Tag: South Korea

The KNPA has recently ended a 100 day crackdown on foreigner crime:

Police booked more than 800 foreigners for allegedly committing crimes during a special 100-day crackdown from July 4.

The National Police Agency said Tuesday 803 foreigners involved in 348 cases were booked and 136 were arrested in the period.

By crime type, violent crime (67 percent) led the way, followed by narcotics (24 percent), sexual violence (5 percent) and gambling (4 percent).

For violent crime, 189 cases (80 percent) occurred among foreigners and 83 percent among compatriots. Police said most criminals who assaulted people were drunk. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Any tri-lateral cooperation like this good between the US, ROK and Japan:

The United States, Japan and South Korea will practice detecting and stopping ships carrying weapons of mass destruction during a sea exercise this weekend.

The trilateral exercise comes in light of North Korea’s continued work on its nuclear weapons and missile program, South Korean defense officials told reporters in Seoul on Thursday.

The maritime interdiction operation will be held Saturday and Sunday in international waters south of South Korea’s Jeju Island, Yonhap News reported.

The sea services also will conduct search and rescue exercises aimed at rescuing personnel on disabled ships, the report said.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

This photo taken on Oct. 17, 2016, shows the rooftop garden of the Sejong Government Complex in Sejong, south of Seoul, that went on the Guinness World Records as the world’s biggest among its peers. The garden sits atop bridge-connected structures, measuring 3.6 kilometers in length and 79,194 square meters in space. (Yonhap)

Horrible news for the family of this South Korean ship captain who was kidnapped by the ISIS linked Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines:

Suspected Abu Sayyaf militants have abducted a South Korean skipper and a Filipino crewman from a South Korean cargo ship in the latest such attacks that have sparked a security alarm in the busy regional sealanes, military officials said Friday.

About 10 gunmen boarded the MV Dongbang Giant using ropes from a speedboat and abducted skipper Chul Hong and Filipino crewman Glenn Alindajao on Thursday off Bongao town in Tawi Tawi province. The ship was on its way to South Korea from Australia, regional military spokesman Maj. Filemon Tan said.

Other crewmen were not seized and one managed to call his family, which reported the assault to authorities, according to Tan.  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link.

I am glad the Korean authorities caught these two because I can’t stand people who steal or leave graffiti everywhere:

Police have arrested two Russians for allegedly vandalizing subway cars in Daegu and stealing clothes from department stores in Seoul and Busan.

Daegu Dongbu Police Station said on Monday that the two men, 22 and 20, allegedly painted the word “ONAS” — meaning “we” in Russian — on two subway cars at a depot in the city’s Dong-gu district around 1:40 a.m. on Oct. 16.

A Daegu department store employee reported the men to police.

After analyzing CCTV footage, police discovered that the graffiti suspects were wanted by Busan Jungbu Police Station on a charge of stealing clothes worth 7.5 million won ($6,620) from department stores in Seoul and Busan on Oct. 11 and 12, respectively.

According to Daegu police, the Russians stole the clothes and vandalized the subway cars “for fun.” [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

10 Questions You’ll Probably Be Asked as a Foreigner in Korea https://t.co/EtweO9A0U0 #10magazine #korealife #korea

— 10 Magazine (@10_Magazine) October 18, 2016

I doubt the young woman in question is the first politically connected person to receive favorable treatment in admissions to a Korean university.  So why are people making a big deal about it now?:

After recent allegation that a granddaughter of President Park Geun-hye’s close mentor was granted admissions to Ewha Womans University unfairly, professors will hold a rally Wednesday to demand the university president step down, taking up a cause students have been championing for some 80 days.“Ewha Womans University, which has been under fire for its plans to build a college of continuing education, is now mired in a political issue,” said an emergency planning committee of Ewha professors in an official statement. “University President Choi Kyung-hee and the board of directors are handling the issues at the school dictatorially and failing to communicate with the university staff and students. It is high time that professors take up the cause.”

