Category: crime & punishment

It is amazing how much money this guy made in just four years selling college entrance exam questions. It makes me wonder how many other teachers are doing this that have not been caught?:

Police have referred an incumbent high school teacher to the prosecution for making college entrance exam questions and selling them to a private cram school for some 250 million won ($ 180,072) over the course of four years, officials said Monday.

The National Office of Investigation (NOI) under the National Police Agency said it has booked 69 people and referred 24 of them initially to the prosecution as part of investigations into the collusive “cartel” ties between public and private education sectors.

A total of 24 such cases are under investigation, officials said.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

It looks like there may soon be a plea deal for the dumb ass Soldier who ran into North Korea last year:

The first court appearance of a Fort Bliss soldier charged with desertion for running into North Korea last year has been postponed, according to the soldier’s attorney. Pvt. Travis King, 24, faces eight charges, including desertion, assault and soliciting child sexual abuse material. Attorneys are negotiating a possible plea agreement, said Frank Rosenblatt, the attorney for King. “These negotiations, I believe, will meet both the needs of Pvt. King and the Army to resolve this case,” Rosenblatt said Monday. “It does appear that because of that, the Article 32 hearing may no longer be necessary.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

I feel bad for the bus driver in this incident who only hit this car because it was parked in the bus lane while the couple inside were arguing:

A highway bus driver and a woman’s husband who hit a woman in her 50s who got out of the car while fighting on the highway were sentenced to imprisonment.

According to the legal community on the 27th, the Daejeon District Court’s Criminal Chamber 9 (Judge Ko Young-sik) sentenced A (59) to one year in prison and her husband B (66) to two years in prison on charges of professional negligence.

Earlier on March 19th last year, A was put on trial on charges of hitting and killing a woman in her 50s, C (65), who was standing behind a stopped vehicle while driving an express bus in one of the four lanes on the 293.2km one way toward Seoul on the Gyeongbu Expressway in Nami-myeon, Seowon-gu, Cheongju, Chungcheongbuk-do.

Maeil Business News

You can read more at the link.

South Korea has definitely come a long ways in the past twenty years in regards to how it treats sex crimes. The Miryang Rape Case was a major example of how lenient the government treated sex crimes at the time:

Government officials and community leaders in the southeastern city of Miryang, South Gyeongsang Province, jointly issued a public apology Tuesday for an infamous gang rape case that occurred two decades ago, saying it was “all of our responsibility.”

“We all share the responsibility to make a better community, yet we (the people of Miryang) have not apologized or reflected on this tragedy, just because it is not directly related to our family or friends,” said Mayor An Byeong-gu, a Miryang native himself who took helm of the city in April this year. “We apologize for everyone who has been hurt.”

Officials of the city government, city council and some 80 civic and religious groups based in the area participated in the public apology at the city hall, collectively bowing their heads for one of the worst sex crimes in South Korean history. They did not take questions from reporters who attended the event.

The 2004 Miryang gape rape case has recently reentered the national consciousness after YouTubers began revealing the personal information of some the alleged perpetrators. Forty-four high school boys in South Gyeongsang Province were alleged to have brutally assaulted a then-middle school girl physically and sexually over the course of a year, but all of them escaped criminal punishment on account of them being minors at the time.

A subsequent investigation found that four other underage girls, including the primary victim’s older sister, had been raped by the group who called themselves the “Miryang Coalition.”

What fueled public furor was the widespread victim-blaming by the local community and secondary damage inflicted by the police. A 2005 survey of 645 residents of the city showed that 64 percent pointed the finger of blame at the victim for the heinous crimes, and a police officer’s blunder led to the victim’s family having their information leaked to the public.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link, but there was another horrible sex crime back in 2004 that involved a U.S. Soldier getting rape by a taxi driver soon after she arrived in Korea:

It is amazing how long this guy was able to get away with this scam and make millions of dollars undetected:

A former Army sergeant was sentenced to three years in prison for defrauding millions of dollars from the service in a rideshare scam using illegally obtained personal information from more than 800 soldiers, the Justice Department announced Tuesday. Kevin Romulus Pelayo, 45, co-owned and operated a rideshare company, Soldiers Vanpools LLC, out of Killeen with his wife, Cristine Furio Fredericks, 40, according to court documents. The company claimed to shuttle military personnel to and from Fort Cavazos, then known as Fort Hood, from Jan. 1, 2014, through June 10, 2020. Killeen is the city just outside the gates of Fort Cavazos.

