Category: crime & punishment

This guy is lucky to be alive and will likely be spending some time in jail for surviving this fall:

An inflatable jump bag is set up in front of an apartment building in Sacheon, South Gyeongsang, on Monday after a man started engaging in a standoff while holding his ex-girlfriend hostage at knifepoint. [NEWS1]

A man in his 20s, who had been holding his ex-girlfriend hostage at knifepoint on Monday, jumped off an apartment building from a staircase between the sixth and seventh floors of the building. 
  
According to South Gyeongsang police, the incident took place in Sacheon, South Gyeongsang, at around 2 p.m. 
  
The man engaged in a four-hour standoff with the police before jumping from the building.

He struck an exterior structure of the apartment on the third floor before landing on an air mattress laid on the first floor. 
  
He was taken to a hospital by first responders. 
  
The police said that the man was undergoing court proceedings for stalking his ex-girlfriend.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

This arrest makes me wonder how many countries and how long these thieves have been pickpocketing people?:

Police arrest three Russian nationals suspected of pickpocketing at a subway station in Myeong-dong, central Seoul, on Nov.13. [SEOUL METROPOLITAN POLICE AGENCY]

Prosecutors on Thursday indicted three Russian nationals suspected of pickpocketing subway riders for two weeks in Seoul, their office said Monday. 
  
The three Russian nationals, comprising two men aged 45 and a woman aged 38, entered Korea on a tourist visa on Nov. 1. 
  
The police said the three individuals focused on finding victims among subway riders during rush hour.

They mainly targeted women with handbags, approaching them in a coordinated manner, with one person standing in front of the victim to impede movement while another created distraction among the surrounding crowd so that the third person could pick up the victim’s purse. 
  
The three-member group was apprehended by the police on Nov. 13 who were on a stakeout. 
  
Authorities found that the three had collectively spent 45 hours riding the subway over nine days since their arrival in Seoul. 
  
The police estimated that the three stole a total of 7.13 million won ($5,400), including 5.6 million won in cash, in addition to three mobile phones.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Guys like this need a swift death penalty for such a brutal crime:

Choi Yun-jong, the suspect behind the rape and murder of a woman in Seoul’s Sillim neighborhood, speaks to reporters at the Seoul Gwanak Police Station, in this file photo taken Aug. 25, 2023. (Yonhap)

Prosecutors on Monday demanded the death penalty for a 30-year-old suspect behind the attempted rape and killing of a woman on a hiking trail in southern Seoul.

Choi Yun-jong was indicted on charges of fatally beating, throttling and attempting to rape the victim he randomly picked on a hillside hiking trail in the Sillim neighborhood on Aug. 17.

In the final hearing at Seoul Central District Court, prosecutors demanded the death penalty for Choi, arguing that he poses a high risk to society if released without any sign of repentance.

Prosecutors also stressed that he caused irrevocable damage to the family members of the victim and said there is a need to show that anyone who causes such crime would face heavy punishment.

The victim, an elementary school teacher in her 30s, had been left unaided for around 20 minutes before being found by the police and moved to a hospital. She died two days later due to brain damage caused by the strangulation.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This was a horrible crime that happened to the woman just trying to do her job at a convenience store:

This image captured from X, also formerly known as Twitter, shows an ongoing campaign in which women with short hair share their photos, which began after a female part-timer in her 20s, who was working at a convenience store, was assaulted by a man in his 20s simply because of her short hair. Captured from X

Should women with short hair be labeled as feminists? And do feminists harm men?

Such questions, which sound a bit peculiar, have been raised in Korea, once again, following a recent incident, in which a female part-timer in her 20s, who was working at a convenience store, was assaulted by a man in his 20s simply because of her short hair. 

The incident immediately led to an online campaign encouraging women with short hair to share their photos under #women_shortcut_campaign.

According to police, the assailant was caught assaulting the part-timer at the convenience store in Jinju, South Gyeongsang Province, on Saturday. The man also assaulted a male customer in his 50s who was trying to stop the attack.

At the time of the attack, the attacker said to the victim, “You must be a feminist as you have short hair. The feminist should get punished,” according to the police.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Via a reader tip comes this news of an assault of a Korean woman in Sydney by two Australian teenage women:

Disturbing footage shows the moment a teenager brutally attacked a young Korean woman in Sydney in the early hours of Sunday morning. 

