Tag: crime

You would think the police in Seoul would have better things to do instead of arresting this guy for taking a banner down off of his home:

Police have booked an American man, 64, who works as a part-time English instructor at Hongik University, for allegedly vandalizing a presidential campaign poster.

Under Korean election law, unlawfully removing or vandalizing a political campaign poster can lead to a two-year jail term or a fine of 4 million won ($ 3,500).

Mapo Police Station said on Monday the man allegedly tried to remove a poster from the side of his house on Apr. 21. His neighbors tried to stop him but he repeatedly said “my home” and continued to dismantle the poster before being arrested.

It is unclear whether the neighbors explained clearly to the suspect that removing an election poster is against the law. The man is known to have told police he did not know it was unlawful. [Korea Times]

There is probably more to this story, but on the surface it seems if someone puts a banner on your house you should be able to take it down if you don’t want it there.

Here is something you don’t see happen very often in South Korea, a bank robbery:

Police said Saturday it has arrested a suspect in an armed bank robbery that took place in the country’s southeastern provincial county two days earlier.

The Gyeongsan Police Station in North Gyeongsang Province said it caught a 43-year-old man, identified only by his last name Kim, at a parking lot of a large accommodation facility in Danyang, North Chungcheong Province, at around 6:47 p.m.

Police had suspected the robber may be a foreigner as one of the bank employees claimed he had a poor Korean accent, but it turned out that he was a native.

Kim is suspected of robbing a branch of the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, also known as Nonghyup, in a county in Gyeongsan early Thursday, threatening the employees at gunpoint and fleeing the scene on a bicycle with some 15.6 million won (US$13,700) in cash, all of which took him only four minutes.

During the heist, he apparently fired one shot from what the police believe to be a homemade gun, but no one was hurt as it was aimed at the wall. [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but as expected the man was tracked down by piecing together camera footage from neighborhood cc cameras.

I would not want to be the commander for the unit these idiots serve in that kept an underage prostitute in the on-post dormitories and fed her dining facility food:

Two enlisted airmen assigned to Dover Air Force Base are being held on federal charges they sexually abused a runaway teen girl.

The men, identified as Airman 1st Class Dalian Washington, 25, of Philadelphia, and Airman 1st Class Akeem Beazer, 21, of Pompano Beach, Fla., were arrested March 31, said Kimberlynn Reeves, spokeswoman for acting US Attorney David Weiss.

Both men are charged with sexual abuse of a minor, while Washington also faces a single count of sex trafficking of a child.

According to the criminal complaint against both men, the case came to light in March when the girl told a social worker that beginning when she was 15 years old and continuing after her 16th birthday, she had stayed at Dover AFB and had sexual relations with Air Force personnel while there.

This admission prompted an investigation by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and the Delaware State Police.

The DSP detective was familiar with the girl, who allegedly had a troubled home life and often ran away from home.  [Dover Post]

You can read the rest at the link, but this girl was being pimped out of the DMV of all places.

I wonder how long she has been getting away with this?:

Police have booked a 20-year-old woman for allegedly stealing two gold bracelets and hiding them in her buttocks at a jeweler’s shop in central South Korea earlier this month, they said Wednesday.

The Heungdeok Police Station in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, said the woman, along with her 21-year-old friend, visited the shop on April 1 and browsed the bracelets on display. She repeatedly put her hand into her pants while the other woman was talking to an employee over the purchase of a ring.

According to the police, the shopowner found that two bracelets, worth 980,000 won (about US$856), were gone. The woman was later spotted picking them up in CCTV footage.

She denied the allegations and demanded that the shop call the police to determine whether she stole them, saying that she wore a pair of leggings and had nowhere to hide them.

Two female police officers arrived at the shop and conducted a strip search in a bathroom near the shop after getting the suspect’s consent, eventually obtaining her confession that she had hidden them in her buttocks.  [Yonhap]

Nobody likes bullies, but this reaction to bullying was a bit too extreme:

The Ulsan District Court has jailed a man who raided a middle school with six thugs to threaten teenage girls who bullied his daughter.

The court Tuesday jailed the father for a year and sentenced the gangsters he hired to terms ranging from eight months to a year. They were accused of the crime in 2015.

The convicted man’s daughter allegedly suffered serious distress two years ago because of school bullies.

The man acted after the bullies shared a photo of his daughter’s body parts with classmates without her permission, asking the thugs to “take revenge.”

Later, the father and one of his henchmen broke into the school principal’s office, threatening the principal to assemble the bullies. The five other thugs were waiting at the school’s main gate to intimidate students and staff.

The principal refused to give in, so the men broke into the bullies’ classroom. They forced the alleged bullies to kneel in front of the class and threatened to beat them.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

After reading stories about how Korean police ignore crimes against foreigners by Korean men, it is good to see that at least this guy was arrested:

A Korean man in his 30s, surnamed Kim, has been arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a Japanese tourist he met at a nightclub in Gangnam, Seoul, according to Gangnam police station on Monday.

The tourist in her 20s reportedly visited the club with a friend and met Kim.

Kim allegedly sexually assaulted her after taking her to an emergency stairway.

He was stopped when security guards came to rescue the woman after hearing her scream.

“We heard a woman screaming and crying, so we sent our security personnel outside to check,” a club employee said. “We intervened and subdued the man until the police arrived.”

Kim denied the sexual assault charges, saying his interaction with the woman was with consent, police said.  [The Korea Times]

It does seem the Korean authorities are taking sex crimes against foreign women more seriously.  It wasn’t that long ago when this was not the case.

