2 Chinese men indicted for allegedly filming US aircraft carrier at naval base in S. Korea
The Busan District Prosecutors Office recently indicted the two Chinese nationals -- both students in their 30s and 40s enrolled at a university in Busan -- on charges of benefiting an enemy and undermining national military interests.
Under South Korean law, individuals convicted of such offenses may face imprisonment of at least three years up to life imprisonment.
The two are accused of flying a drone near the Korean Fleet Command in southern Busan nine times between March 2023 and June 2024. They allegedly used the drone to illegally record footage of the naval base as well as the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt while it was docked in Busan.
The two proceeded with the filming even on June 25, 2024, when former President Yoon Suk Yeol visited the Theodore Roosevelt to inspect the vessel and meet with South Korean and U.S. service members, which heightened security.
Their illegal filming content totaled 11.9 gigabytes comprising 172 photos and 22 videos, with some of them distributed to TikTok and other Chinese social media.
Separately, another Chinese woman in her 30s is also under investigation by prosecutors after being referred on suspicion of violating the military base law, the sources added. (Yonhap)
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Korea Herald
31 minutes ago
- Korea Herald
[Lee Kyong-hee] Fake news, false reports, conspiracy theories
Within hours after President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on Dec. 3, a rabid right-wing YouTuber contended that 99 Chinese spies were apprehended at an election management facility and transported to a US military base in Okinawa, Japan. Thereafter, social networks were rife with rumors that the Chinese accounted for 30 percent of anti-Yoon protesters demanding his impeachment. Nonsensical online demagoguery? Of course. But to many supporters of the disgraced YouTube-addicted former president, it rang true. After all, during his turbulent presidency, Yoon often blamed Chinese influence on domestic politics and elections without providing evidence. The Yoon supporters eventually descended on an enclave of lamb skewer restaurants mostly run by ethnic Koreans who left China for their ancestral homeland in search of better opportunities. Screams of 'Go back to China!' and 'Commies, disappear quickly from the Republic of Korea!' filled the air near Konkuk University, eastern Seoul. The pathetic scene of violence evoked a sense of deja vu. Rewind to July 1931, when Japan hyped a minor dispute between local Chinese farmers and Korean settlers in Manchuria to justify its aggression. The dispute began when a group of Koreans subleased land outside of Wanpaoshan village, north of Changchun, Jilin province, and began digging an irrigation ditch in an area not included in the sublease. Some 400 Chinese farmers, armed with farming tools, confronted the Koreans, and the Japanese consulate in Changchun dispatched police under the pretext of protecting subjects of their empire. The Chinese security authorities also sent police. The clash ended with several Chinese wounded, but Japanese police officers and Korean farmers unharmed. To ignite anti-Chinese sentiment, the Japanese colonial authorities had Korean newspapers publish fabricated reports claiming that hundreds of Koreans were killed during the so-called 'Wanpaoshan Incident.' Anti-Chinese riots erupted across Korea, causing hundreds of Chinese casualties and major property damage. Meanwhile, anti-Korean riots in China continued under Japan's wartime propaganda. Months later, a New York Times dispatch from Changchun dated Nov. 4 said: 'Fully 10,000 Korean farmers have been massacred by Chinese or slain while defending their homesteads during the last six weeks in Jilin Province alone, according to an estimate given out here today by a Japanese General commanding a division of 5,500 troops.' The media manipulation thus turned a minor skirmish between farming groups into a major conflict, devastating an ethnic community and eventually dealing a fatal blow to Korean independence movements in the broader Manchurian region. Fast forward to chaotic post-liberation Korea in 1945. Freed at last from four decades of harsh foreign rule, Koreans failed to achieve national unity and fell victim to great power politics. Again, newspapers played a role -- significant, if not decisive -- in the partition of the peninsula under two contesting regimes. In the summer of 1945, Koreans expected their country would quickly become free and independent again. They were not aware that the big powers, under US initiative, were considering a four-power trusteeship that might last as long as 40 to 50 years. The trusteeship issue was resolved by the foreign ministers of the US, the UK and the Soviet Union, who convened in Moscow in December 1945. Their communique, adopting the Soviet draft concerning the Korean question, stipulated a four-power trusteeship for up to five years to supervise a unified provisional Korean government, which would be established by a US-Soviet joint commission. On Christmas Day, before the announcement of the final decision, the United Press reported from Washington that 'Secretary of State Byrns went to Russia reportedly with instructions to urge immediate independence as opposed to the Russian thesis of trusteeship.' Korean media carried the story on Dec. 27, each editing and compiling it as they saw fit. The news bombarded the already polarized political scene. The idea of 'trusteeship' itself was unacceptable; anti-trusteeship became a strong rallying point for the right. The rightist Dong-A Ilbo had an inflammatory headline: 'Soviet Union Asserts Trusteeship; United States Asserts Immediate Independence.' The rightists seized upon the opportunity to denounce communists as 'country-selling Soviet stooges.' The US Military Government in Korea added to the confusion by deliberately implying that trusteeship was solely a Soviet policy. Amid extreme confrontation between the right and the left, leading politicians from both camps were assassinated. The turmoil ever deepened. The North-South division perpetuated. Much about the controversial newspaper reports on the Moscow conference, regarded as among the worst Korean press performances to date, remains a mystery. None of the newspapers offered an apology for false reporting, disregarding the basic principles of fact-checking and verification, nor did they elucidate the background of their reporting. Most recently, the press coverage of the visit by Morse Tan, a Korean American law professor and former US ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice, raises questions about his identity as well as evidence of his claims about election fraud in South Korea and President Lee Jae-myung's childhood. The press should focus more on fact-finding to enhance accountability and win back the public's trust, which has been lost to social media. Today's information disorder and consequent conundrum, complicated by the proliferation of new media and the ever-present foreign interference, requires unwavering journalistic integrity and professionalism. News consumers also need to improve their information literacy. Ultimately, they get the media they deserve.
