Category: crime & punishment

An issue that has gained recent attention is the issue of sexual assaults in Korea. There has been plenty of recent attention in Korea on sexual assaults against minors and other Korean women. Many of the recent high profile assaults against these women have been by repeat rapists who had received lenient jail time measured in months after their first sexual assault. These cases has caught the attention of the Korean media and hopefully this attention will lead to positive change in Korean society against sexual predators by not immediately condemning women who have been raped as prostitutes for example or giving these monsters who rape women light sentences which is right now an all to common practice in Korea.

Despite the media coverage of the sexual assault problems in Korea, something that has continued to be ignored by the Korean media is sexual assaults against foreign women in Korea. I have highlighted a number of assaults against female foreigners in Korea. Here are a few examples of past assaults on foreign women in Korea. A 19 year old female soldier newly arrived to Korea from Incheon airport was raped by a cab driver bringing her to Seoul. Then there is also the Jamie Penich murder in Itaewon that should be familiar to many expats out there. Then most recently the rape of an Army officer in Taegu that was almost totally buried by the Korean media.

If you don’t believe me that these stories are buried go ask the nearest Korean if they have heard about the rape of the US Army officer. They will probably tell you they never heard about it. Now ask them if they heard about the drunk idiot GI in Uijongbu who hit a beer bottle over a Korean guy’s head, they will probably tell you that they have heard of that, however. I just find it sad that a ville incident such as the beer bottle case would draw more publicity then a rape in Taegu, especially since the rapist wasn’t caught and could be still out there in Korean society raping more people. It just seems to me a rape case should draw as much media attention as possible in order to identify the rapist to ensure they are caught and cannot rape more women.

In an effort to educate people more about sexual assaults in Korea, I was contacted by a young lady who was sexually assaulted and beaten while teaching English at a hagwon in Seoul. For those familiar with prior assaults on foreign women in Korea you will see many similarities in this case with those prior cases in as far as how incompetent the Korean police are. The important thing is to learn from her story things that you can do to help yourself if you find yourself in a similar situation or maybe you are helping someone that unfortunately was assaulted because the Korean police are not there to help you.

With that in mind here is a story of a sexual assault in Korea that no one has probably heard of, but should of:

I came across this blog in doing my own research about the incidents of foreign females in Korea being assaulted and saw the story from back in July when a female military officer was assaulted by a cab driver. I am so lucky that I have found this blog and can spread the word about the dangers of being a foreign female in Korea and how biased the Korean media, police, hospitals, etc. might be to you if something horrible were to happen. I, too, was a victim and want anyone who wants to hear my story to listen up and spread the word.

I came to Seoul in February of last year to teach English. This was not my first time in Korea, having visited Korea in high school with my Korean friend and having also studied Korean language at Yonsei University in 2000-2001.

I was living in Seoul in what is considered to be one of the safest (aka richest) areas: Chungdam. I am sure you know the 24 hour McDonalds, Hard Rock Cafe, etc—I lived across the street from those places. On July 31, 2005, I arrived to my one room when around 11:20pm, my window slides open and a man is in the window. In the second that I sat frozen in my computer chair in shock/surprise/disbelief, he hopped down from the window and lunged at me and began to hit me with his fist repeatedly, while choking me with his other hand. After hitting me for a few minutes to where I was going unconscious, he ran over to my bag, grabbed my wallet, and in Korean, said the first word “Don, don, don”, which translated means “Money, money, money”. Being a Sunday night, I had just spent the last cash I had and I told him that in Korean. At this point, he began hitting me again. After only a few hits, however, he decided to begin choking me.

He gave up choking me and began hitting me more until I again was drifting in and out of consciousness.

He then decided to rape me. He first tried covering my bloodied face with a shirt but I quickly bled through it so he told me in Korean, “Wash your face”. He went into my kitchen to get a knife and I knew it was my chance to get away. In that instant I found my cell phone and locked myself in the bathroom.

