It just seems that this is a pretty bold theft to try and pull off with little reward when they were trying to sell the HMMWVs for $10,000 a piece:
An American soldier and six South Korean civilians have been accused of stealing three Humvees from an unnamed U.S. base in South Korea and trying to sell them.
A U.S. soldier and six South Korean civilians have been accused of being part of a ring that stole three Humvees from a U.S. base in South Korea and tried to sell them, police said Thursday.
The soldier, identified only as a 47-year-old Korean-American man, allegedly conspired with the others to arrange for three Humvees to be stolen from the base in June and September of last year, police said.
The thefts were carried out by camouflaging the vehicles to appear as unused items, said Kim Dong Hwan, chief detective of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency’s international crime investigation unit.
“The soldier insists that he was not trying to steal the vehicles with the rest of the guys,” Kim told Stars and Stripes. “The Koreans kept denying what they did at first. But they’ve been saying lately that they attempted to sell the Humvees.”
Kim said it was the first time police have uncovered a ring trafficking in stolen Humvees in South Korea.
The suspects — who also included a civilian contractor working on the base, three junk dealers, a film-prop maker and an intermediary — have been booked without detention. [Stars & Stripes]
Another creepy ajushi in the Seoul diplomatic corps is in trouble:
A South Korean diplomat has been convicted of taking indecent photos of women.
Seoul Western District Court fined the lawyer-turned-diplomat, 38, identified only as Kim, 70 million won and ordered him to take a 40-hour education program on sexual crimes.
He was apprehended on Aug. 5 last year for taking photos up the skirt of a woman on a bus. Police later confirmed that he had used his smartphone to take photos up women’s skirts 16 times between April 2015 and August last year. One photo was taken in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs lobby in Seoul. [Korea Times]
An Australian, whose identity is unknown, has been arrested for defacing a subway car, according to Suseo Police Station Sunday.
According to police, the man, 22, and his girlfriend arrived on Mar. 27, and stayed at a hotel near Hongik University.
The man broke into Gangnam Subway Depot and drew graffiti on a subway car on Apr. 1, after being told wrongly he could do this.
He left for Japan the next day, but was arrested on Sunday after stopping at Incheon International Airport for a flight back to Australia. [Korea Times]
You would think the police in Seoul would have better things to do instead of arresting this guy for taking a banner down off of his home:
Police have booked an American man, 64, who works as a part-time English instructor at Hongik University, for allegedly vandalizing a presidential campaign poster.
Under Korean election law, unlawfully removing or vandalizing a political campaign poster can lead to a two-year jail term or a fine of 4 million won ($ 3,500).
Mapo Police Station said on Monday the man allegedly tried to remove a poster from the side of his house on Apr. 21. His neighbors tried to stop him but he repeatedly said “my home” and continued to dismantle the poster before being arrested.
It is unclear whether the neighbors explained clearly to the suspect that removing an election poster is against the law. The man is known to have told police he did not know it was unlawful. [Korea Times]
There is probably more to this story, but on the surface it seems if someone puts a banner on your house you should be able to take it down if you don’t want it there.
Here is something you don’t see happen very often in South Korea, a bank robbery:
This photo, provided by an anonymous citizen, shows the suspect Kim minutes before he carries out a bank heist in Gyeongsan, North Gyeongsang Province, southeast of Seoul, on April 20, 2017. (Yonhap)
Police said Saturday it has arrested a suspect in an armed bank robbery that took place in the country’s southeastern provincial county two days earlier.
The Gyeongsan Police Station in North Gyeongsang Province said it caught a 43-year-old man, identified only by his last name Kim, at a parking lot of a large accommodation facility in Danyang, North Chungcheong Province, at around 6:47 p.m.
Police had suspected the robber may be a foreigner as one of the bank employees claimed he had a poor Korean accent, but it turned out that he was a native.
Kim is suspected of robbing a branch of the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, also known as Nonghyup, in a county in Gyeongsan early Thursday, threatening the employees at gunpoint and fleeing the scene on a bicycle with some 15.6 million won (US$13,700) in cash, all of which took him only four minutes.
During the heist, he apparently fired one shot from what the police believe to be a homemade gun, but no one was hurt as it was aimed at the wall. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but as expected the man was tracked down by piecing together camera footage from neighborhood cc cameras.
I would not want to be the commander for the unit these idiots serve in that kept an underage prostitute in the on-post dormitories and fed her dining facility food:
Two enlisted airmen assigned to Dover Air Force Base are being held on federal charges they sexually abused a runaway teen girl.
The men, identified as Airman 1st Class Dalian Washington, 25, of Philadelphia, and Airman 1st Class Akeem Beazer, 21, of Pompano Beach, Fla., were arrested March 31, said Kimberlynn Reeves, spokeswoman for acting US Attorney David Weiss.
Both men are charged with sexual abuse of a minor, while Washington also faces a single count of sex trafficking of a child.
