Tag: crime

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.

I wonder what the mental health of this guy is current is because this wasn’t a very well thought out robbery:

An American who has lived in South Korea for 20 years was arrested for robbing a lottery shop in Busan, police said Thursday.

According to Haeundae Police Station, the U.S. citizen, 63, entered the shop near Haeundae beach masked on Wednesday night, assaulted its manager and got away with bundles of cash (510,000 won, or $451).

The manager followed him shouting for help. The American was caught after police shot him with a stun gun. 

He reportedly told police he had committed the crime “for money.” According to police, the American entered the country in 1988 and taught English until 2011. He is jobless. 

Korea Times

I hope he enjoys his time in the foreigner prison over in Cheonan.

It seems pretty creepy for someone to wear the jacket of someone that was just killed and then continue to wear it even while being investigated and arrested:

The police said on Saturday that one of four middle-school students arrested in the death of a classmate Friday had worn the victim’s jacket at the time of the arrest and throughout the police investigation.

Four teenagers were booked on charges of causing death from bodily injuries after the other boy fell from the roof of a 15-story apartment building on Tuesday afternoon.

The Incheon Yeonsu Police Station confirmed that the jacket one of the suspects wore to court on Friday belonged to the victim. “The boy was wearing the jacket when we arrested him, and he has not been able to change as he has been under detention since then,” the police said.  [Korea Herald]

You can read more at the link.

I have been saying this for quite some time now, expect every petty USFK crime to now receive attention from the Korean media:

Two United States Forces Korea soldiers were caught stealing clothes from a shop in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province, police said Saturday.

They entered the shop at 11 p.m. Friday, and fled with a jacket priced at 60,000 won ($54), according to Gwangju Dongbu Police Station. Officers, called by the shop’s manager, traced the two and apprehended them.

The two suspects, from an air base in Gyeonggi Province, remained tight-lipped, refusing to answer questions from investigators.

Police are reviewing CCTV footage to help them in their investigation.  [Korea Times]

This is not something that should make national news, but like we saw during the 2000-2008 timeframe every USFK petty crime made the news to help create the perception of out of control GI crime.  It was common for Koreans to think USFK personnel could commit crimes and fly away back to the US.  This caused protests and demands for SOFA revisions.

I long ago showed the problems with the anti-US activists complaints about the US-ROK SOFA and I am still awaiting for one person to point out an example of a crime committed by a GI off duty and the USFK refused to hand him over?  The anti-US activists keep complaining about GI’s getting away with crimes and can’t point out a specific example of when this happened.

Visitors look at a model of a human skeleton to learn more about forensic anthropology during the 2018 International Crime Scene Investigation Conference in Seoul on Nov. 6, 2018. (Yonhap)

This is a lot of people to get rolled up all at once for drug crimes:

Two sailors are already heading to court-martial for using, possessing and distributing the hallucinogenic drug, while three are waiting to see whether they will be charged as well, according to 7th Fleet spokesman Lt. Joe Keiley.

Another 10 sailors with the Japan-based ship were administratively disciplined on LSD-related charges, Keiley said.

A 15th sailor was also disciplined, but that person was not assigned to the carrier’s reactor department.

A South Korean millionaire who founded & runs file-sharing sites notorious for sharing revenge porn/spycam porn videos is under probe for beating & abusing workers by forcing them to eat a handful of raw garlic, dye their hair red/green & kill live chickens with crossbows. https://t.co/icEI5raOxG

— Hawon Jung (@allyjung) November 1, 2018

If the autopsy shows the girl died from alcohol poisoning I would hope these two are charged with at least manslaughter:

An arrest warrant is being sought against two high schoolers on charges of allegedly raping a high school girl, Saturday, the police said. The girl was found dead afterwards.

According to the Yeonggwang Police in South Jeolla Province, two 17 year-old students surnamed Jung and Baek raped the victim, 16, in a motel room in Yeonggwang county on Thursday.

It was between 2:10 a.m and 4:15 a.m. when the two left the crime scene. The victim was later found dead by the owner of the motel who came in to clean up the room, around 4 p.m. that day.

According to the police, Jung and Baek had planned to commit sexual assault after they got the girl drunk in a “drinking game.” They had known the girl since childhood.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.