Gusts of Popular Feeling has a translation of this Joong Ang Ilbo article about a 20 year old man found guilty of prostitution with a 13-year old run away girl in Uijongbu:

Korean love hotel image via Flickr user For 91 Days.

A man in his twenties who even received the motel fee from a 13-year-old schoolgirl found guilty of prostitution

A man in his twenties who met a 13-year-old runaway schoolgirl for sex but argued he wasn’t guilty and said that “The schoolgirl paid more of the motel fee so it wasn’t prostitution” was found guilty.

Seoul Eastern District Court announced on the 16th that is that it [sentenced] Mr. Lee (22), who had been charged with contravening the Law for Sexual Protection of Children and Youth, to a one-year sentence suspended for two years and ordered him to attend 40 hours of sexual assault treatment classes.

Mr. Lee came to know A (13) on June 10, 2015 via a smartphone chatting application. Learning that A had run away and needed a place to sleep he promised, “If you come to my house, I can put you up,” and the next morning he called her out to the Uijeongbu Station area.

When he met A, Lee said, “It’s hot right now, so let’s go and rest,” and took A to a nearby motel. The motel fee was 20,000 won but Lee had only 8000 won in his pocket. Lee asked A, “Can you pay a little bit?” and got 10,000 won from her and, after getting a 2000 won discount, paid the motel fee.

After they had sex, Lee said, “My parents came home early so I can’t put you put you up,” and left A and returned home.

In court Lee claimed that “Since I had never promised to put her up at my house and I paid 8000 won of the motel fee but A paid 10,000 won, it wasn’t buying sex.”

Subsequently he protested that “Since A looked 20ish in her chatting program profile photo, in which she was wearing makeup, I didn’t think she was a minor.”

However, the court said, “It doesn’t make any sense that you saw her face and didn’t know she was 13.” “Seeming to offer to put up a runaway victim at your house and meeting [her], you acted to buy sex to satisfy your sexual desire, and the fact that even after that you left her and ignored the fact that she was penniless because of you makes the nature of the crime very bad.”

It added, “Because she expected that the defendant would give him a place to stay afterwards, she readily gave 10,000 won.” “The defendant fully acknowledged the fact that he promised to provide payment for things like a place to stay and that, expecting this, A acceded to sex.”

A court official said, “The amount of money when providing payment for prostitution does not matter; if it’s true that payment is provided, then [the fact of] prostitution is established.”  [Gusts of Popular Feeling]

I guess the moral of this story is that if you are going to trick a thirteen year old runaway girl to have sex with you make sure she pays for the entire hotel bill.  That is because as Gusts of Popular Feeling discusses in his article the age of consent in South Korea is 13 years old.  Read the rest of the article to better understand why the age of consent is so low.

Considering the Chinese embassy in Seoul was able to get away with organizing riots and assaulting and beating Korean nationals in Seoul, getting a Falun Gong dance performance cancelled should come as no surprise:

In recent months, incidents of Communist Party restrictions on free expression extending beyond China’s borders have occurred across Asia. Now South Korea, a leading democracy in the region, has joined this disturbing trend.

On May 4, a court in Seoul issued a last-minute ruling canceling a series of classical Chinese dance and music shows by Shen Yun Performing Arts, scheduled to take place at KBS Hall over the weekend. The ruling explicitly cites threats by the Chinese embassy aimed at the theater owner, including implicit references to financial reprisals if the shows go on as planned.

The mission of the New York–based performance group is to revive China’s five-millennia-old traditional culture, which has been largely destroyed under decades of Communist rule. Shen Yun’s performers practice Falun Gong, a meditation and spiritual discipline whose practitioners are persecuted in China today; some company members have themselves fled religious persecution or have family members imprisoned in China still.

Alongside dances portraying scenes from imperial dynasties and literary classics, some of the show’s pieces also depict the story of what Falun Gong practitioners face in China today or attacks on Buddhist temples during the Cultural Revolution. An overarching theme throughout the Shen Yun performance is the traditional Chinese concept of a connection between Heaven, Earth, and humankind. [The Diplomat]

You can read more at the link.

https://twitter.com/freekorea_us/status/729358813430726656

Soldiers remove broken vinyl greenhouses in Goseong County, Gangwon Province, on May 8, 2016. Some 540 of the total 772 greenhouses in the region were damaged by strong winds that struck the region on Wednesday. The Army’s 22nd Division has deployed some 700 troops to help get rid of the damaged greenhouses. (Yonhap)

