Two Korean nationals were part of the group of 10 people killed in the deadly van attack in Toronto:
Minassian has been taken into police custody and is due to appear in court on Tuesday. Police have not disclosed his motive, but sources suggested mental illness was a factor
Two Koreans were killed and one was injured in a van attack in Toronto, the Korean government said Tuesday (KST).
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said two Koreans were killed and one was seriously wounded as a result of the attack, in which a van plowed into pedestrians in the Canadian city. Their identities have not been disclosed.
The government has sent consular officials to local hospitals and police stations to help them and their families.
“The foreign ministry has taken necessary steps, including contacting the families of the victims, and plans to provide relevant consular support,” a ministry official said.
A large Korean community is in the area. The incident occurred when people rushed out for lunch.
According to reports, a man deliberately plowed his white Ryder rental van into a lunch-hour crowd, killing 10 people and injuring 15.
The suspect, Alek Minassian, 25, of Richmond Hill, Ontario, is in custody. Minassian was arrested about 30 minutes after police received the emergency call. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but the reported reason for this attack is one of the weirdest yet; this killer Alek Minassian is supposedly part of an online group called “incel” for being involuntary celibate due to women rejecting him. This attack was a way to stand up for the “incel’ community.
Condolences to this man’s family after he was randomly murdered by someone with a long criminal history and yet is still not in jail. This attack at least should lock him up for a long time:
A Korean man has died after a mysterious street attack in Waikiki, Hawaii, local media reported.
Kim Pil-sung, 29, lost consciousness after allegedly being punched and kicked by Cesarin Perez, 34, outside a bar early on Feb. 20. Kim was taken to a hospital but died on March 1.
Perez was caught Thursday and charged on suspicion of second-degree murder. He has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter. His bail is $500,000.
Why Perez allegedly attacked Kim is unclear because there were no specific ties between the two. The suspect had been convicted multiple times of prostitution and drug use charges, among others, according to local media.
An autopsy determined Kim died from injuries to his brain from blunt-force trauma. [Korea Times]
South Korea’s infamous “molar daddy” has been rightfully given the death penalty after raping and killing a 14-year old girl:
Lee Young-hak
A Seoul court on Wednesday meted out a death sentence for a man charged with killing a school friend of his daughter after sexually molesting her.
The Seoul Northern District Court handed down the gravest possible punishment on Lee Young-hak, 36, who had confessed to choking a 14-year-old girl to death in his home last September after committing lewd acts on her body while she was drugged.
Prosecutors had demanded the death penalty.
The court sentenced his daughter, whose identity was not revealed, to four years in prison for luring the friend to the house and helping her father dump her body. But her sentence can be extended up to six years in case of an infraction during her four-year imprisonment. [Korea Times]
It looks like it is a strong possibility that Kim Jong-nam was meeting with a US intelligence agent a few days before he was assassinated by North Korean agents:
Kim Jong-nam
A police witness said Monday that the estranged half-brother of North Korea’s leader met with an unidentified Korean-American man on a Malaysian resort island four days before he was murdered, as the trial of two women accused of killing him resumed.
Indonesia’s Siti Aisyah, 25, and Vietnam’s Doan Thi Huong, 29, are accused of smearing VX nerve agent on Kim Jong Nam’s face in a crowded airport terminal in Kuala Lumpur last Feb. 13. They pleaded not guilty to murder charges when their trial began Oct. 2. The two are the only suspects in custody, though prosecutors have said four North Koreans who fled the country were also involved.
Chief police investigating officer Wan Azirul Nizam Che Wan Aziz told the court Monday that Kim flew from Macau to Kuala Lumpur last Feb. 6 and went to the northern island of Langkawi two days later. He said Kim met with the Korean-American at a Langkawi hotel the next day, but he didn’t know the man’s identity and it wasn’t related to the $138,000 in cash found in Kim’s backpack when he was murdered.
Wah Azirul was responding to questions from Gooi Soon Seng, Aisyah’s lawyer, who asked him to confirm a report by the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun that Kim had met in Langkawi with a US intelligence agent who was based in Bangkok.
“Until now, the identity of the man is not known,” Wan Azirul told the court. He said he could not remember the hotel name or whether the room was registered under Kim or the man, prompting a lashing from Gooi for his “severe lapse of memory.” [NY Post]
You can read more at the link, but meeting with a US intelligence agent may have been the final straw for his younger brother Kim Jong-nam to finally decide to assassinate him.
Yet another example of a stupid criminal getting caught after committing a horrific crime:
Kim Sung-kwan is being taken from Yongin Police Station, Gyeonggi Province, Monday, to inspect the crime scene. / Yonhap
Kim Sung-kwan, a Korean who flew to Auckland three months ago after allegedly killing three family members here, said Sunday that he had plotted everything to take his mother’s money.
According to police, he has been arrested on charges of killing his mother, 55, stepfather, 57, and half-brother, 14, with a sharp object on Oct. 21 and stealing 118 million won ($110,000) from the mother’s two bank accounts.
Police have found that Kim owed 60 million won and had no stable job.
Police have also confirmed that for two days before executing the plot, Kim searched information about weapons, how to use them and how a criminal extradition system worked between Korea and New Zealand.