Once locked inside, I called the police. According to their police report was at 11::40pm. They did not arrive to my apartment until well after 12am despite a police station being only 5 minutes by walk from my house. I didn’t trust that the police believed me and understood to come so I also called my friends, but they too, were all far away. When the 2 policemen showed up, the man was gone. I told the police what happened and that I need to go to a hospital right away but their first words to me was to say “Where are your panties and give me your Alien Registration ID card”. I managed to find my ID card and I gave it to him and then ran out my door to try to get someone else to get me an ambulance. The police came out and told me to sit in the back of their police car, which I did. Soon after, the ambulance came and they did not help into the ambulance on a stretcher. They opened up their sliding side door and told me to walk in. I did and lay down on the stretcher, unattended by anyone

The first place I was taken was called Samsung Medical Center. When we arrived there, again I was not taken in on a stretcher, but instead the two ambulance workers opened the door and told me to get out. As we were walking in, they did not assist me in walking and wouldn’t even open the hospital doors for me until I pulled up the back of my running pants which had slipped down to reveal the top of my panties. I was laid on a stretcher and someone came to clean my face and photograph my injuries. Within a short amount of time a number of my friends and coworkers began arriving and immediately we worked together to recall what I could of the attack while the hospital workers were deciding where to send me. I explained to them first of all what happened and asked them to please test my fingernails for his DNA because I probably scratched him. My friends (no police were to be found now) then got a pen and paper and were asking for his description and also began listing the places I could remember he touched: My window, my wallet, my bag, my refrigerator, my door lock, my sink faucet—all places that could be tested for fingerprints. This first hospital also took pictures of my injuries which now are LOST. The hospital has told the US Embassy that they do not have a camera to even take pictures; while they told my friend who inquired about them that they just don’t have record of my name for that date.

After I would guess about 40 minutes-1 hour, I was moved to a 2nd hospital—Hye-Min hospital in the northwest part of Seoul. I was put into the ambulance on a stretcher but again, was not tended to by any professionals. My two friends rode with me and when I began feeling nauseous and throwing up from the bumpy ride and my head injury, my friends were helping me not any professional workers. I do not remember the emergency room of Hye-Min Hospital and what I will tell you comes from my friends who were dealing with admitting me. This comes from 2 Korean friends, 1 American friend, and 1 Canadian friend. My friends were speaking with the man admitting me, he said that the hospital would not help me unless I paid him $1000.00 in cash because I was a ‘Russian prostitute who probably deserved what I got’. Finally after convincing him I was neither Russian, nor a prostitute and having my boss show up, they decided to admit me into Intensive Care. Despite my major injuries being associated with my head and eye, there was no eye doctor even available at this hospital. However, the first hospital claimed that the bigger hospitals’ ICUs were all full and they could not take me.

At this hospital, I basically laid for 1 day on an IV —no medications were given and very little monitoring was done. My blood pressure was checked maybe 2 times per day and I was given no heart/oxygen or any other standard monitors. Besides being in pain from my head injuries, I was unable to sleep or lay without pain due to severe neck and back strains from being choked. The bed was flat in a very uncomfortable position and I was told if I needed to be moved I would have to pound on the side of my bed to get a nurses attention because they didn’t have call buttons. Of course, when I did this, nurses would ignore me for 10-15 minutes or more. I was finally moved into the ICU of Yongdong Severance Hospital where I was given good treatment and finally tests were taken. I was given an immediate CT scan, along with X-rays and an eye doctor looked at my eyes. It was decided that I had a brain hemorrhage, fractured skull and other facial bones, ocular hemorrhaging. On day 3 of my ordeal, I was visited by a deputy of the US embassy and a Korean detective, who through my best Korean friend, interpreted what happened and the suspect description. No sketch was taken, however.

