Tag: crime

I absolutely called this one that the next time we see Cho Kuk’s younger brother he would be in a wheelchair. He had earlier tried to avoid arrest by claiming he had a bad back, now he is wheelchair bound and even added a neck brace for added dramatic effect:

The prosecution again sought an arrest warrant for a younger brother of former Justice Minister Cho Kuk on Tuesday over a hiring scandal and an alleged fake lawsuit surrounding a private school foundation run by his family.

State prosecutors asked a Seoul court to issue a warrant to formally detain the 52-year-old man over charges, including breach of duty, bribery, obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting destruction of evidence.

The brother, who worked at the Woongdong school foundation, is alleged to have leaked test questions and answers to two people who applied to teaching posts at a middle school run by the foundation and received 210 million won (US$180,102)

He is also suspected of incurring financial losses to the school foundation by filing a fraudulent lawsuit against it over construction costs.

The prosecution claimed the younger Cho should be arrested, given that two brokers who gave the money to him were already taken into custody. A court review of the request will be held probably on Thursday.

The prosecution earlier sought an arrest warrant for him, but a local court rejected to issue it on Oct. 9, saying the charges are disputable.

If the warrant is issued, he would be the third member of the former minister’s family to be arrested.

Chung Kyung-sim, Cho’s wife, was arrested last week on a total of 11 counts of charges including an alleged forgery of a school award for her daughter and a dubious investment in a private equity fund. A son of Cho’s cousin involved in the fund was also arrested in mid-September.

Yonhap

As you can see the Korean media continues to blur the faces of those involved with the Cho Kuk scandal. For this brother they don’t even give his name instead call him the younger Cho. This very much unlike what they did with everyone involved with the President Park Geun-hye impeachment who the media did everything possible to personally destroy.

This is interesting, one of the murders that the Hwaseong Serial Killer has admitted to already had someone jailed for the crime:

A man who spent nearly 20 years in prison for raping and killing a teenage girl is seeking a retrial to be exonerated after the notorious Hwaseong serial killer claimed responsibility for what was believed to be a “copycat” murder.

Lawyer Park Joon-young said Wednesday he will represent the man, 52, surnamed Yoon.

“For Yoon, this is a heaven-sent opportunity (to prove his innocence). I won’t waste it,” Park wrote on Facebook. “I will form a team of lawyers and, once completed, reveal their names.”

The development comes after Lee Chun-jae, 56, the prime suspect in at least nine murders between September 1986 and April 1991, claimed responsibility for the Sept. 16, 1988 so-called “copycat” murder ― 30 years after Yoon was convicted of killing the girl, 13, surnamed Park.

Speaking to Channel A, a local broadcaster, Yoon claimed police forced him to make a false confession after they assaulted and tortured him.

Yoon, then 22, was arrested in 1989 for killing the girl at her home. He was later sentenced to life in prison, which the Supreme Court upheld in May 1990. After spending 19 years and six months behind bars, he was released in 2009 for good behavior.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

What a sicko, it makes me wonder how long he has been doing this?:

An Air Force colonel pleaded guilty Friday to receiving child pornography online and taking photos of underage girls without their consent, according to the Department of Justice.

Col. Mark Visconi, 48, of Fairfax, Va., used an online bulletin board dedicated to sharing illegal images of minors between November 2015 and June 2016, according to the release from the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia. A forensic review of his laptop showed that Visconi downloaded and viewed numerous child pornography images and videos using an anonymous web browser.

Titles indicated he downloaded videos of girls as young as 3 years old, according to court documents. In another, investigators noted the girl had a pillowcase with characters from the animated film “Beauty and the Beast.”

The plea documents also noted Visconi used his cell phone to create more than 440 pictures focused on the clothed buttocks of minor girls, according to the release. In a smaller subset of these pictures, Visconi appeared to take “upskirting” images of some of the girls, who did not appear to know that pictures were being taken.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

The top story in Korea that is headlining all its news outlets is the announcement that the Hwaseong Serial Killer has been identified after all these years:

Police may have solved one of the Korea’s most mysterious cold cases: the serial rapes and murders of nine women in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi, in the late 1980s.  

