An Army soldier, identified only as Sgt. Lim, who was arrested on charges of killing five fellow soldiers in a shooting rampage in June, leaves a military court in Wonju, Gangwon Province, on Oct. 23, 2014, after trial. Lim claimed he committed the rampage after being ostracized for years. (Yonhap)
It seems like this guy needs to see a psychologist instead of going to prison:
A man is to face jail time for sexually harassing a call service operator working for a telemarketing company.
The man, identified as Park, age 49, had initially requested to be connected to a specific line, when the operator explained such services could not be provided.
Park then started lashing out at the operator in foul language, using words “objectifying women,” according to Yonhap News Agency.
He was reported to have called 9,982 times since May last year, using offensive speech.
Various other workers at the telemarketing company also said they felt “humiliated.”
The Seoul Central Criminal Court sentenced Park to 18 months in prison after finding him guilty of sexual violence and work disturbance on Oct. 15.
He is sentence also included 80 hours of mandatory participation in a program on sexual violence. [Korea Times]
To me it is amazing that a guy that did not commit a violent act was convicted of sexual violence and sentenced to 18 months in prison just because he used offensive speech over the telephone.
Prosecutors indicted three teenagers on charges of sexually and physically abusing a 15-year-old high school girl, local media reported Sunday.
Suwon District Prosecutors’ Office found that a 16-year-old girl broke into the victim’s house with her two teen friends and brutally assaulted her on Aug. 8 for speaking ill of her.
The victim and one of the perpetrators were classmates.
The three perpetrators allegedly dragged her out of the house and locked her in the basement of a deserted building for five days.
The victim was stripped of her clothes and forced to engage in “pseudo-sex” while being photographed. Moreover, the perpetrators forced the 15-year-old victim to eat her own excrement, swallow cigarette butts and lick their spit off the floor. [Korea Observer]
You can read more at the link, but hopefully these teenagers receive very harsh punishment for this horrible crime and not get off light like the teenagers involved in the Miryang gang rape case a few years ago.
Who the heck tries to rape somebody on an airplane?:
A Japan Airlines flight returned to Honolulu after a male passenger sexually assaulted a female passenger in the airplane’s bathroom, the FBI said.
FBI agents arrested Michael Tanouye on Saturday night at Honolulu International Airport for interfering with flight crew and for aggravated sexual assault aboard an aircraft. The 29-year-old resident of Hilo, Hawaii, was scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday.
An FBI affidavit says the flight was en route to Kansai International Airport when the attack allegedly occurred.
The woman, who was returning home to Japan with her mother after a four-day vacation in Hawaii, went to use the restroom about an hour and 45 minutes after takeoff. Tanouye allegedly forced his way inside, grabbed her by the shoulders and began to forcefully pull down her pants and underwear. [Japan Times]
You can read more at the link, but fortunately this guy was not able to complete the rape of this woman because she was able to push the emergency button in the bathroom to get help to subdue this loon.
A Marine has been detained following the suspected murder of a transgender Filipino at Subic Bay.
Media outlets in the Philippines, quoting a police report, said Monday that the victim, Jeffrey Laude, 26, also known as Jennifer, was found dead on a floor inside the Celzone Lodge in Olongapo City.
A witness said he saw Laude enter the hotel with a short-haired male foreigner, aged 25-30, around 10:55 p.m. on Saturday, the reports said.
Later, Laude’s naked body, partially covered with a blanket, was found in a bathroom at the hotel.
The incident comes at a sensitive time for U.S.-Philippine relations.
The close allies are getting ready to implement an Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement — signed by President Barack Obama during a state visit in April — that will see large numbers of U.S. troops rotate through bases in the Philippines over the next decade.
Patricio Abinales, a University of Hawaii expert on the Philippines, said in an email Monday that Filipinos are likely to be angry about the alleged involvement of a Marine in Laude’s death, but that the incident won’t cause widespread opposition to a greater U.S. troop presence. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read the rest at the link, but since the Philippines is eager to host US troops again as a security guarantee against growing Chinese aggression I doubt the Filipino government will try and demagogue this incident for political advantage. I guess we will see what happens, but it will interesting to see if the US government turns him over or not to face trial in the Philippines.
Anyway, this incident reminds of a transgender story I have from my days in Dongducheon. The majority of the transgendered Koreans I have seen in Korea were in Dongducheon. They would flock to the clubs up there to hit on drunk GIs. I was at the infamous Rendezvous Club one time and saw this soldier hanging all over what was obviously a transexual, but he was too drunk to tell the difference. I sat by him and then pulled him a side to explain to him his folly. He got pissed and wanted to throw down because he thought I was trying to steal his chick. Since he was so enamored with his new girlfriend, I left him to his folly. I never saw that soldier show his face ever again in that club.
