The Itaewon Burger King murder trial has started with former convict for the murder Edward Lee pointing the finger at Arthur John Patterson as the murderer of Korean student Cho Choong-pil:
John Arthur Patterson
During the questioning, Lee found it difficult to recall the situation in which the murder took place in April 1997, but the Korean-American said in the courtroom that he saw Patterson suddenly turning to the victim and stabbing him.
“When the murder took place, I went to the bathroom to wash my hands,” he said. “Patterson suddenly started to stab him. I turned around and I was shocked.
“Cho was trying to hit the accused with his right hand, but Patterson stabbed him and kept stabbing him.”
He admitted that there were only three people including Patterson, Cho and himself at the crime scene. But he continued to accuse Patterson of murdering Cho.
He also took issue with the credibility of the past investigation records and how he was treated during the questioning by the police and prosecutors.
“I have consistently asked for an interpreter, but they didn’t provide me with one,” he said. “I was interrogated without an interpreter, coerced and threated during the first investigation for 17 hours. They didn’t let me go to sleep.” [Korea Herald]
You can read the rest at the link, but Patterson continues to claim that Lee is the actual murderer. I feel so bad for the victim’s mother who also testified and had to listen to the details about how her son was killed for no reason and then see these two each deny responsibility. Even if Lee did not commit the murder he is still culpable for not saying anything after it happened. If he saw Patterson stabbing someone to death he should of at least immediately alerted people in the restaurant to call the police and paramedics.
Does everyone remember the Itaewon Burger King murder case? Well it is back for round two of two decade long effort to convict the then dependent of USFK contractor of murdering a Hongik University student back in 1997:
The two original suspects in a high-profile 1997 Itaewon murder case could potentially be brought back together today in a preparatory session before the start of legal proceedings in the trial against 36-year-old American Arthur Patterson.
Patterson and his friend, Edward Lee, were accused of killing Hongik University student Cho Jung-pil at a fast food restaurant on April 3, 1997, in Itaewon, a popular foreigner-friendly district in central Seoul.
Cho was found dead in the bathroom of a Burger King, stabbed nine times in his neck and chest. The two men, then 18, were both in the restaurant at the time of the murder and both pinpointed the other in the killing.
Lee, a Korean-American, was later convicted for the murder but was acquitted of those charges in 1998 by the Supreme Court, which ruled that there was insufficient evidence to conclude that the murder had been carried out by one man.
He will attend as a witness in the trial against Patterson, who was originally charged and convicted for weapons possession and destruction of evidence before fleeing to the United States in 1999.
“We have confirmed that Lee … is currently staying in Korea,” a prosecutor from the Seoul Central Prosecutors’ Office said on Wednesday, adding that it was planning to request Lee as a witness in the preparatory session to be held at the Seoul Central District Court.
The same day, Lee’s father appeared on a radio program to reiterate that his son would testify in the case.
“My son came to Korea about a month ago and he will attend [the preparatory session] as a witness,” he said. “We want the case closed this time so that we can finally be free from it.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read the rest at the link and you can read more about this case at this prior posting. Basically this whole case comes down to incompetence in the Korean judicial system to let these two go free in the first place. This was a brutal murder that the family deserves justice for.
For those going out to clubs in Itaewon over the long 4th of July weekend, here is one club you will not get into:
An upscale nightclub in Itaewon, Seoul, has stopped accepting foreign customers over the past two weeks in fears of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), a virus that has taken lives of 33 people in South Korea, the owner of the club said Wednesday.
Kim Jong-hyun, owner of Lounge & Club Move contacted The Korea Observer and requested that we remove an article that we published a day earlier as he believes it implies the club has a racist policy in place.
“We absolutely don’t accept foreigners because of MERS,” said Kim. “Above all, Korean people don’t want them. This is Korea, isn’t it?” [Korea Observer]
Here is what he had to say about US military servicemembers:
“Most of the time when a customer loses a cellphone, the CCTV reveals that the thieves are Middle Eastern people or foreigners.”
Kim agreed with his manager Lee’s statement that the club has been hesitant to have foreign customers because it is hard to make them liable when they cause property damages, sexually harass customers or start a brawl.
He also stressed that foreign customers frequently start a fight with U.S. servicemen.
“U.S. servicemen don’t behave badly. The problem is other foreign customers who constantly provoke them into a fight,” Kim said.
“It is better not to have them because we lose too much for trying to make a small amount of money from them.”
You can read the rest at the link, but US servicemembers have been accused for so long for being the ones to start fights in Korea that I don’t know how to react.
There was recently a huge fire in Itaewon that burned nearly a block worth of buildings near the Hamilton Hotel:
A large fire broke out this morning in the Itaewon district of Seoul. According to news reports the fire started in local shop in the early morning hours and spread to surrounding buildings in the area. The fire was able to be contained relatively quickly and was reportedly extinguished by 9AM. It is also being reported that no one was seriously injured in the blaze. Here are few stunning images and some video of the fire that were posted to social media. [AsiaPundits.com]
You can see much more at the link to include video of this huge fire. Even more pictures can be seen over at 10mag.com as well.
Another week and more English teachers arrested on drug charges and shockingly the drug dealer was a Nigerian and the crime happened in Itaewon:
Police booked six foreign English instructors on suspicion of using marijuana, officials said Friday, with some allegedly conducting class while under the influence of the drug, Yonhap News reported.