Professors will hold a rally in front of the main hall of the university, which has been occupied by students since July 28. It is the first time since the university’s establishment in 1886 that professors of the university have called for the ouster of the president.

The allegations concern Choi Soon-sil, daughter of Choi Tae-min, who was President Park Geun-hye’s mentor.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but the young woman in question won a gold medal in the Asian Games for an equestrian event and the university added winning a gold medal in equestrian as an additional selection criteria the year Choi applied to the university.  She also supposedly misses classes and turns in homework late and still gets good grades.  To me this is all hearsay and who knows if it is true.

The stupid things drunk people do:

Rescuers have removed an inebriated woman from a claw crane game for dolls after she crawled into the game machine’s exit following frustration over her failure to get any dolls from it, firefighters said Tuesday.

The woman, 20, got herself confined inside the machine in the city of Incheon, west of Seoul, around 4:00 a.m. on Monday before being rescued. Rescuers, who were mobilized to the scene after receiving a tip from one of her acquaintances, cut through the machine’s cabinet with a motor drill.

After failing to pick up a doll in several attempts, she managed to enter the machine through its opening with a length and width of just 30 centimeters, but was unable to get back out, they said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Person who recently visited the city tends to think so:

If one were to crown the most bizarre city in South Korea, many users on r/korea would undoubtedly pick Songdo. Officially known as the Songdo International Business District, this 40 billion USD project is promoted as a smart, green, low-carbon city a fifteen-minute drive and a short flight away from a third of the world’s population.

Little do people realize that the city is far from just about everything else. Songdo is part of Incheon, and to get to the former you have to go through the latter if you’re not coming from the airport. From Seoul I took the subway, which crawled past enormous apartment buildings for what felt like more than an hour. I found myself wondering what Douglas MacArthur — the nuke-loving American general who surprised the invading Korean People’s Army here seventy years ago — would say if he could see what this village of brick and tile had become.

It was all too much for me, or at least for my stomach. By the time my map app was telling me I was in Songdo I was about to collapse from starvation. I staggered out of the subway into the dark gray empty station and wandered South Korea’s usual labyrinthine hallways, stairwells, and escalators echoing with electronic voices until I emerged in the middle of… nowhere.  [Korea Expose]

You can read the rest at the link of what was a humorous read about what is likely Korea’s most empty city.

Here is the back story on the three Koreans that were found murdered in the Philippines:

Three Korean victims found earlier this week in a remote sugarcane field in the Philippines with gunshot wounds to their heads were identified as primary suspects in a multi-million-dollar investment fraud, local media reported Friday.

The three Koreans were found dead by a local farmer on Tuesday in a sugarcane field in the rural town of Bacolor, 75 kilometers (47 miles) northwest of Manila.

They were a 48-year-old man, a 52-year-old man and a 49-year-old woman. The victims were confirmed by their fingerprints to be Korean nationals on Wednesday.

The Korean police told local media on Friday that the three victims were suspects of an investment fraud worth 15 billion won ($13.25 million).

The three individuals left the country before police formally launched an investigation, the Yonhap News Agency reported.

The victims were executives in an investment corporation that they created last year, and the 48-year-old male victim worked as its president.

They jointly operated the company for approximately one year, using a multi-level marketing investment scheme based on foreign exchange margin trading, police were quoted as saying.

While the president of the firm and the female victim were not married, they pretended to be, police said, luring investors to trust them with large sums of money with the promise of high returns.

Victims of the alleged fraud requested police since the summer to investigate the suspects. One petition was filed at the Songpa District Precinct in August and two more were filed to the Suseo District Precinct in September.

Police said the victims left Korea as the investigation was forming.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but I wonder if they were working for a Korean organized crime group and killing them was a way to keep them quiet after they were targeted to be investigated by authorities?

Further reading:

https://www.rokdrop.net/2016/10/three-more-south-koreans-found-murdered-in-the-philippines/