Category: crime & punishment

What I don’t get is why this woman did not report to the bus driver what was happening, especially when the bus arrived at the rest stop?:

The nightmare trip began when she heard the announcement to fasten her seatbelt. As she fastened hers, she saw the man unzipping his pants and taking out his genitalia. She was shocked, but did not show any reaction, fearing that he would harm her.

When the bus reached a rest stop about halfway to Jeonju, she got off the bus and waited, trying to change her seat when she got back on. But she couldn’t because there were no empty seats. She took her seat next to him again, and he continued exposing himself.

She entered a message in her mobile device and handed it to a person behind her while hoping the pervert wouldn’t notice. The person behind her took the phone and saw what she wrote: “the man next to me is flashing and I want to record proof but I am too afraid. Please do it for me.”

The plan worked and she received back the phone with a video record of the man. Then she texted police to report what was happening. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

This guy picks up a drunk women, restrains her with duct tape, and then claims he is the victim. Maybe this claim would of worked 20 years ago, but not today in Korea:

The prosecution has dropped an assault case brought up against a woman who escaped an alleged rape attempt by biting off her attacker’s tongue, in recognition of self-defense.

The decision by the Busan District Public Prosecutors’ Office last week is expected to set a meaningful precedent in a country where self-defense is rarely recognized. In a similar case in 1965, a victim, Choi Mal-ja, received a suspended prison term, which she is now seeking to rectify through a retrial.

The recent case involved a female university student who took a trip to Busan with three friends on July 19, 2020. According to documents obtained by the Hankook Ilbo, sister paper of The Korea Times, a man in his 30s offered her a ride after spotting her obviously drunk ― with an alleged intention to rape her. She got into the passenger’s seat, thinking he was a taxi driver. 

On his way to a remote place, he bought duct tape, a pack of condoms and three bottles of soju. The man parked in the middle of the road on Mount Hwangnyeong in the city’s Yeonje District, and shoved his tongue in her mouth ― and she bit it off.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

It seems to me it would be a difficult precedent to start by holding first responders criminally responsible every time an emergency operation does not go well. Who would want to take the risk of being a first responder then? It appears that the Seoul court agrees with that assessment:

 A Seoul court on Monday acquitted a former maritime police chief of mishandling the rescue operation during the sinking of the Sewol ferry in 2014 that killed more than 300 people.

The Seoul Central District Court found Kim Suk-kyoon, then-chief of the Korea Coast Guard, not guilty of professional negligence in one of the country’s worst peacetime disasters.

Nine others, who were in key posts of the organization at that time, were also acquitted of the same charge.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The Korean left has already been putting journalists they don’t like in jail and now want to expand their legal offense against their conservative critics even further:

The ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) is planning to revise a law within the National Assembly’s February session aimed at requiring media to pay punitive damages for spreading “fake news”. While the DPK said that punishment is needed to prevent the distortion of information and the spread of fake news by not only conventional media, but also portal sites and YouTube, conservative critics raised concerns that the law could be used to tame the media in the name of cracking down on fake news.

The DPK’s askforce team said, Tuesday, that it would revise the law to apply punitive damages to newspapers, TV broadcasters, portal site operators, YouTubers and other one-person media users for spreading false information.

Before the team’s decision, Rep. Yoon Young-chan of the party proposed a revised bill to have YouTubers, other one-person media users and portal site operators to pay up to three times the damages caused by their fake news to the victims. The team also decided that conventional media, such as newspaper and TV, should also be subject to such punishment if they spread fake news.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

This is a huge drug bust in Busan:

The Coast Guard has seized 35 kilograms of cocaine from a container ship in the southern port city of Busan, officials said Saturday. 

The drug has an estimated street value of 105 billion won (US$93.94 million), the authorities added. 

The packages were found on a Liberia-flagged ship, which departed from Colombia Dec. 15 and arrived at Busan New Port, Jan. 19. Their exteriors had a scorpion-shaped logo, which is usually used by Colombian drug cartels.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

It appears the Vice Justice Minister was given some special treatment by the Korean police:

The National Police Agency issued an apology Monday for misleading the public about the existence of footage capturing Vice Justice Minister Lee Yong-gu allegedly assaulting a taxi driver in November.  

Choi Seung-ryul, acting chief of the police’s newly formed National Investigation Headquarters (NIH), admitted his earlier briefing on Dec. 28 last year suggesting there was no dashboard camera footage of the incident was “partly incorrect.”  

Lee, who was appointed the No. 2 figure at the Justice Ministry in December, has been in the hot seat after opposition politicians claimed police may have let him off the hook for the incident.  