According to Instagram account ‘degeneratehunting’, which uploaded the footage, the Korean woman and her friend were walking back to their hotel when they were approached by two teenagers near Town Hall in the city’s CBD. 

The women, who are from Melbourne and aged 23 and 32, “suddenly passed a group of young teenagers slurring racist remarks and threats towards them”. 

“The teenagers then turned from their direction of travel and began following the two Korean girls, bringing one of them to start recording for self defence,” the post read.

Footage shows the Korean woman in a tussle with one of the teenagers on the street before she is dragged to the floor and struck multiple times. 

The woman manages to get to her feet briefly before she is dragged back down again and kicked and continuously struck in her head.

News.com.au

You can see the video at the link, but both of the women who assaulted the Korean tourist have been identified and arrested by police.

Remember this story of a Korean Olympic medaling fencer that was conned by a transgender fiancé? Here fiance has now been detained by police for fraud:

Olympic fencing silver medalist Nam Hyun-hee (Yonhap)

Police detained the former fiance of Olympic fencing medalist Nam Hyun-hee for investigation on charges of fraud and attempted fraud, officials said Tuesday.

Nam, the silver medalist in women’s foil at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, broke up with her 15-year-younger fiance Jeon Cheong-jo last week, days after revelations that Jeon was actually a woman with a history of fraud convictions.

Yonhap

The website Oddity Central has a good write up about this case and Jeon Cheong-jo’s long criminal history and the lies she used to get Nam to marry her:

However this Korea Herald article speculates that Nam might be an accomplice of Jeon’s frauds that he committed against people while engaged to Nam. What is really bizarre is that Jeon was committing frauds before meeting Nam where he was switching his gender identity depending on who he was defrauding. What a weird story.

You can read more at the link.

I would not be surprised that this old guy probably has a mental illness of some kind:

A 77-year-old man passing by the defense ministry compound Tuesday took out a knife and stabbed two police officers guarding the compound, which also houses the presidential office. 

The man, identified by his family name Park, yelled in front of the compound and attacked the officers at 1:20 p.m. as they tried to subdue his shouting. One of the officers was stabbed in the abdomen and the other in the left arm, and both were taken to a hospital.

The man was arrested at the scene.

The ministry compound houses the office of President Yoon Suk Yeol.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The Korea Herald has a long article about violence against women in Korea. In the article there is an idea on making people accused of stalking wear police issued GPS bracelets. This would allow the person they are stalking to know where that person is. This is an interesting idea, but I would like to see the safeguards on how abuse of making people wear GPS bracelets would be prevented:

Still images from CCTV footage show a man violently attacking a woman in Busan in May 2022. (Courtesy of JTBC)

In a bid to take a more systemic approach, South Korea is working to determine what behaviors constitute an abusive pattern in offenders, and how to adequately train judges, court staff, police officers and other support organizations to identify the risk factors and protections needed.

There is also room for improvement when it comes to the efficacy of temporary restraining orders in deterring offenders from making contact with victims. There have been repeated calls, including from the unnamed victim of the roundhouse kick incident to allow police to use GPS tracking devices on both gender-based crime and stalking offenders and their victims. Under the current system, only victims are able to use the devices to alert police in an emergency, and these devices cannot detect the location of the offenders automatically.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

This is very weird especially since the police are focusing on suicide as the cause for at least four of the deaths:

A family of five has been found dead in three different locations in and around Seoul, and police are investigating connections into their deaths, police said Saturday. 

Police received a report at 7:29 a.m. of a 40-year-old woman having jumped off an apartment building in Songpa in eastern Seoul, officials said. 

She was sent to a hospital in cardiac arrest but later pronounced dead.

While police were checking the woman’s whereabouts in the lead-up to her death, they discovered her husband, mother- and sister-in-law dead in a residence in the same district. 

Police then found the couple’s teenage daughter dead at a hotel in Gimpo, just west of Seoul. 

Police said a note was found at one of the scenes that indicated a conflict over money. 

Police said they believe four of them, excluding the daughter, took their own lives, and an autopsy will be carried out on her to figure out the exact cause of death.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.