The underwear guy is out of jail for now:
This undated file photo shows former Ssangbangwool Group Chairman Kim Sung-tae delivering a speech at an unidentified event.
A local court on Tuesday granted bail to the former chairman of South Korean underwear maker Ssangbangwool who had been arrested for embezzlement and illegal remittance to North Korea.
The Suwon District Court allowed former Ssangbangwool Chairman Kim Sung-tae to be released on bail on condition that he pay 100 million won (US$75,000) and carry a real-time location tracking device with him until trials are over.
The former chairman was released late Tuesday evening when the deposit was paid, a company official said.
“With the court’s decision, the former chairman will attend the remaining trials without physical detention,” Ssangbangwool said in a statement.
On Feb. 3, 2023, Kim was indicted and detained on charges of embezzlement of funds worth 54 billion won in the group’s five unlisted “paper” companies and an illegal remittance of $8 million to the North and has since been behind bars.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but it is alleged that the money he was sending to North Korea was a payoff to allow Lee Jae-myung to travel to North Korea when he was the Gyeongi-do governor at the time.
Not all heroes wear shoes:
A 23-year-old South Korean man alerted his neighbors in an apartment fire in Seoul last week, helping all 95 residents to escape to safety, local media reported Monday.
On Thursday a fire broke out on the 14th floor of an apartment building in Banghwa-dong of Gangseo-gu, western Seoul, at 6:30 a.m., with no casualties except four minor cases of smoke inhalation. A report from local daily Dong-A Ilbo revealed that this was thanks to heroic efforts by a resident named Woo Il-yeong.
According to the report, the sixth-floor resident became aware of the fire while preparing for work, and went up to the 14th floor to find that smoke had filled the halls. After coming back downstairs to get a wet cloth, he went back up to find if anyone needed help.
Woo found an elderly person wondering around in the smoke on the 14th floor and led the person downstairs. He then ran up and down the stairs for 30 minutes to knocking on the doors and urge other residents to evacuate the building, before firefighters arrived on the scene.
After all 95 occupants had escaped to safety, he realized that he had lost his slippers. (…….)
Officials found that the fire started when a resident on the 14th floor was lighting a cigarette. It was also found that the building’s fire-resistant doors meant to prevent the spread of fire had been left open, allowing the blaze to spread across the entire floor within a short period.
Korea Herald
You can read more at the link.
Hopefully they don’t ever let this guy out of prison on parole:
This file photo shows Choi Yun-jong, the suspect accused of attempting to rape, then murdering a woman in her 30s at a hiking trail in southern Seoul on Aug. 25, 2023. (Yonhap)
A Seoul court sentenced the suspect in last year’s attempted rape and killing of a woman on a hiking trail in Seoul to life in prison Monday, saying he should be separated from society forever.
Choi Yun-jong, 30, was indicted on charges of fatally beating, throttling and attempting to rape the victim he randomly picked on a hillside hiking trail in the Sillim neighborhood on Aug. 17.
The victim, an elementary school teacher in her 30s, was left unattended for some 20 minutes before being taken to a hospital, but died two days later.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
I don’t think North Korea policy positions are going to do little to drive voters to vote for you when crime, inflation, and illegal immigration is what most people care about:
Washington’s foreign policy on North Korea is emerging as one of the key issues of the GOP primary as Nikki Haley tries to draw a contrast between her tough stance on the regime and that of her rival in the presidential race, Donald Trump.
Heading into a significant test as she takes on the former president in Tuesday’s (local time) New Hampshire primary, Haley’s campaign team will start airing a three-minute ad featuring the mother of Otto Warmbier, a college student who died in 2017 after being imprisoned by North Korea.
“He was taken hostage, tortured and murdered by the government of North Korea,” Cynthia Warmbier, who spoke at Haley’s campaign event last year, is shown telling the crowd there.
“When we were begging the Obama administration for help, they told us to be quiet and be patient. Nikki told us the opposite. She told me it’s OK to be afraid, like I am now, but I had to push through the fear.”
His mother describes Haley, who was serving as the country’s U.N. ambassador at that time, as a leader with strength and compassion.
Korea Times
You can read more at the link.
The government is still indicting people over the Itaewon crowd crushing tragedy:
Prosecutors have indicted two police officers over the bungled response to the deadly 2022 crowd crush in the district of Itaewon, officials said Monday.
The indictment of the two officers who were overseeing patrol duties at a precinct station in Itaewon came a year and three months after the crowd crush on Oct. 29, 2022, which killed 159 people on a Halloween weekend in the district’s entertainment neighborhood.
The Seoul Western District Prosecutors Office has charged them with professional negligence resulting in death, accusing them of failing to properly respond to 11 emergency calls seeking police help in the last hours of the deadly accident.
One of them was also charged with entering a false record of visiting the accident site on that day into the police intranet, the officials said.
The two are the last government officials to be indicted in connection with the crowd crush, among the 23 that a special police investigation team referred to the prosecution in January 2023.
Last week, the prosecution indicted Kim Kwang-ho, the chief of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, on charges of professional negligence for the botched disaster response, making him the highest-ranking government official indicted in connection with the crowd crush.
Korea Herald
You can read more at the link.