According to Ban Ki-soo, a chief investigator at the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency on Thursday, newly analyzed DNA evidence from three of the nine cases matched the DNA of a 56-year-old convict surnamed Lee currently serving a life sentence in Busan for a different murder he committed in 1994.  

This discovery could very well bring a resolution to one of the most notorious serial rape and murder sprees in Korean criminal history, which terrified Korea from 1986 to 1991 and remained unsolved for three decades.  

Yet the suspect, who was in his 20s at the time of the killings, can no longer be charged for any of those crimes since the statute of limitations for the last of the murders expired in April 2006. He has denied responsibility for all nine murders, police said.

Lee is serving a life sentence in the Busan Penitentiary for raping and murdering his wife’s sister, aged 20 at his home in Cheongju, North Chungcheong, in January 1994. According to press reports, he is a model prisoner with a taciturn personality who is eligible for parole.

A 10-victim rape and murder spree of the late 1980s and early 1990s terrified the nation — particularly due to the authorities’ inability to find a culprit — and was compared to the so-called Zodiac killings in California in the late 1960s. The killings gave rise to copycat crimes and inspired one of the most iconic blockbusters of Korean cinema, “Memories of Murder.” 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but here is a video report of the announcement from Arirang News:

The suspect could have likely been identified sooner if the investigators back when the crimes happened did not discard so much evidence such as cigarette butts found at the scene that would have much DNA evidence. Instead modern day forensic scientists using new technology were able to extract DNA from the victim’s clothes that were saved as evidence to make this DNA match.

For those that haven’t I highly recommend watching the Korean movie, Memories of Murder which uses a dramatized account of the investigation to show how incompetent it was and the killer’s impact on Korean society back then.

What I have not been able to find out is if the identified killer was even a suspect during the time of the killings? The police back then had many suspects that they were trying to pin the murder on, so it would be interesting to see if this guy was even on the police’s radar back then.

Since they are left wing activists I would be surprised if anything significant happens to them for forcibly occupying the office of a prominent Korean opposition lawmaker:

Police on Saturday requested arrest warrants for two members of a progressive collegiate association for trespassing.

The two had occupied Liberty Korea Party Floor Leader Na Kyung-won’s office as part of a protest, Yeongdeungpo Police Station said Sunday. They are reportedly college students. 

They were among 22 members of the group who had occupied Rep. Na’s office at around 10 a.m. Friday to stage a protest demanding Na and Liberty Korea Party chief Hwang Kyo-ahn step down from their positions.

The members are calling for Na and Hwang to resign based on claims that Na made an inappropriate remark on Korean history and Hwang tried to cover up Kim Hak-eui’s sex bribery scandal and hindered attempts to find the truth regarding the Sewol Ferry tragedy.

During the 40-minute protest, the members chanted and carried placards. They also formed a scrummage by lying down on the ground when the National Assembly’s security staff tried to stop them.

The members were dragged outside of the building some 50 minutes after the protest began. Police took the members to the police station after they continued their protest in front of the building.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link, but the police should have arrested all 22 of them for forcibly occupying the office and making a disturbance.

Stories like this make me want to do a complete check of a hotel room in Korea for these spy cameras:

Two men who installed miniature spy cameras in 30 motels and live-streamed footage of around 1,600 guests were arrested, police announced Wednesday. 

Since August last year, a 50-year-old man surnamed Park and a 48-year-old man surnamed Kim installed spy cameras in 42 rooms in 30 motels located in 10 cities throughout the country.

The diameter of the camera lenses was smaller than 1 millimeter (0.04 inches), and the two men installed them in parts of TVs, power sockets and even in the hangers for hair dryers that hang on the wall in bathrooms.

Each camera had a wireless function that allowed the men to upload online videos taken on the camera to various websites.

The lives of around 1,600 guests in these motel rooms were streamed live on a pornography website that Kim ran on an overseas server.

Park and Kim made users pay for the videos on the website, and they made some 7 million won in total ($6,197) from 97 members.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but it seems like this is a small payoff considering the expense and work that went into installing the cameras.