South Korean President Park Geun-hye (R) poses for a photo with Kuwait’s Prime Minister Jaber Mubarak Al-Sabah during their meeting at the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul on May 9, 2016. Jaber arrived in Seoul the previous day at the invitation of South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn. South Korea is the fourth leg of his five-nation trip to Asia that includes Bangladesh, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Japan. (Yonhap)

Here is something to think about for anyone thinking of living long term and raising a family in South Korea:

The number of South Korean babies with birth defects has increased significantly since the early 1990s, likely due to traffic-related air pollutants and endocrine disruptors, a study showed Monday.  The report, by Inha University’s Social and Preventive Medicine department, researched the national health insurance data of 403,250 infants aged 0-1 living in Korea’s seven metropolitan areas between 2009 and 2010. It found that 5.5 percent of all infants researched during the period had birth defects, an increase from the 3.3 percent of those born between 1993 and 1994.

Among all birth defects reported in the period of 2009-2010, hypospadias — a birth defect of the urethra where the urinary opening is not on the head of the male genital — had the highest increase rate of all birth defects from 1993-2010. The prevalence rate of the abnormality increased from 0.7 per 10,000 in 1993-1994 to 9.9 per 10,000 in 2009-2010. Meanwhile, the number of cases of cryptorchidism, the absence of one or both testes from the scrotum, also increased significantly from 2.6 per 10,000 to 29.1 per 10,000.  [Korea Herald]

You can read more at the link, but I always wondered what long term exposure to the yellow dust polluted with heavy metals from China would do to people over the long term.

Hopefully this doesn’t turn out to be a major safety issue with the ROK militaries Surion helicopters:

The South Korean military opened an investigation into the indigenously developed military helicopter Surion after some of the fleet had cracked windshields and other cracking problems, the defense procurement agency said Monday.

“Some of the (locally operational) 40 or so Surions have shown problems on their airframes,” Kim Si-cheol, spokesman at the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA), said in a press briefing earlier in the day.

Currently, the DAPA is consulting the chopper’s producer, Korea Aerospace Industries Ltd. and other defense procurement bodies on how to resolve the issue, Kim said.

According to DAPA officials, the investigation has shown so far that four Surion choppers had cracks developed in the vibration absorption devices in the left part of their airframes and some other choppers had cracked windshields.  [Korea Herald]

You can read more at the link.

In the least surprising news of the day, the North Korean military commander responsible for their ballistic missile program has been removed after repeated failures of their Musudan and submarine launched ballistic missiles:

The North Korean military commander responsible for the country’s recent botched missile launches was removed from the ruling party’s central military commission, the results of the party congress showed Tuesday.

The name of Gen. Kim Rak-gyom, the chief commander of the North Korean military’s strategic forces in charge of missile operations, was omitted when the North released the list of the reshuffled Central Military Commission at the closure of the congress of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea.

Along with Kim, other officials were let go, which caused a downsizing of the commission to a 12-member body.

South Korean military officials said the move may have been punishment for the back-to-back failures of the Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

“We are paying close attention to the exclusion of strategic forces commander Kim Rak-gyom from the Central Military Commission,” one official here said. “We need to study further personnel decisions, but the likelihood is that Kim may have been held accountable for (the failed launches).”  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but I would have to think that this has to be one of the least desirable command jobs in the North Korean military.

Here is what happens when journalists who visit North Korea go off script:

Report: North Korea expelled BBC journalist Rupert Wingfield-Hayes and his team from the country.  The BBC said on Monday that its correspondent Wingfield-Hayes, producer Maria Byrne and cameraman Matthew Goddard were about to leave the country when they were stopped by North Korean officials at the airport on Friday.  They were detained and questioned for eight hours by North Korean officials. Authorities took issue with “disrespectful” reports the team filed in Pyongyang last week.

[Sound bite: Audio footage of report by BBC’s Tokyo correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes (English)]  “But we’re not allowed to talk to ordinary people. If I turn trying to ask these people, they ran away. Everything we see looks like a set-up.”  (…………)

Secretary General O Ryong-il of the North’s National Peace Committee said that Wingfield-Hayes had to sign a statement of apology.

[Sound bite: O Ryong-il – Secretary General, DPRK National Peace Committee (Korean)]  “We have decided to expel the BBC’s Tokyo correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes from the territory of the DPRK and we are going to never admit him again into the country for any report.”  [KBS World Radio]

You can read more at the link, but this continues to make me wonder why journalists even bother to go to North Korea if all they get to report on is regime propaganda?

An honest account of ‘reporting' in North Korea. 'No-one wants to be told they can’t come back.' https://t.co/bWuMXAjCe1

— Alastair Gale (@AlastairGale) May 8, 2016