The rideshare company was funded by the Army’s Mass Transportation Benefit Program, a federal subsidy for government workers to use mass transit, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Western District of Texas. “Pelayo and Fredericks submitted the names, Social Security numbers, and other identifying information of active-duty soldiers to the MTBP on a monthly basis from 2014 to midway through 2020, falsely claiming that the soldiers were active participants in the rideshare program,” according to federal authorities.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but it makes me wonder how many other people defrauded the government using this program and were not caught?

Crime may be dropping in Seoul, but the perception apparentlhy is that crime is a growing problem to be concerned about:

The number of crimes in Seoul has been declining, however, anxiety about the issue among residents is increasing, particularly among women and older adults, according to a report released by the Seoul Foundation of Women and Family, Sunday.

The foundation published the report based on data provided by Statistics Korea, which interviewed 3,007 Seoulites aged 20 and older in 2022.

According to the report, the number of crimes in the city declined from 296,178 in 2020 to 279,507 in 2022. The five major violent crimes — murder, robbery, theft, assault and sexual violence — also decreased from 92,679 to 90,339 during that period.

Despite this decline, residents’ sense of safety has not improved. On a scale from 1 (very safe) to 5 (very unsafe), the average score increased slightly from 3.13 in 2020 to 3.17 in 2022, indicating a growing perception of insecurity.

The report highlighted that women feel more anxious than men about potential crimes in their daily lives. On a scale from 1 (feeling very safe) to 10 (feeling very anxious), women scored 6.38 compared to men’s 5.4.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but I think the media highlighting major crimes is probably what feeds into the public’s anxiety.

Somebody must have said something for the Thai police to have found a body in a barrel filled with concrete in a reservoir:

Thailand plans to request South Korea hand over a suspect in the murder of a South Korean tourist and disposal of the body in Pattaya, a local media report said Wednesday. 

Thai authorities are seeking the extradition of one of the three suspects, who was arrested in a provincial county in South Korea on Monday, the Khaosod daily reported quoting a local police official. 

Thai police are investigating the brutal murder case, in which the body of the 34-year-old victim was found in a plastic container filled with cement in a reservoir in Pattaya.

A Bangkok court has also issued arrest warrants for the three suspects on charges of abduction and murder, the news outlet said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It wasn’t that long ago actions like this was not taken seriously by Korean courts. It is good to see the progress made holding these weirdos accountable:

The court sentenced a pastor in his 40s to prison and arrested him in court for forcibly harassing a woman in her 20s who was a believer and related to a heterogeneous cousin.

According to the legal community on the 28th, the Chuncheon District Court’s Wonju Branch 1 (Chief Judge Lee Soo-woong) sentenced A (41) to three years in prison and arrested him without detention on charges of violating the Special Act on Sexual Violence Crimes Punishment.

The court also ordered the completion of a 40-hour sexual violence treatment program and restrictions on employment for five years at facilities related to children, adolescents, and the disabled, respectively.

A, a church pastor, was indicted on charges of hugging B and touching her body by putting her hand inside her clothes while talking to B (25, female), a member and heterogeneous cousin, at 2 p.m. on June 23 last year.

At the time, the victim refused, saying to A, “What’s wrong with you, I’ll report it,” but “There are times when I can’t control myself because there are many male hormones.” It was revealed through the indictment that he continued to molest, saying, “I wanted to touch it normally.”

Maeil Kyeongchae

You can read more at the link.

If Korea’ Democratic Party has their way, they want President Yoon’s wife to be in jail with her mother:

The Justice Ministry on Tuesday blocked the early release of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s mother-in-law, who has been serving a one-year prison term for forgery, in its latest round of monthly parole reviews, according to officials close to the matter.

Though Choi Eui-soon, the 77-year-old mother of first lady Kim Keon Hee, was excluded from the latest list of inmates to be released early, she will be reconsidered for next month’s review, under the current law.

Following an hours-long monthly review, the ministry’s Probation and Parole Board decided to “hold off” Choi’s parole, rather than “disallowing” it like they did in February. This allows Choi to be included among the list of inmates eligible for parole review next month, while the previous decision in February had led to her exclusion from the subsequent month’s review held in March.

The ministry has yet to release an official statement on its latest decision.

Choi has been incarcerated at the Dongbu Detention Center in Songpa-gu, southern Seoul since July last year, after an appellate court confirmed her one-year prison sentence for falsifying her bank balance certificate to make it appear as though she had deposited 34.9 billion won ($25.4 million) in the account for a land purchase deal, as well as for purchasing property using other people’s names.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.