from the start, and my former client received the day in court that she deserved,” Maribel Jarzabek said. “I think the fact that the jury deliberated for three hours and asked to see some of the evidence showed that this wasn’t the slam-dunk case that Gen. (Craig) Franklin and others predicted it would be.”
Wright was accused of raping a staff sergeant in her apartment near Aviano Air Base, Italy, after a night of drinking and socializing in 2012.
Wright’s defense, which focused its closing argument on the prosecution’s burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and what the defense lawyers characterized as inconsistencies in the woman’s statements over the past three-plus years, hailed the verdict.
Maj. Jacob Ramer and Cpt. Patrick Hughes said in a statement that “panel member(s) understood the importance of their role and gave their full attention to resolving the question before them.”
They also said that Wright’s unit had been “monumental in… helping him through the most difficult time of his young life.”
Wright did not testify.
After an Article 32 preliminary hearing in the case, then-Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin, concurring with the hearing officer’s and legal adviser’s advice, dismissed the case in 2013. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read the rest at the link, but you have to like the spin the prosecution is coming up with. What is the purpose then of an Article 32 if someone who accuses someone of a crime deserve to have their day in court like the prosecution claims? Lt. Gen. Franklin has now been vindicated that this case did not have enough evidence to get a conviction. Also if anything deliberating only three hours shows how weak of a case this was. Even more troubling about this case is that it was so weak despite having the entire Air Force legal community trying to get a conviction to include using unlawful command influence:
An Air Force judge has ruled that the service’s top legal officer committed unlawful command influence in a sexual assault case, partly for political motives. Nonetheless, the case will proceed to court-martial.
Lt. Col. Joshua Kastenberg, in a July 30 ruling in response to a defense motion to dismiss the case against Airman 1st Class Brandon T. Wright, found that Lt. Gen. Richard Harding, formerly the Air Force Judge Advocate General, had improperly influenced the case or had given the appearance of doing so.
One such instance, the judge ruled, was recommending that Wright’s case be transferred to another court-martial convening authority for a do-over after the first convening authority, Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin, dismissed the case in the summer of 2013. Franklin’s dismissal came after an Article 32 investigative hearing at Aviano Air Base, Italy.
Such transfers are almost unheard of. It happened in the Wright case, Kastenberg’s ruling says, in part because Harding was worried that “the failure to have charges preferred against SrA Wright would enable Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to gain needed votes on a pending bill to remove commanders from the court-martial process.”
The ruling took Harding to task for supposedly telling Col. Joseph Bialke, Franklin’s legal adviser, that sexual assault cases, absent “smoking gun” evidence about an alleged victim’s credibility, should be sent to court-martial. In so doing, Kastenberg wrote, Harding improperly attempted to shape Bialke’s future legal advice. Katsenberg ruled that the forced retirements of Bialke and Franklin after their handling of the Wright case created an appearance of unlawful command influence. [Stars & Stripes]
All this case has likely done is force other convening authorities to send flimsy sexual assault cases to trial to protect their careers after seeing what happened to Lt. Gen. Franklin.
The Itaewon Burger King murder trial has started with former convict for the murder Edward Lee pointing the finger at Arthur John Patterson as the murderer of Korean student Cho Choong-pil:
John Arthur Patterson
During the questioning, Lee found it difficult to recall the situation in which the murder took place in April 1997, but the Korean-American said in the courtroom that he saw Patterson suddenly turning to the victim and stabbing him.
“When the murder took place, I went to the bathroom to wash my hands,” he said. “Patterson suddenly started to stab him. I turned around and I was shocked.
“Cho was trying to hit the accused with his right hand, but Patterson stabbed him and kept stabbing him.”
He admitted that there were only three people including Patterson, Cho and himself at the crime scene. But he continued to accuse Patterson of murdering Cho.
He also took issue with the credibility of the past investigation records and how he was treated during the questioning by the police and prosecutors.
“I have consistently asked for an interpreter, but they didn’t provide me with one,” he said. “I was interrogated without an interpreter, coerced and threated during the first investigation for 17 hours. They didn’t let me go to sleep.” [Korea Herald]
You can read the rest at the link, but Patterson continues to claim that Lee is the actual murderer. I feel so bad for the victim’s mother who also testified and had to listen to the details about how her son was killed for no reason and then see these two each deny responsibility. Even if Lee did not commit the murder he is still culpable for not saying anything after it happened. If he saw Patterson stabbing someone to death he should of at least immediately alerted people in the restaurant to call the police and paramedics.
I am sure there is probably some crazy back story to this case:
A 40-year-old woman has been indicted on charges of forcing her husband to have sex with her, prosecutors said Tuesday.
It marks the first time that a wife has been charged with marital rape. The Supreme Court recognized spousal rape as a crime in May 2013.
The Seoul Central Prosecutors’ Office investigating the case alleges that the wife, only identified by her surname Shim, locked her husband, surnamed Kim, inside their house for 29 hours and forced him to have sex with her.
Shim allegedly committed the crime with the aim of obtaining favorable evidence to use for divorce procedures, the prosecutors said. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but no word if Songtan Sally was the perpetrator involved with this case.
