Lee Young-hak, who was arrested last month for allegedly killing a 14-year-old girl, has been indicted on murder and rape charges, the prosecution said Wednesday.
The Seoul Northern District Prosecutors’ Office said the 35-year-old was indicted on charges of raping the daughter of a friend of his while she was asleep and strangling her to death, among other charges.
If he is found guilty, he could be sentenced to life in prison.
According to the prosecution, his deviant sexual desires, including pedophilia, sadism and voyeurism, were a big part of his criminal motive.
Lee lured the girl to his house in Seoul by using his daughter, who left after giving the victim a drink that had powdered sleeping pills in it.
While his daughter was away, Lee raped and sexually assaulted the victim with sex toys.
When she woke up, he strangled her to death with a tie and a towel, and with his daughter, buried her body on a hill in Yeongwol, Gangwon Province. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but it appears the motive is that after his wife committed suicide he had no one to carry out his strange sexual fantasies so he used his daughter to lure her friend to his house where he committed the crime.
This is not surprising to people who have been following this issue, but stopping the foreign parts supply to North Korea is hopefully a major effort being taken by the US government:
Debris from a 2016 North Korean rocket launch
So far this year, North Korea has conducted 16 test launches of missiles, virtually each one personally approved by the country’s young dictator, Kim Jong-un. With every test, North Korea takes a step toward its ultimate goal: an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the United states with a thermonuclear warhead.
This week on 60 Minutes, correspondent David Martin and producer Mary Walsh report just how close the North Koreans are to that goal — and how they get their hands on the parts to do it.
Martin and Walsh interviewed Hugh Griffiths, head of the team that monitors the North Korean missile program and their compliance with sanctions for the U.N. Security Council. During the interview, Griffiths showed the 60 Minutes team a series of stunning photos of rocket debris, which revealed the the inner workings of a North Korean missile.
“What makes this rocket fly was in those photos,” Walsh tells 60 Minutes Overtime in the video above. “And that’s what made them so valuable to the U.N. inspectors, but also to 60 Minutes.”
The recovery of North Korean rocket debris is highly unusual, says Griffiths. In February 2016, North Korea launched a satellite into orbit, and while the satellite wasn’t very serious, the rocket that launched it was. “I think most people around the world agree, the point of this test was not to put a satellite into orbit,” Martin says. “The point of this test was to try out technologies for an intercontinental ballistic missile.”
Before launch, North Korea filed a Notice to Airmen and Mariners, warning them that debris may fall from the sky in a designated area. The South Koreans, in turn, knew exactly where to go in an attempt to recover the debris for intelligence purposes.
To block the South Koreans from collecting their debris, the North Koreans rigged the rocket with explosives that were supposed to detonate after boosting the satellite into orbit, Griffiths says. The rocket was meant to self-destruct, rendering its parts unrecognizable. But that system failed, says Griffiths, leaving the South Koreans with a debris field to collect and analyze.
“This was a gold mine,” correspondent David Martin says. “You just get this in-depth, excruciatingly detailed understanding of how these missiles work.” [60 Minutes]
You can read more at the link, but considering the North Koreans may be planning to launch another ICBM disguised as a space launch it will be interesting to see if they put out a notice beforehand again? Considering the intelligence value the ROK received from the recovered debris from the last launch it will be interesting to see what the regime decides to do.
If this report is true, the fact these workers were tunneling shows that the Kim regime has future plans for more nuclear tests:
A South Korean scientist shows seismic waves taking place in North Korea on a screen at the Korea Meteorological Administration center on September 3, 2017 in Seoul. More than 200 people are believed to have died in underground tunnels after a collapse at North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear facility.
More than 200 people are believed to have died in underground tunnels after a collapse at North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear facility.
The test site was reportedly badly shaken by the aftermath of the country’s sixth nuclear test, a 100-kiloton hydrogen bomb roughly seven times more powerful than the atomic bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
North Korean sources told Japanese television channel Asahi TV that the collapse occurred in October during the construction of an underground tunnel at the facility.
Around 100 workers were stuck underground and a group that was sent to their rescue were also buried after another collapse, causing a total death toll of around 200.
A series of small-scale earthquakes that followed the September 3 test indicated the facility, built south of the Mantapsan mountain, may no longer be stable enough to conduct further tests. [Newsweek]
You can read more at the link, but I wonder how many of the workers killed were just forced laborers from the regime’s system of gulags?
