If President Duterte has his way the policemen who kidnapped, ransomed and killed a South Korean man in the Philippines will be executed:
Filipino police officers and other law enforcement officials take their oath during a Senate investigation of a kidnapped South Korean businessman that was allegedly killed by policemen at the police headquarters in Pasay, Metro Manila, Philippines Jan 26, 2017. Pic: AP
On Thursday, President Rodrigo Duterte apologised to South Korea for Jee’s death, saying he wanted to hang the rogue police allegedly responsible and send their heads to Seoul, Reuters reported.
He called again for the death penalty to be reinstated so that he could hang 20 criminals a day.
Duterte also promised the toughest punishment for those behind the kidnapping and killing of the businessman inside the national police headquarters in October.
The death of the South Korean comes as the Philippine police face growing criticism from rights groups and some lawmakers, who say cover-ups and abuses of police power are rampant. [Asian Correspondent]
Here is evidence that the President Duterte’s drug crackdown is being used as cover for illegal activity:
The Philippine national police chief apologized to South Korea on Thursday over the death of a Korean man who was arrested illegally and then slain by members of an anti-drug task force at the main police camp in Manila.
Police Director-General Ronald Dela Rosa said the policemen detained Jee Ickjoo with a fake arrest warrant last October with the intent of holding him for ransom, but killed him the same day. He said they then extracted a ransom payment from Jee’s family without telling them Jee was dead. [Washington Post]
Here is a real dirtbag that hopefully will be spending the rest of his life in prison:
A man who killed his pregnant girlfriend also attempted to murder his ex-lover, a court said Monday.
Daejeon High Court, sitting as an appeal court, sentenced the man, 37, whose name has been withheld, to 35 years’ jail, increasing the initial 30-year sentence because of his “inhumane sin.”
The court said the man went to Jeju Island with his girlfriend last November to search for a place to open a restaurant. The couple spent a night at a motel and next morning had an argument over financial issues. The man then tried to strangle the woman because she “disrespected him.” When he found she was not dead, he made another attempt using a hairdryer cord.
The man then put the woman’s body into their rental car and set the vehicle alight to make her death look like it was the result of an accident. [Korea Times]
You can read the rest at the link, but the guy was recently out of prison for trying to kill his ex-girlfriend.
It looks like the US military may have its first execution in more than half a century:
A Kansas federal judge has lifted a stay of execution for a former soldier sentenced to death for two killings and a series of rapes, inching the man closer to becoming the military’s first death sentence carried out in more than a half century.
U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten last week sided with the U.S. government in denying a bid by former Fort Bragg, N.C., soldier Ronald A. Gray to block the military from pressing ahead with the execution by lethal injection.
Since a military court sentenced him to die in 1988, Gray has been held at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where the military carried out its last execution when it hanged Army Pvt. John Bennett in 1961 for raping and trying to kill an 11-year-old Austrian girl. [The Virginian Pilot]
Individuals identified as South Korean nationals were found dead on Tuesday in the Philippines, according to South Korean media. (UPI Photo/Jennifer S. Kimball/NVNS)
Police in southern Korea have arrested a suspect in the murder of three Koreans in the Philippines, in a fresh twist to a grisly saga first linked to a spate of vigilante killings.
The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency on Thursday said the suspect, surnamed Kim, was arrested in Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province. (…………..)
Police said Kim lived in the Philippines when the murders took place and had been close to the victims. He returned to Korea on Oct. 13, a day after the murders.
Police are also searching for another Korean man in his 30s surnamed Park, who was also close to the victims and is believed to be still in the Philippines. (……………….)
“The three victims and the suspects did not know each other in Korea but appear to have met in the Philippines,” a police spokesman said. “We have reason to believe that the two suspects committed the crime to get their hands on the victims’ money.” [Chosun Ilbo]
Here is a really odd story of a gunfight in Seoul with a criminal using six homemade guns. This just goes to show that if a criminal really wants a gun they can get one:
A police officer was killed in a gunfight with a criminal suspect in northern Seoul and the suspect involved in the shooting has been apprehended, law enforcement authorities said Wednesday.
In the gunfight that began at around 6:30 p.m. in front of a tunnel near Beon-dong in northern Seoul, the 45-year-old suspect, identified only by his family name Seong, opened fire with a privately manufactured gun, according to the police.
The police responded to a report that the suspect had attacked his neighbor with a blunt object. He ran into the tunnel after he spotted the police and was carrying six guns, all made of wood, when he was apprehended, a police officer said.
The suspect is presumed to have made the wooden guns based on manufacturing methods available from the Internet.
The suspect cut off an electronic monitoring bracelet that he was wearing due to previous involvement in a sexual offense before he began to run towards the tunnel, the officer said.
