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.
To summarize a Columbian man and his Korean wife were walking back to their car at the Busan Costco when the Korean wife yelled loudly for a car to stop which saves the life of little kid who can in front of it. The grandpa of the little kid gets angry at the Korean wife for yelling at the kid and then eventually tries to assault her. However Columbian husband gets in front of him to stop the assault and the grandpa pushes the Columbian to the ground and begins to punch him. While this is going on he is yelling racist remarks the whole time. The assault is caught on camera and yet the police side with the Korean grandpa who is lying and yelling racist remarks the whole time. The police arrest the Columbian man and say this can all go away if he does not pursue the assault charge on the Korean man. The charges are dropped after the Columbian man agrees to not pursue the case against the grandpa and everyone goes home.
The best thing the Columbian man did was not to try and fight back despite being pushed to the ground and having the Korean man on top of him punching him. In Korea you do not have the right to self defense like people in the United States for example may be use to having. If he would have punched the guy back he would likely be in jail for assault. What he was not smart about was trying to pursue the assault charge against the Korean man. He should have just left after the assault was broken up because the odds of the police siding with a foreigner are very low. This is where the swallowing your pride and walking away is the best thing to do. It lets the Korean man save face while the foreigner doesn’t have to worry about getting arrested.
Via a reader tip comes this absolutely horrible murder over in Incheon:
A 17-year-old girl has been arrested for the killing and dismembering of an 8-year-old girl in Incheon. The remains were put into two plastic bags and left on the roof of an apartment building where the suspect lives, the Yeonsu Police Precinct reported Thursday.
The teenager, who dropped out of school and suffers from depression, allegedly committed the act Wednesday afternoon after luring the victim to her apartment in Yeonsu District, western Incheon.
According to police, the victim lived in a different building in the same apartment complex.
The suspect, whose identity is being withheld, met the victim at around 1 p.m. at a playground in the Yeonsu neighborhood. The two had not known each other, according to police. The victim’s friend told investigators the victim asked the suspect if she could borrow her mobile phone to call her mother.
CCTV footage showed the two taking an elevator at around 1 p.m. to go to the suspect’s home. Two hours later, the suspect left the home and later returned. At 4:09 p.m., the suspect left again after changing her clothes. It is believed that the murder took place between 1 and 4 p.m. The suspect’s parents were at work at the time.
Inside the suspect’s home were blood stains and tools that might have been used in the killing. Police declined to go into detail out of respect for the victim’s parents. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
These idiots just never learn that Korean customs inspects the military mail and many people have been caught and arrested for mailing drugs into Korea:
Prosecutors on Wednesday arrested U.S. soldiers and their Korean accomplices for smuggling bags of philopon methamphetamines worth 13.6 billion won ($11.9 million).
Suwon District Prosecutors’ Office arrested an American private, 20, and two Korean-Americans for infringing Korean narcotics laws. Prosecutors also booked without arrest another American private, 20, stationed at K-6 base in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, for providing an address to where the contraband could be sent.
They are also searching for four Korean-Americans.
An accomplice in California sent the drugs to Korea in December, prosecutors claim.
They weighed 4.1 kilograms ― enough for 130,000 users. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but I hope they are sentenced to the maximum penalty allowed by Korean law.
Considering that the suspect is an ethnic Korean it will be interesting to see if the Korean media tries to keep a low key approach to this case or not:
An American soldier of Korean ethnicity has been charged with raping a Korean woman at a Busan guesthouse.
Busan Jungbu police have charged the man, 21, with raping the woman, 24.
The soldier, from a U.S. Forces Korea camp in Gyeonggi Province, made the woman’s acquaintance through an online dating app.
On Feb. 18, he met her in person in Busan while on a brief vacation. At about 4:30 a.m., after they had been drinking, the soldier took her to a guesthouse, where he allegedly raped her.
Police said the man had denied the charge.
The police plan to refer the case to U.S. military police, who will deal with it according to the Status of Forces Agreement between Seoul and Washington. [Korea Times]
The Grammy nominated British DJ Mark Lewis who arrested this past August for drug smuggling at Incheon International Airport ended up getting off with pretty much no punishment:
A Grammy-nominated British DJ was found guilty of smuggling drugs into South Korea last year. The Seoul Central District Court sentenced the DJ, 53, to a year in prison, suspended for two years. A Korean-American was fined 20 million won for buying and using the drugs.
The Briton was arrested at a customs checkpoint at Incheon International Airport last June. He had a 1.5-liter bottle of gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB), also known as the date-rape drug, in his baggage. The court said he smuggled GHB into the country four times — in January, March, April and June. [Korea Times]
You can read the rest at the link, but Lewis admitted to smuggling GHB into the country four times, but the court said they took into consideration that he was not trying to profit from the drugs. So what was he doing with them? Using them to rape women? If he wasn’t the one using them to rape women then he was giving them to someone else to help them rape women.
If people in Korea want to go protest something, then go protest this.
Police have cleared two civilians over a man’s death during a citizens’ arrest.
The civilians, surnamed Kim and Kwon, saw the man carrying out a sexual act near a villa in Suwon on Aug. 13, 2016.
They chased the man and caught him after he collided with a power pole.
They subdued him and handed him to the police, but he died en route to the police station.
The man’s family sued Kim and Kwon in October after the National Forensic Agency found that the death was related to physical impact during the arrest.
But on Saturday, Suwon Nambu police sent the case to the prosecutor, saying there was no evidence for an indictment.
“The police investigated the death and the manslaughter suit against the civilians,” a police official said.
“However, the prosecution concluded there was insufficient evidence to charge the civilians with manslaughter and ordered the case to be designated ‘clear from suspicion’.” [Korea Times]
One of the Army’s most promising generals will be demoted to one star and retired following a scandal that involved sex clubs in Seoul and Rome, high-priced booze and indiscretions with young female troops, the Army announced Thursday.
Ron Lewis, who had been a three-star general and top aide to the then-Defense secretary Ash Carter, will also lose about $10,000 a year in pension payments due to the demotion.
The Pentagon Inspector General “substantiated allegations that Maj. Gen. Lewis misused his government travel charge card for personal expenses, made false official statements regarding his (credit card) misuse, and engaged in conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman on multiple occasions,” Cynthia Smith, an Army spokeswoman, said in a statement. (……)
Army investigators found that Lewis spent more than $1,100 in April 2015 during a visit to the “Candy Bar” in Seoul. The bar, in the city’s red-light district known as “Hooker Hill,” had been deemed off limits to troops. When questioned about the charge, Lewis denied it was his, the Pentagon challenged the expense and got him a new card. [Stars & Stripes]