Landing vehicles of the Marine Corps’s 2nd division in Ganghwa, west of Seoul, demonstrate a landing operation during a parliamentary on-site inspection on Oct. 30, 2017. (Yonhap)
This return of the ROK fishing vessel by the Kim regime appears to have happened so rapidly because of the Vietnamese crew members on board at the fact the ROK has returned various North Korean fishing ships that strayed into South Korean waters when requested:
A fisherman sits on his boat in a small port on the island of Baengnyeong, which lies on the South Korean side of the Northern Limit Line, in the Yellow Sea, April 11, 2014.
North Korea sent back a South Korean fishing boat and its crew that Pyongyang says were detained for crossing the eastern sea border between the rivals.
While the North’s state media said the decision was based on humanitarian grounds, experts said it wasn’t clear whether the repatriation reflected intentions to improve relations with the South amid heightened animosity over Pyongyang’s expanding nuclear program.
The boat’s 10 crew members included not only South Koreans, but also three Vietnamese fishermen, which might have influenced the North’s decision for a quick repatriation, said Hong Min, an analyst at Seoul’s Korea Institute for National Unification.
Fishermen questioned
Hours after announcing the repatriation plans through the Korean Central News Agency, North Korea sent back the boat and fishermen in designated waters off the peninsula’s eastern coast Friday evening. The fishermen, who arrived at the South Korean port of Sokcho late Friday, appeared to be in good health, a South Korean coast guard official said.
The fishermen will be questioned by South Korean authorities over the circumstances of their detention and their experience in the North, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity citing office rules. The fishermen didn’t leave the ship as officials searched the vessel for nearly two hours in Sokcho before they were escorted to another port in nearby Uljin, where they might be questioned. [Voice of America]
This photo, released by the North’s Korean Central TV Broadcasting Station on Feb. 7, 2016, shows North Korea’s “Kwangmyongsong-4” satellite being fired from the Dongchang-ri launch site in Cholsan, North Pyongan Province. The North launched the rocket in a move widely viewed as a disguised ballistic missile test in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions. (Yonhap)
North Korea said Monday it will launch more satellites as any sovereign country has the right to develop a space program amid speculation that it is preparing more provocative acts.
North Korea will place into space more satellites, including a stationary one, in accordance with its five-year space development program as it seeks to improve its economy and people’s livelihood, according to the Rodong Sinmun, the main newspaper.
“Some countries have manipulated U.N. sanctions resolutions against us and hindered the sovereign country’s space development. It is not a tolerable act,” the newspaper said. “It is a global trend that a country seeks the economic growth with the space program.” [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but the last time North Korea did a space launch they announced it and invited foreign journalists to the launch site. It will be interesting to see if they try and take this same approach to fire their next rocket.
Here is the latest criticism from Senator Corker against President Trump:
This AP file photo shows Sen. Bob Corker. (Yonhap)
A U.S. Republican senator called out President Donald Trump again on Sunday, saying the commander-in-chief is hampering diplomatic efforts to resolve the nuclear crisis with North Korea.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), who has recently been involved in a personal feud with Trump, reiterated his argument as the president prepares for his first official visit to Asia later this week.
“When our secretary of state is sitting down with a partner that matters most — China — trying to negotiate something that would resolve and keep us from going into military conflict with North Korea, which brings in South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia, and he’s knee-capped by the president, it hurts our nation. It hurts our efforts,” the senator told CBS.
“It leads us more fully towards the conflict that most of us would like to see resolved in another way. The tweets that are sent out mocking a leader of another country raises tensions in the region,” he added, referring to Trump’s references to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as “Little Rocket Man.” [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but I think President Trump is just trying to change the dynamic that has been missing from past diplomatic efforts that the threat of a military strike this time is very real. Does anyone think the robust UN sanctions and so far China’s efforts to implement them would have happened if there wasn’t a real concern that President Trump was serious about a military strike?
A group of children wearing the costume of “haenyeo,” female divers on South Korea’s southern Jeju Island, wait for their turn at an event to mark the anniversary of the listing of haenyeo as a UNESCO cultural heritage at a park in Seoul on Oct. 30, 2017. The listing was decided at the U.N. culture body’s meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Dec. 1, 2016. (Yonhap)