Korea Herald
16 hours ago
- Korea Herald
Yoon's insurrection trial on hold as courts begin summer recess
Former President Yoon Suk Yeol's criminal insurrection trial over his short-lived martial law imposition, will be put on hold, as courts across the country begin a summer recess on Monday. The Seoul Central District Court, where Yoon's trial is being held, is scheduled to enter a two-week annual summer recess period from Monday to Aug. 8, a notice posted on its website showed Sunday. During this period, the court will have a reduced schedule for hearings. For all civil cases, hearings and preparatory and conciliation proceedings will be temporarily halted. Dates for criminal trials without detention and hearings and trials that 'do not have a significant impact on human rights' will not be held in the cited period. However, hearings on motions for provisional attachment or preliminary injunctions of civil cases, reviews of criminal trials for defendants held in custody, detention hearings before arrest and related reviews, will be carried out as scheduled during recess. Other trials and proceedings can also continue, if the court deems it necessary. Other courts nationwide will adopt similar rules during their respective summer recess period, which would take place around late July to mid-August. The Seoul Central District Court has so far held 12 hearings for Yoon's insurrection trial. Yoon has not attended his trial for three consecutive hearings, citing poor health. He is currently detained at the Seoul Detention Center in Uiwang, just south of the capital. After the two-week recess wraps-up, Yoon faces a separate trial at the Seoul Central District Court, over additional charges of abuse of power and violating the Presidential Records Act, tied to his martial law bid. The charges were brought by the special counsel team led by prosecutor Cho Eun-seok and the first preparatory hearing is scheduled for Aug. 19. The next hearings in the trials of Yoon's aides, including that of former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun, will not take place until mid-August. Kim has been charged with insurrection and abuse of power for deploying the military to the National Assembly in an unsuccessful attempt to block lawmakers from voting to overturn Yoon's martial law decree.
Korea Herald
16 hours ago
- Korea Herald
Korea may be more 'lenient' toward child-killers than parent-killers: report
Recent court rulings gave far heavier punishments to those who killed their ascendants than to those who killed their descendants South Korean courts tend to give lighter sentences to those who killed their offspring than those who killed their parents or grandparents, an analysis of court data by a local media outlet indicated on Sunday. Yonhap News Agency said it analyzed court rulings involving 85 individuals convicted of related charges from 2022 to January of this year, finding that those who killed their ascendants -- individuals directly above them in the family tree, such as parents or grandparents -- were sentenced to an average of 15.7 years in prison. In contrast, those who killed their descendants, such as children or grandchildren, received an average of 7.7 years. The Criminal Act's Article 250 stipulates that those convicted of murder must be punished with at least five years in prison and permits the death penalty. The second clause of the act states that those who killed an ascendant can also receive capital punishment, but the minimum is seven years in prison. No separate legal clause exists for the killing of a descendant. The Yonhap report showed that all of the 53 people convicted of killing an ascendant received a prison term, half of them jailed for at least 15 years, while two were given life sentences. In comparison, four of the 32 convicted of murdering a descendant were given suspended sentences, while a majority of those charged (22 or 68.8 percent) were jailed for three to nine years. An overwhelming majority of the victims in the descendant murder cases, 23 people, or 79.3 percent, were minors. But only one person was sentenced to life in prison -- a man convicted in 2023 of murdering his wife and two teenage sons for "looking down on him." No sympathy for murdered children? Few countries apply different charges for the murder of relatives, and it is extremely rare for the law to treat the murder of a parent and that of a child differently. In Italy, murder of a family member can be regarded as "aggravated homicide," but that distinction is not applied solely to ascendents or descendants as it is in Korea. Official statistics compiled by the Supreme Prosecutors' Office have categories for murders of ascendants, death resulting from child abuse, and infanticide, but not a category for the killing of one's own children or grandchildren. As legal experts have noted over the years, many countries hand out aggravated punishments for the murder of minors. An academic journal article published in 2022 by the Justice Development Foundation found that 26 of the 50 US states issue harsher punishments for the murder of minors. Not only does South Korean law have no legal category for such cases, some cases suggest that courts do not impose aggravated punishments on parents for the murder of young children. A mother who killed her 12-year-old son and severely injured her nine-year-old daughter was jailed for seven years by the Daejeon District Court last year because she was "deeply remorseful and would likely live the rest of her life in guilt and regret." The Yonhap report noted that the "guilt" of the defendant was mentioned in 16 rulings related to the killing of descendants, suggesting the courts were relatively sympathetic toward those who killed their offspring. But most of the rulings on murders of ascendants mentioned the phrases "anti-social (38 times)," "humanity (33 times)" and "deprivation of humanity (12 times)." Just a week ago, a 62-year-old man killed his 34-year-old son over what he claimed was a lack of financial support, although the bereaved family denied this claim and said both the victim and the suspect's long-divorced wife had given him money. The man is currently under investigation, but he will be charged in court with ordinary murder, as no separate legal clause on killing one's own offspring exists in Korea. There is an ongoing debate about the murder of children, with some saying it should be added to the Criminal Act as a crime separate from murder while others say the provision regarding the murder of an ascendant should be removed. Multiple attempts to legislate punishment for the murder of one's children were made in the previous National Assembly, all of which were discarded or have yet to be deliberated.
