According to the Hankook Ilbo, Yongsan Police have arrested a 39-year-old illegal immigrant from Bangladesh for drugging and sexually assaulting over 20 women in the Itaewon area, including a 15-year-old middle school girl.
The suspect also took photos and videos of his assaults.
According to the police, the suspect — identified as M — approached the middle school girl on July 13 on a street in Itaewon, claiming to be an English-speaking tourist who wanted to learn Korean. After buying the girl’s trust by buying her dinner, he gave her a drink spiked with hallucinogens.
While the girl was impaired, he brought her home, sexually assaulted her and took photos and videos. She was confined for 31 hours at his home, and discovered later laying on the ground drugged at a nearby subway station.
Based on photos and videos found at M’s home, they confirmed that the suspect did this to about 20 other women, including another middle school girl. Police say M was a sharp dresser who plied the Itaewon streets looking for lone women.
M is an illegal immigrant who entered Korea in 2003. In 2004, he was arrested on charges of illegally confining someone, but was released after the charges were dropped. Police said in the case of the middle school girl, she couldn’t remember much since she was drugged. In fact, the drugs are so powerful the women don’t even realize they’re being assaulted.
Police believe it likely M’s videos were illegally distributed to jeonhwabang (”phone rooms”) and other places of ill repute, and are investigating accordingly.
According to Financial News, M spiked the women’s drinks with sleeping pills. M is also denying the charges against him, saying he did spike the women’s drinks with headache medicine and that the sex was consensual.
The Korea Times has an English version of the story.
Marmot’s Note: Just another Itaewon moment. Sure, the main drag might be gentrifying, but the rest of the place is a fucking hole. My wife won’t even walk home alone from the subway since a carload of West Africans, mistaking her for a Korean, followed her on the street yelling “이리 와”, and then berated her in their native language when she ignored them.
Stories of illegal immigrants kidnapping and raping women — often school girls — occasionally make the news (see here, here, for example). Because I couldn’t find much about the incidents on the ‘Net, I used to think they were bullshit until last year, when a verifiable incident in which a Filipino illegal alien murdered a middle school girl in Yangju during a bungled rape attempt was ignored by the mainstream press. Now I’m starting to think we really do have a problem in some areas.
Perhaps Enoch Jeon was right.
(HT to Hamel)
58 Comments
I don’t quite understand. The put out an arrest warrant but they’ve got all these comments from him and they obviously went to his place and seized a bunch of stuff. Have they arrested him or is he still “at large”?
While tragic, what does being an illegal alien have to do with fact that people are committing crimes. Are you saying that if all the illegal immigrants in Korea were caught and sent home the sexual assault, rape, and murder of women would suddenly end?
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but you seem like a mildly racist person dude. Sorry, but you do.
I don’t buy these “the locals commit crimes too” attempts to shrug off this sort of thing. People have the right to expect foreign guests to behave better than local thugs, just as we expect our children’s guests in our home to behave better than our own kids do.
What is lacking in a sizable minority of foreigners here (among whom Muslims are overrepresented - wonder why?) is the consciousness of being guests at all.
By theway, Enoch WAS right.
I agree with two. You are on very tenuous ground here, Robert.
20 chicks is a serious rape bonanza. I’m sure if they caught some wetback here in NC raping the snot out of blond haired college crackers left and right they’d be out for lynching anything with tan skin in a low-rider. Wish I could work more racial epithets into this… hmmm…
P.S. I’d like to know how statistics for sexual assault stack up for both Koreans and immigrants. If I remember correctly in an earlier post here, someone mentioned overall crime stats were lower for the latter. You also promised a follow-up on a similarly-themed article regarding the proclivities of South Asian men in Ansan. Whatever became of that? Finally, my (non-Korean) wife was followed by a seemingly south Asian man when we lived in Cheongju. I couldn’t use that single anecdotal point to draw the conclusion that there was a problem, however.
#3, then do Korea a favor by fucking off back home. Dunno what you mean per the Muslim reference, but pretty much everyone of them here that I know speaks excellent Korean, many live with their families and none of them I know have commited a crime. Oh yeah, and they are all better behaved than whitey, the ones I know at least.
You certainly paint Itaewon with a pretty broad brush…
Understandably your wife went through an awful situation, but put the foot on the other show and how many stories I’ve heard from caucasian women being berated by Koreans (while being accused of being a Russian prostitute).
Personally I think Itaewon is improving, granted you don’t go up the hill by the fire station. That whole street needs to be redeveloped.
Changed the text to make it more clear. They had him in custody, but they hadn’t gotten their confinement warrant yet.
Perhaps I am. Sorry, but I don’t see the benefits of having a sizable population of illegal Muslim men.
Again, perhaps.
Yes, that was true. But those numbers include large numbers of Chinese, Thais, Vietnamese and other nationalities. I haven’t broken them down by nationality. For drug offenses, for instance, foreigners are less likely to be arrested for drugs than Koreans, but particular foreigners — Canadians and Americans — are much more likely. I’ll try to give you actual numbers, but it will require some fishing around.
That may also be true.
Itaewon is the ghetto. Not calling it the ghetto is not going to stop it from being the ghetto. It’s completely unrealistic to blame RK for calling the place the cesspool that it is.
aaronm:
Do you deny that there are more illegal Muslims here than illegal “whiteys”? And is breaking the law of the host country from day 1 compatible with your definition of “better behaved”?
And do you deny that the issue here is how said illegal Muslims treat local women, something which renders your personal experiences (assuming your ID = whitey male) irrelevant?
