Tag: murder

On July 11, 2008 Pak Wang-Ja, a 53 yr-old wife/mom/tourist from SK, while out on a walk, was shot in the back & killed by NK guards at Mt. Geumgang resort in #NorthKorea, funded by SK's Hyundai, allegedly for having walked into a no-entry zone. NK never apologized. #Engagement

— Sung-Yoon Lee (@SungYoonLee1) July 10, 2019

A trip to Jeju that a man took to visit his daughter at his ex-wife’s house did not go very well:

Police have arrested a woman who allegedly murdered her ex-husband on Jeju Island and mutilated his body before discarding it in at least three locations across the nation. 

Ko Yoo-jung, 36, was apprehended at her house last Saturday in Chungju, North Chungcheong Province. 

The victim, surnamed Kang, 36, was meeting Ko on Jeju to see their six-year-old son for the first time in two years since she took custody after their divorce. Kang’s family reported him missing after he didn’t return.

Ko traveled to Wando from Jeju on a ferry three days after the alleged murder. She was caught on surveillance camera footage throwing a plastic bag into the ocean during her trip. 

She had purchased 30 trash bags and a suitcase from a supermarket about two hours before she left Jeju. 

Police suspected that she threw away a similar plastic bag near her father’s house in Gimpo, Gyeonggi Province. She returned to her house on May 31. 

Korea Times

This is an absolutely horrible crime:

A man in Jinju, southeastern South Korea, set his apartment aflame on Wednesday and attacked fleeing residents with a knife, killing five of them and injuring 13, police said.
The arson and murder suspect, identified only as a 42-year-old man, set fire to his apartment building in Jinju, about 435 kilometers southeast of Seoul, at around 4:29 a.m. before randomly stabbing other residents coming out of their houses to evacuate, police said.

Five residents, including a 12-year-old, were stabbed to death in the apartment stairways, and 13 others were injured, with three of them in critical condition, police said.
The suspect was detained on the scene at about 4:50 a.m. after a confrontation with police.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but condolences to all the victims’ families.

There has been another horrible murder incident on Okinawa that will probably get the anti-US protesters riled up again:

A U.S. sailor fatally stabbed a Japanese woman and then killed himself on Okinawa, Japanese officials said.
The two were found dead Saturday morning inside a six-story apartment building in the Kuwae district of Chatan, according to an Okinawa Prefectural Police spokesman.
The woman’s child was present when the incident occurred and called a relative, who then called police at 7:26 a.m., the spokesman said.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

The Indonesian woman accused of murdering Kim Jong-nam was released last month and it appears next month the Vietnamese woman involved in the murder will be let go as well:

A Vietnamese woman who is the only suspect in custody for the killing of the North Korean leader’s brother pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in a Malaysian court on Monday and her lawyer said she could be freed as early as next month.
Doan Thi Huong had faced a murder charge, which carried the death penalty if she was convicted, in the slaying of Kim Jong Nam, who died after being accosted by two women in a Kuala Lumpur airport terminal. Huong nodded as a translator read the new charge to her: voluntarily causing injury with a dangerous weapon, VX nerve agent.
High Court judge Azmi Ariffin sentenced Huong to three years and four months from the day she was arrested on Feb. 15, 2017. Huong’s lawyer Hisyam Teh Poh Teik said his client is expected to be freed by the first week of May, after a one-third reduction in her sentence for good behavior.
“I am happy,” Huong, 30, told reporters as she left the courtroom, adding she thought it was a fair outcome.
While handing out a jail term short of the maximum 10 years the new charge carried, the judge told Huong she was “very, very lucky” and he wished her “all the best.” Vietnamese officials in the courtroom cheered when the decision was announced.

Associated Press

I wonder what the verdict on this would have been if it was a Malaysian murdered like this instead of the son of a foreign despot?

