Flanked by police officers, the suspect behind the brutal murder of a 23-year-old woman enters a karaoke bar near a subway station in Seoul’s upscale Gangnam district on May 24, 2016, to stage a reconstruction. The 34-year-old man fatally knifed the victim in the bar’s bathroom a week ago in an alleged random crime, whipping up a nationwide outpouring of mourning. (Yonhap)
Gender Minister Kang Eun-hee looks at a myriad of Post-it condolence messages on the wall of a subway exit in southern Seoul on May 20, 2016, which citizens voluntarily left to mourn the brutal murder of a 23-year-old woman in an alleged hate crime. The woman was fatally stabbed by a stranger in a bathroom near Gangnam Subway Station on Tuesday, sparking a nationwide outpouring of mourning. (Yonhap)
This is a senseless and brutal murder by some homeless guy in Gangnam. However, the usual suspects are out trying to paint this as a hate crime despite the fact the homeless guy has a history of schizophrenia and has been in and out of mental hospitals:
Mass public mourning of a 23-year-old woman who was fatally stabbed by a stranger in a bathroom near Gangnam Station, southern Seoul, on Tuesday, sparked a rallying call against misogyny across the nation.
Hundreds of people voluntarily left Post-it condolence notes and white chrysanthemums near Exit 10 of Gangnam Station to mourn the victim’s brutal slaying since Wednesday morning.
Politicians visited the impromptu mourning site, which was proposed by a Twitter user that went viral Wednesday, to pay their condolences. Moon Jae-in, the former chairman of the Minjoo Party visited the station Wednesday morning unaccompanied by aides. On Thursday, Cho Eun-hee, head of the Seocho District Office, and Park Won-soon, Seoul mayor, visited the site as well.
“I will preserve the mourning site as well as the memory of the tragic event,” wrote Park on Twitter. “I’ll try to heal the world into a place where there will be no more killings due to anger and hatred.”
After the police announced Tuesday that the 34-year-old suspect, a homeless man surnamed Kim, admitted that he didn’t know the victim but killed her out of vengeance against women in general for looking down on him, misogyny in Korea became a trending topic online and in the Post-its at Gangnam Station. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link.
Residents of Guryong Village, the last shantytown in Gangnam, Seoul’s wealthiest district, clash with riot police on Feb. 6, 2015, as municipal officials and contractor workers attempt to demolish the village’s community center as part of the area’s redevelopment project. (Yonhap)
Hyundai is thinking big with the construction of what they hope will be a landmark building in Korea:
Hyundai Motor Group began negotiations with the Seoul city government over the construction of a 115-story headquarters at the Samseong-dong plot in Gangnam it purchased from Korea Electric Power Corporation (Kepco) for 10.55 trillion won ($9.6 billion) last September.
According to the city government Sunday, Hyundai Motor has submitted a plan to build the highest building in the country at 571 meters (1,873 feet), 16 meters higher than the Lotte World Tower.
Currently, the country’s highest skyscraper is the North East Asia Trade Tower in Songdo, Incheon, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.
That building, which was finished last July, has 68 floors and is 305-meters high. Offices occupy the first 35 floors, and the remaining floors are used as a hotel and for restaurants.
The world’s fifth-largest automaker said it wants to build a landmark dubbed the Global Business Center at the Kepco site in Gangnam when it purchased the land last year. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read the rest at the link.
I wonder if this brothel owner was not making the appropriate bribes to get raided like this:
“Put your clothes on,” shouted a police officer as he entered a small room during an evening raid on a massage parlor set up as a front to conceal a brothel in Gangnam, southern Seoul.
A man and a woman lying down on a single bed tried hastily to cover their naked bodies with a large bath towel.
The man turned his face away from the officer, while the woman bowed her head.
Four other officers entered another seven rooms connected by a network of underground corridors.
Five government human rights officers and a reporter from The Korea Times accompanied the raid conducted by officers from Gangnam Police Station on Nov. 18.“You have the right to remain silent,” the officer began reading the couple their rights.
The brothel was located in a nondescript, three-story building located in Nonhyeon-dong.
A neon sign was on one corner of the building but it did not specify any of the services available or the activities conducted inside. Outside a man was standing guard with a walkie-talkie in his hand.
When the policemen told him to move aside, he offered little resistance.
A door was then flung open and the policemen ran downstairs.They reached a lounge where a hidden corridor was discovered after an air conditioner was removed.
The operation was made possible by two undercover officers inside the building who posed as customers and text-messaged reports to colleagues waiting outside.
Although the remaining seven rooms were also occupied, officers struggled to break the locks on the doors. By the time they gained entry, men and women inside the rooms were fully clothed and officers were unable to find physical evidence such as used condoms in the room and had to let them go.
“We just had a chat,” said one man, who was accompanied by a woman.
“I was unlucky,” said the man who was caught in bed with a woman, as he was escorted into an unmarked police van.Also taken into custody was a blind man who managed the premises, but officers said he was just a front man and not the real owner. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link.
I wonder if the local government will send in thugs to chase people out of this shantytown like they have done in the past in other neighborhoods in Seoul to get them redeveloped?:
The Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) and Gangnam District Office have agreed to resume a long-stalled project to develop a shanty town in the most affluent district in Seoul, officials said Friday.
Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon and Shin Yeon-hee, head of the district office, will hold a joint press conference next week to announce details of the agreement, an SMG official said.
The SMG and the district office have long been at odds over how to develop Guryong Village, considered the last remaining urban slum in Seoul, and how to compensate the residents.
“The SMG has decided to accept the district office’s demands regarding how to develop the area,” the SMG official said.
The SMG’s change of stance was prompted by a fire in the village on Nov. 10 that left one person dead and destroyed the homes of 136 people. It was the eleventh fire in the village since 2009.
“We understood the urgency for the government to take swift action, since political gridlock means nothing when people die and lose their homes,” the official said. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link.
Did anyone see a naked woman walking around Gangnam last week?:
A viral video of a naked woman on the streets of Gangnam, southern Seoul, uploaded to YouTube last week, is prompting a slew of false rumors.
When the video went viral on Thursday, netizens spread the rumors about how she ended up in her birthday suit. They also claimed that the woman had been questioned by police.
However, Gangnam police said the video had been uploaded four days before, and went viral due to the rumor mongering.
“It seems as if someone deliberately made up stories about an existing video to get attention,” said the police.
“Once we receive reports from the woman or another relevant party, we will find who first spread the video and consider punishment.” [Korea Times]
So let me get this straight, if you take a video of someone walking naked in public in Korea and post it to the Internet, you are the one that gets in trouble?
