Tag: crime

At least the Korean courts have decided to keep this dirt bag in jail.  I can remember the days when the Korean courts were so weak on sexual assault that they were letting rapists routinely go free:

The Seoul High Court turned down a sexually abusive stepfather’s appeal for a lighter sentence Sunday.

The convicted, 48, was charged for abusing his sleeping stepdaughter, 25, and later threatening her with physical violence in an attempt to prevent her from alerting authorities.

In the original trial he received five years in prison for incestuous sexual assault, but later appealed, saying his sentence was too heavy.

The appeals court turned down his plea in a decision saying, “The nature of the defendant’s crime is malignant as he had not only sexually assaulted his own stepdaughter, but also threatened her with a weapon to cover up his crime.”  [Korea Herald]

Some people should not be allowed to board a airplane.  This story makes me wonder if alcohol was in any way involved or if he is just an old guy with mental issues?:

 A Japan-bound airplane returned to Hawaii because of a violent passenger who wanted to do yoga instead of sit in his seat, the FBI said.

The pilot of the March 26 United Airlines flight from Honolulu International Airport to Narita International Airport turned the plane around after hearing that Hyongtae Pae was yelling at crew members and shoving his wife, the FBI said in a criminal complaint.

Pae told the FBI he didn’t want to sit in his seat during the meal service, so he went to the back of the plane to do yoga and meditate. He became angry when his wife and flight attendants told him to return to his seat. “Pae pushed his wife because she was trying to make him stop,” the complaint said. “He felt that she was siding with the flight crew.”

He tried to head-butt and bite Marines who were passengers on the flight and tried to force him back to his seat, Assistant U.S. Attorney Darren Ching said at Pae’s detention hearing Wednesday.

According to the complaint, he threatened to kill passengers and was yelling that there is no god.

Pae went into a rage because he felt the flight crew was ordering him around, Ching said.

Ching said Pae shouldn’t be released because he’s a danger to his wife, himself and others. Pae urinated on himself and was on suicide watch at the Honolulu Federal Detention Center, Ching said.  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link.

More bad news for US Forces Japan.  The strangest thing to me about this story is how do you assault someone for 90 minutes on airplane?:

 A Navy lieutenant was arrested Friday following allegations that he groped and punched a female passenger aboard a Japan-bound flight, police and Navy officials said.

The lieutenant, 33, assigned to Naval Air Facility Atsugi, is suspected of touching the 19-year-old college student’s clothed thigh, then punching her in the head several times during a flight from San Diego to Narita International Airport, an airport police spokesman said.

Police allege the officer assaulted the woman for about 90 minutes aboard the Japan Airlines flight, beginning around 11 a.m. Thursday, according to police and media reports.

The woman changed seats after another passenger reported the incident to a flight attendant, police said.

The officer had been drinking on the flight, though how much he had consumed is unclear, the police spokesman said.

Police arrested the lieutenant and took him into custody shortly after midnight, following an investigation that began after the plane arrived Thursday afternoon.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read the rest of this crazy story at the link.

This is one of these crime stories just begging for a picture, but I could not find one unfortunately:

Yongsan police have arrested a man who dressed as a woman to steal money and valuables from drunken people in Itaewon.

The man, identified as Kim, 44, allegedly stole a credit card, an identification card and a smartphone from a man, identified as Choi, 46, when he fell asleep at 2 p.m. on Jan. 28.

The two had been drinking together at a pub in Itaewon, police said.

Kim allegedly stole 1.5 million won from three men in Itaewon and the Incheon area last December.

Police said Kim dressed like a woman and befriended men to steal money when they were drunk. He allegedly used stolen identity cards to obtain credit cards, and also bought smartphones. [Korea Times]

The horrible crime where parents in Bucheon killed and dismembered their 7-year old son led to a nationwide investigation of kids who stopped attending school.  This investigation caused police to uncover another horrible crime:

The mummified body of a girl who stopped attending middle school more than 10 months ago was discovered by police in a room surrounded by air fresheners Wednesday.

