This guy is claiming he was just being multicultural:
A man who was caught allegedly robbing a house while wearing women’s panties has been identified and apprehended, Seoul police said Monday.
The incident occurred some three months ago. The 63-year-old man, identified only as Hwang, was allegedly ransacking a house when the owner walked in. Hwang escaped, but not before getting his pants and panties caught on the window as he was jumping out.
Police took hair and fluid samples in the underwear to identify the man and arrested him last Wednesday.
The man claimed he wore the women’s underwear because of a traditional superstition, Gangseo-gu district police said. [Korea Times]
Korean street market in 1960, probably near or in Seoul. The exact location has not been positively identified yet. The photographer, my father Leroy Smothers, did not label the 35 mm slide this image was scanned from. He traveled all over South Korea, so this could be somewhere other than Seoul. (We lived 1960 near Itaewon, south of Seoul.) [Bill Somther’s Flickr page]
Via a reader tip comes news that Yongsan Garrison will have some visitors looking to find evidence of oil leakage from Yongsan Garrision:
South Korea and the United States agreed Tuesday to allow local environmental experts to conduct a field study on a U.S. military base in central Seoul suspected of polluting groundwater and its nearby land.
The Yongsan Garrison is suspected of being the source of leaking oil that has polluted at least 12,000 square meters of land and more than 7 million liters of underground water since 2001 when the first oil spill was reported.
The agreement was reached at the latest Joint Committee meeting on the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) aimed at discussing an array of issues governing the legal status of 28,500 U.S. soldiers stationed in South Korea, according to Seoul’s foreign ministry.
To address the suspected oil leakage, both sides formed a joint working group consisting of officials from Seoul’s environment ministry, U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) and the Seoul Metropolitan Government in June last year.
“The two sides agreed to allow Korea’s environmental experts to visit the garrison in the near term for a field inspection into possible pollution sources,” the foreign ministry said in a statement. “They shared the view that the move will contribute to the fundamental resolution of the matter.”
Seoul has made repeated requests to the U.S. for its cooperation with the inspection of the garrison, which have been long ignored by the U.S. Under the SOFA, the South Korean government can investigate USFK bases only if permission is granted. [Yonhap]
This inspection is really nothing unprecedented because when the camps in the 2nd Infantry Division closed out almost ten years ago the environmental ministry and NGO types visited those camps as well. What is going on with Yongsan is that there has been oil found dripping in the subway lines, but no one has been able to confirm where it is coming from and the Korean government believes it is coming from Yongsan Garrison.
Anyway here is how the article ends with a topic that has absolutely nothing to do with the oil spill issue:
Concerning crimes committed by U.S. forces stationed here, South Korea asked the U.S. to tighten discipline among its soldiers at end-year, the ministry said.
Crimes committed by U.S. servicemen have declined, but sex and drug-related crimes rose between 2011 and 2013, the ministry added. In response, the U.S. said it will sternly deal with any kinds of sex crimes, vowing to cooperate with Seoul over crimes by U.S. soldiers.
South Korean authorities have often failed to take legal action against U.S. soldiers as the SOFA regulations allow the suspects to be handed over to U.S. authorities.
Having compiled these stats in the past I do not trust any GI crime statistics put out by Koreans which are often inflated. With that said that I am sure that drug crimes have risen because of the crackdown the ROK has done on inspecting US mail. There has been plenty of idiot soldiers caught in the past few years sending drugs through the mail.
I wonder if this brothel owner was not making the appropriate bribes to get raided like this:
“Put your clothes on,” shouted a police officer as he entered a small room during an evening raid on a massage parlor set up as a front to conceal a brothel in Gangnam, southern Seoul.
A man and a woman lying down on a single bed tried hastily to cover their naked bodies with a large bath towel.
The man turned his face away from the officer, while the woman bowed her head.
Four other officers entered another seven rooms connected by a network of underground corridors.
Five government human rights officers and a reporter from The Korea Times accompanied the raid conducted by officers from Gangnam Police Station on Nov. 18.
“You have the right to remain silent,” the officer began reading the couple their rights.
The brothel was located in a nondescript, three-story building located in Nonhyeon-dong.