According to police, he first killed his mother and half-brother at her apartment in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, between 2 p.m. and 5p.m. He then killed his stepfather at a parking lot in PyeongChang, Gangwon Province, at around 8 p.m. the same day.
Two days later, he flew to New Zealand with his wife, surnamed Jung, and two daughters ― one aged two years and the other seven months at that time.
But Kim, who has a permanent residency in New Zealand not know he was wanted there for a crime he committed two years ago ― stealing household appliances.
By the time a local court found him guilty of the theft, Korean police learned where he was and asked the New Zealand government to send him back. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but obviously his Internet research on extraditions from New Zealand were not very well executed. Hopefully this brutal murderer rots in prison for the rest of his life.
This is a horrible crime committed by a South Korean man in Hong Kong:
Hong Kong police have arrested a South Korean man on suspicion of murdering his wife and seven-year-old son at the five-star Ritz-Carlton hotel, according to Reuters.
The two were found dead in a room at 8:30 a.m. The man reportedly appeared drunk and injured. He was arrested at the scene and sent to hospital.
Further details were not available immediately. [Korea Times]
It looks like there is an English teacher job opening at Sahmyook University after one of their professors was fired due to his link to the murder of four people back in Canada:
Paul Laan
A former professor at a Seoul-based university is a suspect in a mysterious missing-person case in Canada, according to South Korean broadcaster JTBC.
Canadian Paul Laan taught English at Sahmyook University in Nowon, northern Seoul, from 2014. The university stripped him of his professorship early this month after learning of the accusations in Canada and then terminated his contract.
According to the report, Laan came to Korea in 2006 and earned a living by teaching English at private or public institutes.
According to JTBC and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), he was a suspect in a high-profile missing-person case in Ontario in 1998. A woman in her 70s, known as the “Cat Lady,” was a tenant in his house and disappeared outside Huntsville. Police later found that three other tenants were missing.
Police investigating the case saw Laan as a suspect but they found no evidence, and it became a cold case.
CBC put the case back in the spotlight on its investigative program “The Fifth Estate,” aired in September.
The program said the residents’ disappearance was not reported and that pension checks were stolen from them by the Paul family. The youngest of the family was living in South Korea as a professor, according to the program.
“Paul now teaches English at a university in South Korea and travels with his wife extensively, professing their love for God on their family blog,” CBC reported. [Korea Times]
You can read the whole CBC report on these murders at this link. The Paul family are all part of a crime family in the Huntsville area of Canada that have a long criminal history culminating in the murder of four people.
At least this scumbag is out of society for the rest of his life:
Kenneth Franklin Gadson was given life in prison for the slaying of 20-year-old Okinawan office worker Rina Shimabukuro, Friday, Dec. 1, 2017.
The former U.S. base worker accused of raping and killing a 20-year-old Okinawan woman last year was sentenced to life in prison with hard labor after being convicted of her murder Friday at Naha District Court.
A panel of three judges and six jurors found Kenneth Franklin Gadson, 33, guilty of murder, rape resulting in death and the illegal disposal of a body in the slaying of Uruma office worker Rina Shimabukuro. He will spend the rest of his life behind bars at Yokosuka Prison in Kurihama, barring a successful appeal.
“The life of the victim — who had just celebrated her adulthood — was suddenly taken and her body was abandoned in the bushes,” chief judge Toshihiro Shibata said when reading the verdict.
“Her body was not found until it was reduced to bone; her sorrow is immeasurable … even giving consideration to the fact that the body was found by the concession of the defendant and he had no previous criminal record, there is no reason to find a lighter sentence than life imprisonment,” he added. [Stars & Stripes]
A 55-year-old woman surnamed Lee and her son were both arrested on Thursday for burying her friend alive on her husband’s farm. The two face charges of murder and abandoning a corpse, while Lee’s husband has since committed suicide after police came to search his property.
On July 14, Lee called up her 49-year-old friend for a drive in Seongnam, Gyeonggi. They were longtime friends, having met at a social club in Seongnam over a decade ago. Lee’s 25-year-old son drove while Lee handed her friend a cup of coffee laced with sleeping pills. The mother-and-son pair drove to the farm of Lee’s husband in Cheorwon County, Gangwon, where they buried her friend alive.
Police began investigating the disappearance on Aug. 10, leaving open the possibility that the friend was being held against her will, given the inactivity they saw on her phone and bank account.
In September, police received reports that Lee had met the victim before her disappearance, and were able to confirm that Lee’s son had rented a car and driven to Cheorwon. Last Friday, the court issued an arrest warrant for Lee and Park on suspicion of holding the victim in confinement. Police arrested the two on Nov. 28.
The same day, police went to search the property of Lee’s husband. Though the 62-year-old husband was not regarded as a suspect, he hung himself in a storage room when they arrived, after excusing himself to the bathroom.
Lee and her son confessed to the crime late Tuesday. “She made me look like a thief,” Lee said.
In June last year, the victim had asked Lee to bring her some belongings from the home she was sharing with her abusive partner. But after the victim’s partner reported Lee to the police for larceny, the victim did not defend Lee. Lee was subsequently convicted and fined. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read the rest at the link, but hopefully the mother and son spend a long time in prison because that is a horrible way to die.