I have been reading about this K-Pop sex scandal over the past week and can’t help but wonder why anyone is surprised this was going on?:

Police booked a serving police lieutenant as a suspect and are questioning an elite senior officer as a key witness in the mushrooming sex, drugs, celebrities and police protection scandal surrounding the Burning Sun nightclub.

Following the questioning of an elite police officer on Friday, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said Sunday that it booked a lieutenant at the Gangnam Police Precinct as a suspect for criminal negligence related to illegal activities at the club in Gangnam District, southern Seoul, which was partly owned by K-pop megastar Seungri. 

The club was located in the precinct where the lieutenant, only identified by his surname Kim, worked. This is the first time that a current police officer has been identified as a suspect in the scandal. 

Kim was accused of criminal negligence in his handling of a complaint against Burning Sun in July last year. A complaint was filed that an underage guest entered the club and drank alcohol, but Kim closed the case, saying there was not enough evidence. Kim also allegedly advised the prosecution that there was no case to pursue.

It appears that the police are speeding up their investigation, as the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office was assigned to investigate a separate but related case concerning several illicit activities discussed in KakaoTalk chat rooms by Seungri, his business partner and other celebrities. The suspected crimes include sexual assault, taking and sharing sex videos without the consent of women in them, prostitution, using drugs, bribing police and tax evasion.

“The scandal seems to be going on for a while, and it is uncomfortable that the police keep being mentioned,” a police official told the JoongAng Ilbo. “We want to quickly and sternly investigate the urgent issues.” 

One of the urgent issues concerning the police is the suspicion that an elite member of the police, who once served at the Moon Jae-in Blue House, was involved in the crimes. The senior superintendent of the National Police Agency, only identified by his surname Yun, was suspected of having maintained a close relationship with Seungri, whose real name is Lee Seung-hyun, and his business partner, Yu In-seok. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

An Air Force lieutenant got in struggle for “strangling” a Korean taxi driver:

A U.S. Air Force 1st lieutenant assigned to the 51st Fighter Wing at Osan Air Base was reprimanded in February for strangling a Korean national after a night of drinking, according to a recent discipline update.

The lieutenant “grabbed a Korean National taxi driver’s neck while riding in the taxi after 1 a.m., the curfew time for U.S. forces in Korea,” Capt. Rachel Salpietra, a 51FW spokeswoman, told Task & Purpose.
The driver declined to press criminal or civil charges and accepted a voluntary settlement from the service member, Salpietra said, adding that alcohol “appears to have been involved” in the incident.

Task and Purpose via a reader tip

The article was headlined that he strangled the taxi driver, but grabbing his neck with no charges filed is quite different. Nevertheless the lieutenant was given an Article 15 and the punishment shared in an email that was headlined as “strangling” a taxi driver.

This caused people on the popular Air Force amn/nco/snco Facebook page to complain:

A senior airman found guilty of larceny for stealing a blanket was reduced in rank to an E-3 and forced to forfeit $1,116 in pay a month for two months.

Another senior airman found guilty of stealing a blanket and jacket was reduced in rank to an E-3 and slapped with 45 days restriction. (….)

“What I’m going to take from this is if you get cold, strangle a Korean national,” wrote one Air Force amn/nco/snco reader, “but whatever you do, DON’T STEAL A EFFING BLANKET.”

The difference is that the two airman robbed a Korean store for those items. So what is worse grabbing a taxi driver by the neck while drunk past curfew or willfully robbing a store?

The other thing to remember is that the airman can likely recover career wise from their discipline, the lieutenant on the other hand has his career ended since any promotion board will see the Article 15 and reprimand.

Makes me wonder how big the market for fake refugee applications is in the US if this is even happening in South Korea:

A 34-year-old Ukrainian woman was sentenced to 14 months in jail for helping other foreigners draft fake refugee applications, Tuesday.

The Incheon District Court said the woman “repeatedly disrupted immigration processes” by writing false refugee applications for 57 foreign clients who arrived in Korea on temporary B-1 or E-9 visas.

According to court documents, the woman cooked up clients’ stories telling of prosecution in their home countries, including kidnapping, rape and unfair treatment by law enforcement, between March 2017 and June 2018. She was paid 200,000 won per application by a broker company that linked her with the foreign clients.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.