According to the criminal complaint against both men, the case came to light in March when the girl told a social worker that beginning when she was 15 years old and continuing after her 16th birthday, she had stayed at Dover AFB and had sexual relations with Air Force personnel while there.
This admission prompted an investigation by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and the Delaware State Police.
The DSP detective was familiar with the girl, who allegedly had a troubled home life and often ran away from home. [Dover Post]
You can read the rest at the link, but this girl was being pimped out of the DMV of all places.
I wonder how long she has been getting away with this?:
This provided image, taken from CCTV footage, shows a 20-year-old woman (in red circle) stealing two bracelets at a jeweler’s shop in the central city of Cheongju on April 1, 2017. (Yonhap)
Police have booked a 20-year-old woman for allegedly stealing two gold bracelets and hiding them in her buttocks at a jeweler’s shop in central South Korea earlier this month, they said Wednesday.
The Heungdeok Police Station in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, said the woman, along with her 21-year-old friend, visited the shop on April 1 and browsed the bracelets on display. She repeatedly put her hand into her pants while the other woman was talking to an employee over the purchase of a ring.
According to the police, the shopowner found that two bracelets, worth 980,000 won (about US$856), were gone. The woman was later spotted picking them up in CCTV footage.
She denied the allegations and demanded that the shop call the police to determine whether she stole them, saying that she wore a pair of leggings and had nowhere to hide them.
Two female police officers arrived at the shop and conducted a strip search in a bathroom near the shop after getting the suspect’s consent, eventually obtaining her confession that she had hidden them in her buttocks. [Yonhap]
Nobody likes bullies, but this reaction to bullying was a bit too extreme:
The Ulsan District Court has jailed a man who raided a middle school with six thugs to threaten teenage girls who bullied his daughter.
The court Tuesday jailed the father for a year and sentenced the gangsters he hired to terms ranging from eight months to a year. They were accused of the crime in 2015.
The convicted man’s daughter allegedly suffered serious distress two years ago because of school bullies.
The man acted after the bullies shared a photo of his daughter’s body parts with classmates without her permission, asking the thugs to “take revenge.”
Later, the father and one of his henchmen broke into the school principal’s office, threatening the principal to assemble the bullies. The five other thugs were waiting at the school’s main gate to intimidate students and staff.
The principal refused to give in, so the men broke into the bullies’ classroom. They forced the alleged bullies to kneel in front of the class and threatened to beat them. [Korea Times]
A Korean man in his 30s, surnamed Kim, has been arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a Japanese tourist he met at a nightclub in Gangnam, Seoul, according to Gangnam police station on Monday.
The tourist in her 20s reportedly visited the club with a friend and met Kim.
Kim allegedly sexually assaulted her after taking her to an emergency stairway.
He was stopped when security guards came to rescue the woman after hearing her scream.
“We heard a woman screaming and crying, so we sent our security personnel outside to check,” a club employee said. “We intervened and subdued the man until the police arrived.”
Kim denied the sexual assault charges, saying his interaction with the woman was with consent, police said. [The Korea Times]
It does seem the Korean authorities are taking sex crimes against foreign women more seriously. It wasn’t that long ago when this was not the case.
Via a reader tip comes news of this horrible attack that some are now trying to use to further the narrative that Korean men have a misogyny and problem with violently attacking women:
A Korean man attacks a Korean woman with a hammer in LA’s Koreatown district.
The 22-year-old South Korean man in a black T-shirt asked one question of the young woman before bludgeoning her repeatedly with a hammer.
“Are you Korean?”
Much about the random attack last Friday at a Koreatown strip mall remains unclear, but police said Thursday one thing seemed apparent: Jae Won Yang chose his victim because she was Korean, and a woman.
Last week’s attack, in front of a second-floor acupuncture clinic, has reverberated across the Pacific Ocean to rattle nerves and grab headlines in South Korea. The incident set off online debates about whether it was the latest in violent attacks against women in recent years that have triggered soul-searching about misogyny in the Asian nation. [LA Times]
You can read and see the video of the attack at the link.
Here are my thoughts on this, if people want to debate misogyny and violence against women in Korea fine, but don’t twist incidents to prove the point. For example the big incident that has been used recently to “prove” this point was the violent murder of a woman in the Gangnam district of Seoul last year. However, what the activists pushing this narrative do not mention is that the Gangman murderer for years was in and out of mental hospitals and became homeless because his family could no longer handle caring for him due to his mental illness. The guy was certifiably crazy, not a misogynist.
This guy with the hammer attack we don’t know what his motive is yet. Maybe he hates Korean women and decided to just randomly attack one with a hammer. If so then the activists have their case they can champion to prove their point. However, maybe this guy is someone else with a background of mental illness. This statement in the article seems to suggest that:
Kim, who met with Yang after his arrest, said the man was rambling and nonsensical about the motive behind the attack. He does not speak any English, Kim said.
I am sure that as more facts come out this guy’s motive will become more clear, but in the meantime instead making unsubstantiated claims of misogyny lets all hope the victim of this horrible attack is able to make a speedy recovery.
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