The Bucheon Sosa Police Precinct on Wednesday arrested the girl’s parents on suspicions of child abuse and murder. Under questioning, the father, a 47-year-old pastor surnamed Lee, admitted to beating the 13-year-old for five hours with a broomstick on March 17 last year. He and the stepmother, surnamed Baek, later found the daughter dead, covered her in blankets and kept the body inside their house for over 10 months.

Baek’s 39-year-old younger sister was also arrested Wednesday on suspected abuse charges.

The girl did not get along with her stepmother, aged 40, and lived with her step-aunt starting in 2012. She ran away from the step-aunt’s home on March 15 last year and called on a former elementary school teacher. The teacher brought her to her parents.

“I asked her why she had run away from her aunt’s home, hit her with a broomstick and a drying rack to discipline her, and told her to go to sleep,” Lee told police in the first round of questioning. “I took a nap in another room and woke up to find her dead.”

Lee and Baek refused to provide a statement on why they kept the body in a room in the house for nearly a year.

The discovery was the result of an ongoing police investigation of 220 children who have been missing from school for unknown reasons. The investigation was sparked by the case of an 11-year-old girl who had been held captive by her parents and starved for two years in Incheon last December. Police have already discovered another grisly find: the remains of a 7-year-old boy were found in his parents’ freezer years after he had stopped attending school. That incident also occurred in Bucheon, Gyeonggi.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

What a mess this entire Burger King murder case has been over the past 2 decades, but fortunately some justice appears to have finally be served in this case.  Still 20 years in prison still seems too lenient for this guy:

A Seoul court on Friday convicted U.S. citizen Arthur Patterson of murder in the lurid Itaewon murder case and sentenced him to 20 years in prison, almost 19 years after the murder.

The Seoul Central District Court found the 36-year-old guilty of fatally stabbing Hongik University student Cho Jung-pil on April 3, 1997, in a Burger King in the capital’s popular Itaewon district.

Cho was found dead in the restroom of a fast food restaurant, stabbed nine times in the neck and chest.

“There was credibility in confessions by Edward Lee, while Patterson’s comments were inconsistent and contradicted evidence,” the Seoul Central District Court said in the ruling.

Patterson was extradited to Korea in September to face charges in a reopened investigation into the case and maintained his innocence throughout.

Patterson has denied the murder charge, blaming Lee. The two men were both in the restaurant at the time of the murder, and both accused the other of being the killer.

The court said Patterson’s bloodstained clothes and hands pinpointed him as the assailant.   [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link.

This is some pretty harsh punishment for not helping make a lunchbox.  Unsurprisingly the assault involved alcohol:

A father, identified only as Jeong, 40, has been arrested for stabbing his teenage son for not listening to him, Yonhap reported Sunday.

Police in Ulsan said Jeong stabbed his son, 14, twice – once in the chest and once in the leg on Jan. 13. He told them he stabbed the teenager because the boy did not help him prepare a lunchbox for the daughter, 10. The father was drunk, having consumed half a bottle of soju, police said.

Jeong then carried his son to an emergency room. The boy is in a hospital receiving treatment.

The man recently separated from his wife and was raising the two children, police said. Jeong did not have a criminal record but was arrested to protect the boy, they said  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Ultimately the authorities were able to catch the crazy man threatening passengers with a knife, but I am not sure what authorities in Seoul can do to prevent crazy people from doing crazy things:

Authorities on Tuesday apprehended a middle-aged man who was alleged to have brandished a 10-inch knife and threatened passengers onboard a subway train in Seoul during morning rush hour.

The suspect, determined later to be a 51-year-old homeless man, was caught more than an hour after the episode, in which he brandished a knife onboard a train on subway line No. 1 around 8:20 a.m., before exiting at Jonggak Station.

No injuries were reported, though the incident highlighted a barrage of loopholes present in subway security systems in the capital, with a population density almost twice that of New York City and where more than 7 million people on average use the trains daily.

Last year, police recorded 3,040 crimes at local subway stations, up 58 percent from the 1,922 cases in 2013.

The most apparent oversight, however, is the lack of security resources and personnel.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.