Via a reader tip comes news of this horrible attack that some are now trying to use to further the narrative that Korean men have a misogyny and problem with violently attacking women:

The 22-year-old South Korean man in a black T-shirt asked one question of the young woman before bludgeoning her repeatedly with a hammer.

“Are you Korean?”

Much about the random attack last Friday at a Koreatown strip mall remains unclear, but police said Thursday one thing seemed apparent: Jae Won Yang chose his victim because she was Korean, and a woman.

Last week’s attack, in front of a second-floor acupuncture clinic, has reverberated across the Pacific Ocean to rattle nerves and grab headlines in South Korea. The incident set off online debates about whether it was the latest in violent attacks against women in recent years that have triggered soul-searching about misogyny in the Asian nation.  [LA Times]

You can read and see the video of the attack at the link.

Here are my thoughts on this, if people want to debate misogyny and violence against women in Korea fine, but don’t twist incidents to prove the point.  For example the big incident that has been used recently to “prove” this point was the violent murder of a woman in the Gangnam district of Seoul last year.  However, what the activists pushing this narrative do not mention is that the Gangman murderer for years was in and out of mental hospitals and became homeless because his family could no longer handle caring for him due to his mental illness.  The guy was certifiably crazy, not a misogynist.

This guy with the hammer attack we don’t know what his motive is yet.  Maybe he hates Korean women and decided to just randomly attack one with a hammer.  If so then the activists have their case they can champion to prove their point.  However, maybe this guy is someone else with a background of mental illness.  This statement in the article seems to suggest that:

Kim, who met with Yang after his arrest, said the man was rambling and nonsensical about the motive behind the attack. He does not speak any English, Kim said.

I am sure that as more facts come out this guy’s motive will become more clear, but in the meantime instead making unsubstantiated claims of misogyny lets all hope the victim of this horrible attack is able to make a speedy recovery.

This story of a Columbian man assaulted by a Korean man at a Busan Costco just continues to confirm my long held advice that foreigners need to swallow their pride and walk away from confrontations with Koreans.  This is because the odds are high that the police will side with the Korean and that the foreigner will end up being the one arrested which is what happened in this case.

To summarize a Columbian man and his Korean wife were walking back to their car at the Busan Costco when the Korean wife yelled loudly for a car to stop which saves the life of little kid who can in front of it. The grandpa of the little kid gets angry at the Korean wife for yelling at the kid and then eventually tries to assault her.  However Columbian husband gets in front of him to stop the assault and the grandpa pushes the Columbian to the ground and begins to punch him.  While this is going on he is yelling racist remarks the whole time. The assault is caught on camera and yet the police side with the Korean grandpa who is lying and yelling racist remarks the whole time.  The police arrest the Columbian man and say this can all go away if he does not pursue the assault charge on the Korean man.  The charges are dropped after the Columbian man agrees to not pursue the case against the grandpa and everyone goes home.

The best thing the Columbian man did was not to try and fight back despite being pushed to the ground and having the Korean man on top of him punching him.  In Korea you do not have the right to self defense like people in the United States for example may be use to having.  If he would have punched the guy back he would likely be in jail for assault.  What he was not smart about was trying to pursue the assault charge against the Korean man.  He should have just left after the assault was broken up because the odds of the police siding with a foreigner are very low.  This is where the swallowing your pride and walking away is the best thing to do.  It lets the Korean man save face while the foreigner doesn’t have to worry about getting arrested.

Via a reader tip comes this absolutely horrible murder over in Incheon:

A 17-year-old girl has been arrested for the killing and dismembering of an 8-year-old girl in Incheon. The remains were put into two plastic bags and left on the roof of an apartment building where the suspect lives, the Yeonsu Police Precinct reported Thursday.

The teenager, who dropped out of school and suffers from depression, allegedly committed the act Wednesday afternoon after luring the victim to her apartment in Yeonsu District, western Incheon.

According to police, the victim lived in a different building in the same apartment complex.

The suspect, whose identity is being withheld, met the victim at around 1 p.m. at a playground in the Yeonsu neighborhood. The two had not known each other, according to police. The victim’s friend told investigators the victim asked the suspect if she could borrow her mobile phone to call her mother.

CCTV footage showed the two taking an elevator at around 1 p.m. to go to the suspect’s home. Two hours later, the suspect left the home and later returned. At 4:09 p.m., the suspect left again after changing her clothes. It is believed that the murder took place between 1 and 4 p.m. The suspect’s parents were at work at the time.

Inside the suspect’s home were blood stains and tools that might have been used in the killing. Police declined to go into detail out of respect for the victim’s parents.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

These idiots just never learn that Korean customs inspects the military mail and many people have been caught and arrested for mailing drugs into Korea:

Prosecutors on Wednesday arrested U.S. soldiers and their Korean accomplices for smuggling bags of philopon methamphetamines worth 13.6 billion won ($11.9 million).

Suwon District Prosecutors’ Office arrested an American private, 20, and two Korean-Americans for infringing Korean narcotics laws. Prosecutors also booked without arrest another American private, 20, stationed at K-6 base in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, for providing an address to where the contraband could be sent.

They are also searching for four Korean-Americans.

An accomplice in California sent the drugs to Korea in December, prosecutors claim.

They weighed 4.1 kilograms ― enough for 130,000 users.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but I hope they are sentenced to the maximum penalty allowed by Korean law.