A police officer, 54, was shot in the gunfight and was rushed to the hospital for treatment, but died during surgery. The neighbor who was attacked, who also turns out to be the suspect’s landlord, is undergoing treatment for his wounds.
The landlord and the tenant were engaged in an argument before he became violent. The police have begun an investigation into what caused the verbal fight. [Yonhap via a reader tip]
Three Korean victims found earlier this week in a remote sugarcane field in the Philippines with gunshot wounds to their heads were identified as primary suspects in a multi-million-dollar investment fraud, local media reported Friday.
The three Koreans were found dead by a local farmer on Tuesday in a sugarcane field in the rural town of Bacolor, 75 kilometers (47 miles) northwest of Manila.
They were a 48-year-old man, a 52-year-old man and a 49-year-old woman. The victims were confirmed by their fingerprints to be Korean nationals on Wednesday.
The Korean police told local media on Friday that the three victims were suspects of an investment fraud worth 15 billion won ($13.25 million).
The three individuals left the country before police formally launched an investigation, the Yonhap News Agency reported.
The victims were executives in an investment corporation that they created last year, and the 48-year-old male victim worked as its president.
They jointly operated the company for approximately one year, using a multi-level marketing investment scheme based on foreign exchange margin trading, police were quoted as saying.
While the president of the firm and the female victim were not married, they pretended to be, police said, luring investors to trust them with large sums of money with the promise of high returns.
Victims of the alleged fraud requested police since the summer to investigate the suspects. One petition was filed at the Songpa District Precinct in August and two more were filed to the Suseo District Precinct in September.
Police said the victims left Korea as the investigation was forming. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but I wonder if they were working for a Korean organized crime group and killing them was a way to keep them quiet after they were targeted to be investigated by authorities?
This makes me wonder if these three were killed as part of feuding between drug gangs or as part of the government’s drug crackdown? I guess we will find out as more details become available:
Individuals identified as South Korean nationals were found dead on Tuesday in the Philippines, according to South Korean media. (UPI Photo/Jennifer S. Kimball/NVNS)
Three people, at least two of who were identified as South Korean nationals, were found dead near a small Philippine city on Tuesday.
All three individuals were found with gunshot wounds, with their wrists or legs bound with electric tape, South Korean news service Newsis reported on Thursday, local time.
The bodies were discovered in a sugar cane field near the city of Bacolor in Pampanga Province, about 50 miles from Manila, at around 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday.
Of the victims, two men and a woman who were in their 40s and 50s, one man had had his legs tied with electric tape, and the woman’s wrists were bound.
No arrests have been made and the case is under investigation.
Violent deaths of South Korean nationals in the Philippines have been on the rise in 2016, with the death count up to 6 this year. [UPI]
This is just a horrible story coming out of Pocheon, north of Seoul:
A middle-aged couple was arrested Sunday for allegedly binding their 6-year-old adopted daughter with duct tape for 17 hours and, when she suffocated, burning her body on a mountain.
The couple denied intentionally killing the girl and said she was being punished for being “too gluttonous.”
Police requested a pre-trial detention warrant Monday for the 47-year-old man and his 30-year-old wife on charges of murder, physical abuse, as well as the mutilation and abandonment of a dead body.
A 19-year-old woman living with the couple in Pocheon, Gyeonggi, was also apprehended on the same charges. Police identified the teenager as a daughter of the father’s close friend, who allegedly took some – if not equal – part in the crime.
The three suspects said during police questioning that they habitually struck the child with their bare hands or a fly swatter because she didn’t obey orders.
Last Wednesday night, they allegedly bound the girl up with duct tape and left home, returning 17 hours later to find her struggling to breathe.
The adoptive mother claimed she performed CPR on the child before she took her last breath. The three moved the body to the couple’s car Friday and drove to a nearby mountain. They allegedly burned the body to hide the evidence. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more of the details at the link, to include how the police determined the adopted parents killed the girl.
Tragic story out of Daegu involving the search for a 11-year old boy after his mother was found dead in the Nakdong River and his 26-year old sister was found dead at a park:
Police in Daegu have started a search for an 11-year-old boy who went missing after leaving his apartment with his mother on Sept. 15.
The mother, 56, surnamed Cho, was found dead in the Nakdong River earlier this week, as was his 26-year-old sister, whose body was found at their apartment.
On Friday, the police released three photos of the boy nationwide, Ryu Jeong-min, caught by surveillance cameras.
Taken at three different locations, the photos captured the 11-year-old leaving the apartment building, leaving an elevator and picking up groceries at a supermarket. He was last seen at his apartment lobby as he was leaving with his mother.
Police said the boy is estimated to be 140 centimeters tall and wearing a white T-shirt with blue sleeves, dark pants and a cap.
Finding him is crucial to unraveling the mysterious deaths of his sister and mother, but the police said they don’t rule out that the boy might have killed himself. [Korea Times]