According to police, Lee took a taxi to his home in Seocho-dong in Seocho District, southern Seoul, on Nov. 6. He fell asleep in the car, and the driver woke him up when they reached the destination. Lee allegedly hurled insults at the driver and grabbed him by the collar.  

The driver called the police to report an assault, and a unit went to the scene and took his statement.  

The taxi driver reached a settlement with Lee the next day and informed the police that he did not want to press criminal charges. The police closed the case without a criminal investigation.  

But controversy flared up again after media reports surfaced there was in fact footage from the taxi, and that the taxi driver had shown the video in question to a police officer through his mobile phone in a police investigation on Nov. 11.  

The taxi driver claimed the officer watched the approximately 30-second-long video, then said he was going to “pretend [he] never saw” the footage. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but this appears to be another one of those incidents where the cover up was worse than the crime.

Here is yet another example of someone from the South Korean political left sexually assaulting someone. This time it is a party chairman sexually assaulting a lawmaker:

Justice Party Chairman Kim Jong-cheol stepped down after admitting to sexually assaulting one of the party’s lawmakers.    
   
“I am here to announce very humiliating, devastating news that Chairman Kim committed sexual assault on Jan. 15,” Bae Bok-joo, deputy chair of the party, said in a press conference Monday. “The victim is Rep. Jang Hye-young, a member of the party.” 

The alleged assault took place on Jan. 15 after a dinner, and Jang filed a complaint with the party on Jan. 18. Bae, who is also in charge of the party’s gender and human rights division, said the party had conducted a one-week investigation.   
   
“The outcome was reported to the leadership earlier this morning, a serious discussion followed and a swift decision was made since it involves the party’s chairman.”   

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but in the past two years the left wing politicians former Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon and former Governor An Hee-jung all involved in sexual assault scandals.

Here is the latest on the case of Olympic champion Shim Suk-hee being sexually assaulted by her coach:

South Korean double Olympic champion skater Shim Suk-hee is seeking a heavier sentence for her former coach, her lawyer said Friday, after he was jailed for more than a decade for sexually assaulting her over several years.

The development came as a former physical therapist was imprisoned for eight years in a separate case for sexually and physically abusing a female triathlete who took her own life.

Short track skater Shim — one of the country’s top female sports stars — went public in 2019 with accusations that coach Cho Jae-beom had sexually abused her for three years, starting when she was 17.

Her action confronted a culture of shame in the socially conservative nation and prompted a series of athletes to come forward with similar allegations, leading to apologies from sporting authorities.

Cho was convicted and sentenced to 10 and a half years in jail by the Suwon District Court on Thursday, but Shim’s lawyer said they will ask the court to impose a longer term.

AFP

You can read more at the link.

It is not surprising that this guy had a mental disorder that led to the subway confrontation:

A 50-something man was sentenced to 20 months in prison on Friday for getting into a “slipper fight” with subway passengers who asked him to wear a face mask due to the coronavirus.

The man was indicted on charges of assaulting two passengers on a Line 2 subway train. During the incident in August, he choked the passengers and slapped their faces with a slipper he was wearing.

“The defendant was not wearing a mask even though it was essential due to COVID-19 and talked in a loud voice on the train before assaulting the passengers,” Judge Lee Sang-hoon of the Seoul Southern District Court said.

“However, we took into consideration the fact that his mental illness appeared to have contributed to the crime,” he said.

Yonhap

There had to be more than just the Malaysian employee involved with this heist of money from this casino on Jeju Island. What did she do wheel out 300 kilogram of money on a dolly through the casino?:

A stash of W8.1 billion has been found in a secret safe at the Landing Casino in the Shinhwa World Marriott Resort on Jeju Island, where billions have gone missing (US$1=W1,097).

Police said Wednesday that the new stash was found in a safe in a secret vault in the casino from where another W14.5 billion in cash had vanished without a trace. 

The secret vault is not the casino’s ordinary safe where chips and gambling money are stored, but a 50 sq.m space containing dozens of safes of different sizes. 

Police discovered the new stash of money while raiding the secret vault after the casino filed a report accusing a female Malaysian executive of making off with the W14.5 billion in crisp W50,000 notes that would have weighed nearly 300 kg.

The 55-year-old woman disappeared last December and is suspected of absconding with the money on behalf of her boss, the troubled Hong Kong-based chairman of Landing International, Yang Zhihui.

Chosun Ilbo

You can read more at the link. but this money could still be stashed around Jeju with some of it already being found by police.