Among those charged were three teachers from Canada, two from the United States and one from New Zealand, all of whom teach English at private institutions or elementary schools in Seoul. Police also arrested a Nigerian man, whose name has been withheld, on suspicion of providing marijuana to the six suspects.
According to police, the drugs were supplied to the suspects by the Nigerian dealer and were imbibed in and around their residences in Itaewon, a neighborhood populated by bars and other late-night establishments. They added that some of the suspects smoked the banned substance before heading to class in the morning.
“The suspects are believed to have routinely used the drug from a young age,” a police official said. “We have to tighten visa controls for foreign teachers with medical and criminal records.” [Korea Herald]
So how would tightening medical and criminal records do any good in preventing these guys from entering the country if they were never arrested in the first place?
A South Korean judge sentenced three U.S. soldiers Friday for their participation in a Nov. 11 bar brawl in the Itaewon entertainment district.
Two soldiers — Pvt. Sylvester Antely Clark, 19, and Spc. Tydes Whiten, 27, — were sentenced to 18 months in prison for punching and striking a U.N. Club bouncer with beer bottles during the fight.
But judge Han Yang-seok suspended both sentences for two years, saying he took into account that both soldiers paid compensation to the bouncer, had no prior convictions and “had worked diligently to defend the country†as soldiers here.
Pfc. Mario Duprey, convicted of assaulting a police officer, was fined the equivalent of about $3,000.
The two soldiers involved in the brawl have been maintaining their innocence that they were not the ones who hit the bouncer with a beer bottle. Judging by past altercations involving Koreans falsely accusing GIs of assault, this claim may quite possibly be true. However, there is not enough information available compared to the Acosta case, to really make a determination on this and the fact that PVT Clark was led into the courtroom in shackles I found quite interesting:
Clark, who was escorted in and out of the courtroom by Army criminal investigators and restrained with his hands shackled to a belt around his waist, declined to comment.
The fact he was led into the courtroom into shackles leads me to wonder what other trouble he has gotten into to be the only one shackled in the courtroom. No one is going to jail, but they are definitely lighter in the pocketbook and hopefully other soldiers can take some good lessons learned from this incident, especially like when you are drunk don’t go to the police station and start crap there.Â
Alleyway T-shirt vendors in the Itaewon district have a new competitor. The new must-have shirts read I’m not migook on the front, and on the back in Korean, “I am not an American.†Since the shirts first turned up at a shop in front of the neighborhood Starbucks in the middle of last month, more than 100 of the shirts have been sold every five days. The man who brought the thoughtful product into the world is a 31-year-old named Michael Kenny who would like to make it clear that he is Canadian.
However, Mr. Kenny claims this is all in good fun and he is not anti-American:
Worry no. 2 is that people tend to associate the shirts with anti-Americanism. He says quite a few people have challenged him about the message. But his response is: Oh, there’s nothing to it. It’s all just good fun. American whites are Caucasians, but that doesn’t mean all Caucasians are Americans. Now, wouldn’t it be nice if Koreans knew that too?
Now would he sell t-shirts to people of black skin color saying that they are not Nigerians? Or better yet maybe he should start selling t-shirts that say “I’m not a Low Quality English Teacher”. What’s the difference between this hate speech and bashing Americans?
A Seoul court has ordered that the South Korean government pay about $34,000 to the family of a murdered university student because local prosecutors mistakenly allowed an American suspect to return home, according to court officials.
The decision from early this week ends a seven-year fight from the victim’s family, who was outraged that South Korean officials failed to stop Arthur Patterson, one of the two suspects in the case, from leaving South Korea, according to a family spokesman.
(…)
In April 1997, Cho Chong-pil was stabbed to death in a Burger King restroom in Itaewon. Investigators and experts at the time said the stabbing appeared to be random and similar to an American gang-style killing. Two American teens, Patterson and Eddie Lee, were charged in the case.
Patterson, the dependent of a contract worker for U.S. Forces Korea, was charged with possessing a deadly weapon and destroying evidence. He was convicted and sentenced to 18 months. Lee, who had no direct connection to USFK, was charged with murder and sentenced to life in prison. A higher court, however, reduced that sentence to 20 years and ultimately acquitted Lee for lack of evidence after he had served 18 months.
Patterson also was released early from prison in 1998, in the annual Aug. 15 liberation day amnesty granted by the South Korean government to some 2,000 convicts. Prosecutors promised to pursue the case and perhaps file a harsher charge against Patterson. Yet after his release from prison, he was allowed to leave South Korea, the court’s ruling this week admitted.
Amazing someone originally convicted of a brutal murder and sentenced for 20 years is later released while his accomplice is later released as well by a special pardon.
On April 3, 1997, Joong Pil and his steady girlfriend Jung Eun were on their way to her home in Itaewon after studying at the Kook Ki Won Library. They stopped to use the restroom at the fast food restaurant. Jung Eun went to order soft drinks and Joong Pil went into the restroom.
The motive for the murder was that Lee killed the victim just for fun. After killing Cho, Lee went back to the table and hung out again with Patterson like nothing had happened while Cho slowly bled to death in the restroom. Similar to the Penich murder case another cold blooded murderer was allowed to go free. Now both these punks are running around free in America instead of rotting in jail where they can’t kill anyone else just for fun.