While in the hospital I was thinking about who this guy might be so I gathered a list of the places I walk a lot. Based on his skin tone and build, I figured he must work outside and suggested to the police to check 3 nearby construction sites near my house that I regularly walk by, 2 car shops or local taxis. Based on the glove marks around my neck, I figured he could be a taxi driver and a taxi driver lives in my building, yet the police never interviewed anyone in my building or the surrounding buildings. My friends interviewed my neighbors on their own who said they did in fact hear screams, but were too afraid to help and saw nothing. The police interviewed no one, took no suspect sketch, no DNA, and despite claiming that they took fingerprints, there was no evidence of the traditional black soot fingerprinting would leave at my apartment. There were no police reports sent out to the media and despite me and my friends calling every Korean and English news and television media outlet, no one would cover my story or even just release information regarding the suspect’s appearance. I also remembered that because I lived in the nicest area of Seoul, for “security” they have CCTV cameras up around the neighborhoods. My Korean friend called the police with this information and all of my other suggestions about where to find the suspect and their response to us was “We do things our way, we are handling it, leave us alone”. I was never contacted by the police again. During my final day in the hospital, I finally got enough courage to look at the shirt I was wearing during the attack. The police did not collect it for evidence or DNA. Upon my examination, I found a short black hair to which I applied a piece of tape and called the police asking them to please come and pick it up—-it could be the suspect’s hair! Again, they responded, “We do things our way; we don’t have time for that”. Finally, after returning to America and complaining to the Embassy, the police agreed to look at the hair and we fed-exd the shirt to the police. It was returned “tested” with the hair still in tact. Nice, right?

I do not even want to get into my school. Of course we know how hagwons are. All I will say, is that they deemed me to be too problematic to the school because they feared I would reveal where I worked and make them to have a bad reputation. When I was released from the hospital, I had made flyers to distribute throughout my neighborhood with a suspect description and I was told by my school and the police that I could not do so because it would make all Koreans look crazy. So, despite being promised I would have a job when I was completely, recovered, I never got the offer back.

After returning back to the USA, I am not aware of anything going on in the investigation. About 3 weeks after my attack, a Korean girl was found naked and murdered, dying from the same injuries I sustained and she only lived about 5 minutes from my house by walk. So after 1 month, the police requested I get a sketch of the suspect and started sending me pictures of sex offenders about 2 months after my attack. But of course, the mind is a great thing and tries to forget something like that, so making a sketch now is difficult. Due to the recent string of serial rapes in Korea, I have taken it on myself to try to find out anyone who is arrested in case I may recognize the guy. After seeing a picture the Taejon serial rapist who was captured in Seoul in February, he seemed familiar to me and so I contacted the Embassy. They said the police determined it was not the same man who attacked me based on a DNA mismatch. Oh, now they do have my perpetrator’s DNA? Up until this point, I was told they didn’t have anything. Suspicious is the fact that they will not give the embassy pictures of the man for me to identify.

That is my story. My goal is not to shock, not to expound hate on Korea or Korean people. My goal is to make us foreigners living in a seemingly “safe” country aware that even though these things do not appear in the papers, they can and do happen. More importantly, I am looking for ways I can help to get started programs for foreigners to provide safety education and resources. If you would be attacked, do you know enough Korean to call the police, or do you even know the police number? If you do suffer an attack, there are no rape crisis lines or centers for foreigners. Finding a psychologist who speaks English is also difficult.

We need to get together and make a positive change. Acknowledging that there is a problem is the first step. Now, let’s make a difference.

I know this post is long but I think the information provided in it is very important because I know I learned plenty from the writer’s tragic experience and hopefully others did as well.

Maybe she just wanted to speed up the base relocation?:

A South Korean woman was arrested Thursday on suspicion of setting fire to a wooden training facility at the U.S. military headquarters in Seoul, which injured three people, police said.

The fire, which broke out at 1:39 a.m. Thursday at Yongsan Garrison, quickly spread and burned down four other U.S. command buildings, before it was contained three hours later, police officials said.

Now why was she on post at 1:39AM to begin with?:

Police apprehended a 57-year-old South Korean woman who was wandering around the area after she admitted to initiating the arson attack in protest of “U.S. terrorism.”
“I sneaked onto the U.S. base and started the fire with a cigarette lighter to punish (U.S.) terrorism,” police officials quoted the woman, only identified by the initial “K” of her surname, as saying.

If an old mentally deranged women can sneak on to Yongsan imagine who else is on post.

This is odd, from Yonhap:

SEOUL, March 11 (Yonhap) — The corpses of three South Koreans were found in separate locations Seoul’s Han river on Saturday, police said.