It is speculated that this release was a political favor that Malaysia gave to Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo who goes up for re-election next month:

 An Indonesian woman held for two years on suspicion of killing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s half brother was freed from custody Monday after Malaysian prosecutors unexpectedly dropped the murder charge against her.
Siti Aisyah cried and hugged her Vietnamese co-defendant, Doan Thi Huong, before leaving the courtroom and being ushered away in an embassy car. She told reporters that she had only learned Monday morning that she would be freed.

“I feel very happy,” she said later at a news conference at the Indonesian Embassy. “I didn’t expect that today will be my freedom day.”
The two young women were accused of smearing VX nerve agent on Kim Jong Nam’s face in an airport terminal in Kuala Lumpur on Feb. 13, 2017. They have said they thought they were taking part in a prank for a TV show. They had been the only suspects in custody after four North Korean suspects fled the country the same morning Kim was killed.
The High Court judge discharged Aisyah without an acquittal after prosecutors applied to drop the murder charge against her. They did not give any reason.

The trial will resume Thursday, with prosecutors expected to reply to a request by Huong’s lawyers asking the government to similarly withdraw the charges against her.
Indonesia’s government said its continual high-level lobbying resulted in Aisyah’s release. The foreign ministry said in a statement that she was “deceived and did not realize at all that she was being manipulated by North Korean intelligence.”
It said Aisyah, a migrant worker, believed that she was part of a reality TV show and never had any intention of killing Kim.

MSN via a reader tip

You can read much more at the link, but I like how they call Aisyah a migrant worker when she was a prostitute in Malaysia and that is how the North Korean agent recruited her.

Anyway her co-defendant Doan Thi Huong from Vietnam I suspect will get released as well since Aisyah was let go. The four North Korean agents that organized the murder all fled back to North Korea which means likely no one will be held responsible for murdering someone with a dangerous nerve agent in the middle of a busy international airport.

Via a reader tip comes this news of two former USFK soldiers charged in a murder plot in Michigan:

A woman and her boyfriend were deployed with the U.S. Army in South Korea when they conspired via Snapchat to kill her husband so she could claim the life insurance money, police in Michigan said.

Berrian County Judge Sterling Schrock ruled Wednesday in a preliminary hearing that the murder trial of Kemia Hassel, 22, and Jeremy Cuellar, 24, will begin April 30.
Both have pleaded not guilty in the Dec. 31 killing of U.S. Army Sgt. Tyrone Hassel III. Cuellar was also charged with a felony firearms count.
Authorities say the 23-year-old Hassel was ambushed while visiting his family in St. Joseph Township. He died of multiple gunshot wounds, including one to the head, according to the autopsy report.
All three were soldiers stationed at Fort Stewart in Georgia.
Kemia Hassel told police in a signed statement that she spent months planning how to kill her husband so she could continue her romantic relationship with Cuellar, Township Police Officer Mike Lanier testified Wednesday.
Kemia and Tyrone Hassel married in 2016 and had a 1-year-old son. She told police she was unhappy with her marriage, but didn’t want to go through a divorce because she then wouldn’t be able to receive any life insurance money, Lanier said.
Hassel and Cuellar began plotting while they were deployed in South Korea last year, Lanier said. The pair communicated through Snapchat because they believed the social media app’s temporary messages would make it difficult for police to trace, he said.

Associated Press

You can read more at the link.

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.

This is horrible news out of Okcheon:

A man, 42, has been arrested for allegedly killing his wife and three young daughters in Okcheon, North Chungcheong, police said Monday.

The bodies were found on Saturday. The man had tried, but failed, to kill himself, police said.

The wife’s sister found the bodies when she came to visit. She told police she had heard her sister and brother-in-law complain about their dire financial situation.

The daughters were aged 7, 9 and 10. Police said sleeping pills were scattered around the bodies.

The man’s kendo or Japanese sword-practicing center had been in financial difficulty recently after he reportedly borrowed 250 million won ($224,000) from private lenders.

He allegedly borrowed some of the money under the name of a student and had clashed with the student’s parents.  [Korea Times]