A neon sign was on one corner of the building but it did not specify any of the services available or the activities conducted inside. Outside a man was standing guard with a walkie-talkie in his hand.
When the policemen told him to move aside, he offered little resistance.
A door was then flung open and the policemen ran downstairs.
They reached a lounge where a hidden corridor was discovered after an air conditioner was removed.
The operation was made possible by two undercover officers inside the building who posed as customers and text-messaged reports to colleagues waiting outside.
Although the remaining seven rooms were also occupied, officers struggled to break the locks on the doors. By the time they gained entry, men and women inside the rooms were fully clothed and officers were unable to find physical evidence such as used condoms in the room and had to let them go.
“We just had a chat,” said one man, who was accompanied by a woman.
“I was unlucky,” said the man who was caught in bed with a woman, as he was escorted into an unmarked police van.
Also taken into custody was a blind man who managed the premises, but officers said he was just a front man and not the real owner. [Korea Times]
The Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) and Gangnam District Office have agreed to resume a long-stalled project to develop a shanty town in the most affluent district in Seoul, officials said Friday.
Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon and Shin Yeon-hee, head of the district office, will hold a joint press conference next week to announce details of the agreement, an SMG official said.
The SMG and the district office have long been at odds over how to develop Guryong Village, considered the last remaining urban slum in Seoul, and how to compensate the residents.
“The SMG has decided to accept the district office’s demands regarding how to develop the area,” the SMG official said.
The SMG’s change of stance was prompted by a fire in the village on Nov. 10 that left one person dead and destroyed the homes of 136 people. It was the eleventh fire in the village since 2009.
“We understood the urgency for the government to take swift action, since political gridlock means nothing when people die and lose their homes,” the official said. [Korea Times]
Park Hyun-jung, president and CEO of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, is under fire over allegations that she sexually harassed employees, verbally assaulted them and abused her power in hiring and promotion decisions.
Insiders of the Seoul-government funded orchestra say Park tried to touch a male employee’s genital area in October last year by pulling him by his necktie at a public dinner gathering after drinking an excessive amount of alcohol.
“From the look of you, I think you will do well as a (bar) hostess,” she was also quoted as saying to a female employee during a meeting.
A petition filed against her reveals that Park told two other female employees at the meeting that they should serve important guests by sitting next to them and doing the duty of bar girls. [Korea Observer]
The leading conservative daily in Korea, the Chosun Ilbo is not happy with the announced changes to the Yongsan Garrison relocation plan:
Korea and the U.S. have agreed to keep the Combined Forces Command in Seoul even after the U.S. Forces Korea headquarters moves to Pyeongtaek in 2016. The CFC compound accounts for between eight to nine percent of the total area of the U.S. garrison right in the middle of Seoul.
If the housing compound for American Embassy staff is included, the total area of the base that the U.S. will continue to use rises to 17 percent. A Defense Ministry official claimed relocating the CFC further south would make it “difficult” to establish a smooth command system in conjunction with South Korean top brass in an emergency.
The official claimed that it would cost an additional W400 billion (US$1=W1,058) to relocate the CFC to Pyeongtaek. These are all valid reasons.
But Korea and the U.S. are in the process of building a new military base in Pyeongtaek at a cost of almost W9 trillion. Supporters say the move would help the U.S. military’s capabilities. The CFC was to be among the facilities being relocated, and the budget had taken that into account. Now the military is saying that the CFC should stay in Seoul. That is an absurd reversal.
The government hopes to build a 2.64 million sq.m park at the Yongsan site that rivals New York’s Central Park. The relocation of the U.S. garrison is also a highly symbolic event that signifies the return of land back to the Korean people after being used by foreign armies for around a century.
When Seoul and Washington agreed in 2004 to relocate the Yongsan base to Pyeongtaek, then U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it was absurd to have a foreign military base sitting in the middle of a nation’s capital. Seoul agreed to shoulder the entire cost of the relocation because the Korean public agreed with Rumsfeld’s view.
But now, the symbolic significance of the relocation is about to lose its luster although trillions of won in taxpayer’s money have been spent. (Chosun Ilbo)
You can read more at the link, but the Chosun thinks the land should be developed into a park with some land sold to make apartments to offset the cost.