The dead bodies were drifting along the river which cuts through Seoul when passers-by spotted them from riverside paths, police officers said.

Not much information in this article but maybe it was a group suicide by jumping from one of the bridges?

For every crazy child sex story in Korea, Japan always finds a way to top it:

An elderly Buddhist priest, who also headed a nursery school attached to his temple in Hiroshima, has been arrested for child prostitution, police said Friday.

Itsushi Ehara, 73, chief priest of Komyoji Temple in Aki-ku, Hiroshima, and director of an affiliated nursery school, is accused of violating the Anti-Child Prostitution and Pornography Law.

He admitted to the allegations during questioning. “I did it to alleviate my work stress,” he was quoted as telling investigators. He has also confessed to having been a member of a child prostitution club and paid several high school girls to have sex with him on more than 20 occasions.

In the specific case for which he was arrested, Ehara paid 80,000 yen to a girl, who was a 15-year-old, first-year high school student, to have sex with him at a hotel in Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, in August 2004, Tokyo police said.

Work stress? WTF?

Hat Tip: Japundit

The Osan Shakedown Scandal leader’s light 2 year sentence will stand according a US Air Force general after doing all of this:

Davis pleaded guilty to running illicit police undercover operations, accepting gifts and cash from club owners, maintaining illicit sexual liaisons with bar girls, breaking the U.S. military’s curfew that the town patrol had the duty of enforcing, being drunk and disorderly, having sex with women who were not his wife, illegally possessing weapons, illegally keeping an off-base apartment, using racial and ethnic slurs, filing a leave request with false information as to his intended destination and maintaining an improper relationship with a subordinate airman.

He is lucky he didn’t get caught doing BAH fraud as well because he might have actually done some real time.

Let me get this right, this guy gets 18 months for BAH fraud and this guy gets 6 months for adultery, conduct unbecoming of an officer, and giving classified information to a KGB agent. WTF?

Add another story to the ville files. This story just goes to show that even officers are not immune to the charms of juicy girl:

An Air Force captain who didn’t tell officials two women asked him for classified information was sentenced Monday to 10 months in prison and dismissal from the service.

But under a pre-trial agreement, Capt. James L. Shank will serve just six months in prison. Shank, 43, married and a father, was a mission planner with the 5th Reconnaissance Squadron, which flies classified reconnaissance missions in northeast Asia.

His court-martial began Monday before Air Force Lt. Col. Eric Dillow, judge for the Pacific Circuit, of Yokota Air Base, Japan. Shank opted to be tried by judge, not jury.

Shank pleaded guilty to disobeying an order, making a false official statement, three counts of violating a lawful general regulation and two counts of conduct unbecoming an officer.

Events that brought to an end his more than 18-year Air Force career began in December 2003 when he met Larisa Sergeevna Whittington, a dancer at the off-base Golden Gate club.

Whittington, from the former Soviet Union, was married to an Army soldier who’d been stationed at Camp Humphreys and later at Fort Drum, N.Y. Shank admitted in court he knew the woman was married to an enlisted servicemember.

Basically the article goes on to explain that not only was the Russian a juicy girl married to a GI but she also had a part time job with the KGB. How can this idiot pass on classified information to someone claiming to be KGB and on top of that put 18 years in the Air Force at risk?

Is it just me or do Air Force officers at Osan get in more trouble compared to officers in other areas of Korea?

The Korea Times is running a two part series about how foreigners are treated at the prison in Taejon. Here is an excerpt from part one:

A total of about 4,000 inmates are serving time, including roughly 300 foreign prisoners from 45 different countries. The alleged crime in question is usually divided along national lines: Malaysians, credit card fraud; Vietnamese, theft; Mongolians, manslaughter; and Westerners, drugs. Compared to Koreans, foreigners typically receive harsher sentences for identical crimes, but of the foreigners Westerners usually get lighter sentences than those from elsewhere.

According to extensive correspondence and interesting interviews with a vast array of foreign prisoners, their experience is a sobering reminder for everyone to cherish freedom. Assigned to cells aligned like the cramped quarters of the slave ships of the 17th century, two inmates share a cell with living quarters measuring no more than 4’ by 7’.