It seems like every few months someone in the Korean media feels the need to make sweeping accusations against foreigners in Korea to drive page view traffic I suppose to their site. Via the Marmot’s Hole comes this latest example from the Donga Ilbo:
In May, a young man by the name of Kim got a urgent Kakao Talk from a female acquaintance of his who’d gone to a club in Yongsan. She was passing out and worried something might happen to her. He went to the club, found her passed out and surrounded by two foreigners, and rescued her. The next day, she told him that the foreigners gave her something to drink which had apparently been spiked.
She was rescued, but the Dong-A reports that there are women, defenseless against foreigners will ill-intent, who have been sexually assaulted. For instance, on Sept. 10, a 20-year-old woman was sitting at a Gangnam club with two foreign guys and a Korean guy. They gave her a drink which they’d spiked with sleeping pills. They brought her to a nearby motel, where they began filming parts of her anatomy with a cellphone. When she protested, they beat her. After a two week investigation, the cops arrested three guys for sexual assault, including a French guy and some model. [Marmot’s Hole via a reader tip]
You can read the rest at the link, to include a lively discussion on this topic in the comments section. I just like how the article makes no mention about sexual assault in Korea by Koreans which has been a significant issue that has gained increased attention in recent years. By the way this is not the first time the Donga Ilbo has been spreading lies, I called them out a few years ago when they were spreading lies about GI crime in Korea.
What else I found of interest is how the Donga Ilbo has pretty much did a recycle of the reporting done on the English Spectrum incident. I guess their reporters are even too lazy now to find new xenophobic angle to report on.
It seems like if you were a Japanese athlete that committing theft in South Korea at such a highly visible event such as the Asian Games would be the last thing you would want to do:
A Japanese swimmer suspected of stealing a camera at the Asian Games has been summarily indicted by local authorities and remains in South Korea awaiting a decision on his case, games organizers said Wednesday.
Naoya Tomita, who won a gold medal at the 2010 Asian Games, has been fined 1 million Korean won ($950) for stealing the camera from a photojournalist after failing to win a medal in any of his events in Incheon. He was caught on a venue surveillance video taking the camera and putting it in his bag.
Japanese team officials say Tomita admitted to taking the camera and apologized.
He has been expelled from the Japanese team, the first time that has ever happened for a swimmer, and has been kicked out of the athletes’ village. [Asian Correspondent]
I have not discussed the Andrew Tahmooressi case here on the ROK Drop because of how little information there is out there about it. The usual suspects have been using it to bash the Obama administration, but now people need to seriously consider if he intentionally drove into Mexico with those weapons:
If the judge throws the case out on technical grounds, we’ll probably never know for sure whether Tahmooressi was telling the truth when he claimed that he crossed the border by accident after making a wrong turn out of a parking lot in San Ysidro.
But if the trial goes on, that question will be very much at issue. To find Tahmooressi guilty, the judge will have to determine that he intended to break the law by bringing military-style weapons and ammunition into Mexico, which has strict anti-gun laws.
In May, sources showed the arrest video to a reporter for Tijuana’s fearless weekly magazine Zeta.
In a story headlined “Ex-Marine did not enter Mexico by mistake,” Ines Garcia Ramos reported that around 10:30 p.m. on March 31, as Tahmooressi began to drive into Mexico, border officers who noticed a mattress and other large items in his truck waved him over to an inspection area, where his weapons were discovered during a search. Contrary to his assertion that he stopped to ask how to return to the U.S., she wrote, he appeared to be driving away from the border. (After his guns were discovered, he called 911, telling an American operator he had crossed the border “by accident … and they’re trying to take my guns from me.”) (LA Times)
You can read more at the link, but before Tahmooressi drove into Mexico he walked across the border earlier in the day and checked into a hotel. So if he had no intention of driving into Mexico then why did he check into a hotel and then go back to get his truck?
Lee Jay-hyun, chairman of the food and entertainment conglomerate CJ Group, enters a courtroom at the Seoul High Court in Seoul on Sept. 12, 2014. The court commuted the jail term of the 54-year-old tycoon to three years from four years, convicting him of embezzlement and tax evasion. Lee was indicted for misappropriating 165.7 billion won (US$156 million) in company assets to offshore slush funds and dodging taxes in the process. (Yonhap)