For those interested USFK prisoners do not serve time at the Taejon prison. The USFK prisoners are jailed just up the road from Taejon at the Choenan correctional facility where conditions are much better compared to Choenan.

Let this be an example if you are a female of what not to do in the barracks:

According to the woman’s testimony Wednesday, the two were among a group of friends who spent several hours socializing, first at a barbecue party and then at the off-base Bounce Club.

Later, she testified, she agreed to let Wheeler sleep in her dorm room and the two took a taxi to the dorm.

Once in her room, she said, Wheeler took off his shoes and lay atop her bed, even though they had “discussed him sleeping on the floor.”

Wearing a T-shirt, bra and panties, she joined Wheeler in bed. Wheeler, she said, began kissing her and she asked him to stop, reminding him she had a boyfriend.

Unfortunately to much of these rape and sexual assault cases happen in the barracks due to over consumption of alcohol. The Air Force may have a different policy but in the Army you cannot have members of the opposite sleeping in your room with you. A member of the opposite sex can visit your room but they must be logged in as a visitor with the CQ (charge of quarters) and the door to the room must remain open so the CQ can check the room.

These policies cannot prevent all sexual assaults but it helps. The best way to stop sexual assaults is to get soldiers to not over consume alcohol. I have yet to see a sexual assault case that has not involved alcohol. The airman in the Osan case IMHO is going to have a hard time being found guilty when the alleged victim has skeletons like this in her closet:

Under cross-examination by defense lawyer Capt. Gloria Downey, the woman said she did not scream, pound the wall to alert her suitemate or otherwise call for help during the incident. Downey is Area Defense Counsel at Osan Air Base.

The woman answered “yes” when Downey asked whether she has claimed to have been raped by six different men while in the Air Force, five of them while at Nellis Air Force Base.

“But, to this day, you haven’t reported the other five rapes to anyone?” Downey asked the woman.

“Yes,” she answered.

Here is another reason why criminals shouldn’t fear the South Korean justice system:

A Seoul court has ordered that the South Korean government pay about $34,000 to the family of a murdered university student because local prosecutors mistakenly allowed an American suspect to return home, according to court officials.

The decision from early this week ends a seven-year fight from the victim’s family, who was outraged that South Korean officials failed to stop Arthur Patterson, one of the two suspects in the case, from leaving South Korea, according to a family spokesman.

(…)

In April 1997, Cho Chong-pil was stabbed to death in a Burger King restroom in Itaewon. Investigators and experts at the time said the stabbing appeared to be random and similar to an American gang-style killing. Two American teens, Patterson and Eddie Lee, were charged in the case.

Patterson, the dependent of a contract worker for U.S. Forces Korea, was charged with possessing a deadly weapon and destroying evidence. He was convicted and sentenced to 18 months. Lee, who had no direct connection to USFK, was charged with murder and sentenced to life in prison. A higher court, however, reduced that sentence to 20 years and ultimately acquitted Lee for lack of evidence after he had served 18 months.

Patterson also was released early from prison in 1998, in the annual Aug. 15 liberation day amnesty granted by the South Korean government to some 2,000 convicts. Prosecutors promised to pursue the case and perhaps file a harsher charge against Patterson. Yet after his release from prison, he was allowed to leave South Korea, the court’s ruling this week admitted.

Amazing someone originally convicted of a brutal murder and sentenced for 20 years is later released while his accomplice is later released as well by a special pardon.

For those not familiar with Burger King murder case here is a quick recap of the murder:

On April 3, 1997, Joong Pil and his steady girlfriend Jung Eun were on their way to her home in Itaewon after studying at the Kook Ki Won Library. They stopped to use the restroom at the fast food restaurant. Jung Eun went to order soft drinks and Joong Pil went into the restroom.

The motive for the murder was that Lee killed the victim just for fun. After killing Cho, Lee went back to the table and hung out again with Patterson like nothing had happened while Cho slowly bled to death in the restroom. Similar to the Penich murder case another cold blooded murderer was allowed to go free. Now both these punks are running around free in America instead of rotting in jail where they can’t kill anyone else just for fun.