I don’t have the stats off hand, but I do believe a large percentage of the English teacher population is illegal. And there’s a large number of crackers and gyopos the country could probably do without, too.
I don’t think he’s saying that’s not the issue. I think he’s saying I don’t have objective statistics to back up the assertion that immigrant men are particularly likely to assault local women/engage in dubious behavior. To which I say he’s right — I don’t have the numbers, and my gut feeling is based primarily on a) news reports that may be exaggerating the problem and b) just what I’ve heard and seen around my own neighborhood.
Itaewon was cool during the world cup….have very rarely been back there since. This story is just one reason why.
GI’s another.
Other reasons are stories I’ve heard about guys (yes men) who live near Itaewon being drugged and then robbed after a night out.
Robert you speak fluent Korean. Living in Itaewon is seriously bad for you. I did it for a year and the next 3 years I spent living as far away from foreign enclaves as I could. You are MUCH better off away from that place, living in the real Korea. That whole area is like some warped version of Korea seen through some demented global lens.
@5, Koreans in general do not give a shit about one another. The degree of collectivism in China or Japan is not shared here.
My gut feeling is based on observing too. The problem is evidently the Muslim’s perception that any young woman not dressed in a veil and walking around alone is (per Islam) behaving indecently, and thus “asking for it.”
Good luck finding the sort of objective statistics that will satisfy the determinedly self-blinkered liberal “whitey.” But talk to even the most left-wing, foreigner-friendly women from European countries with high Muslim populations (or those who have been foolhardy enough to travel sans male escort on the Indian subcontinent) and they will not dispute that Muslim men are indeed different in this respect.
http://www.sullivan-county.com/wcva/fjordman.htm
Par for the course. Sometimes reality and platitudes of tolerance collide.
KrZ — See, the thing is, I spent most of my time here in the “real” Korea. If Itaewon was my intro to Korea, I’d probably be back in New York or DC by now. Frankly, though, as a man, I don’t even find Itaewon that bad, and if that’s the worse Korea has to offer in terms of urban shitholes, well, I guess I have little to bitch about. Haven’t seen any drive-bys yet, after all…
God damn all of a sudden Americans dont seem so bad. Thought of fucking Africans and jihad muslim men roaming around Korea is disgusting.
True, it’s not a real crack-dealing project RK. But still… I just couldn’t handle it. I’ve got to stick with my 시골뜨기 brothers.
Can someone tell me why the gentrification of Itaewon never touches the rough area? It always looks so dead and 설렁하다, I wonder how it keeps going.
Twenty years of campaigning, and rights activists in Bahrain still can’t get rape made illegal. Here’s their latest attempt:
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/da.....t&col=
But there’s no arguing against the Koran: “Your wives are as a tilth unto you; so approach your tilth when or how ye will…” - Qur’an 2:223
Spousal rape is different to this kind of rape of course, but legitimise rape in one area and surely you encourage it in another?
Here’s a recept example from Australia in which four Pakistani brothers attacked 18 victims and the case was kept secret.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles.....94208.html
That’s just an isolated example. And yet in Oslo, two out of three charged with rape are immigrants with a non-western background and the number of rape cases is also rising steadily:
http://www.aftenposten.no/engl.....190268.ece
Of course most Muslims are perfectly good people. But the Koran says rape is okay and areas with increased immigration (read Muslim immigration) see increased levels of rape.
@#8> try being booked 1 hour at Incheon by several KOREAN IMMIGRATION OFFICERS (including ladies) being accused of being a prostitute, when on your 4th perfectly legal trip to Korea, with all proper travel documents and visa, with no history of overstay and/or trouble, and after having paid your taxes while on your previous working trips here.
lovely.
so much for insulting west Africans & Muslims. derogatory comments towards women are a common occurrence in pretty much any country, especially in an area clearly identified as a shithole. but so far, Korea’s the only place I’ve been to where OFFICIALS did it.
itaewon in the past year has gotten lot better. of course, just the other day, i ran into the store across the street from kfc and not 2 minutes went by before a “dark skinned” guy approached my lady friend outside and tried to get her into his car.
I’m going to defend Itaewon. I live there, and tarring it all with the same brush is unfair. Yes, if you wander around there at 3am, you’re likely to see some bad stuff (I saw a Bangladeshi guy get shanked recently), but the same goes for my hometown in England. In fact, I’d say I feel considerably safer walking alone at night here.
That said, my wife would never walk alone at night in Itaewon, but neither did she walk alone at night in Canada or in England. Itaewon at night is bad in a Korean context, but in a world context, it’s nothing at all.
#17 (or those who have been foolhardy enough to travel sans male escort on the INDIAN subcontinent) and they will not dispute that Muslim men are indeed different in this respect.
Notice caps. You’ve forgotten that the vast majority of men there are Hindus, and not Muslims. Or perhaps you have ‘evidence’ that Muslim men are more likely to engage in this behavior.
This is something I have touched on here before. What exactly is a Muslim for your intent and purposes? Most of the ones I know here are Indonesian PhD students, mostly male, mostly married with kids here. They are the least likely people I know to commit offences here. I also know a slew of North African Arabs here, again, for the most part married and making a decent living here. You (and Robert to that end) may even be right that amongst certain sections of the Sub-Continental population there is a ‘problem’ vis-a-vis their approach to gender relations. But let’s not forget that population here also includes Hindus (lots of Nepalis and Indian Hindus here) and unless you conclusively prove thier religion and then establish something more than a list of anectdotes to prove this, you are simply engaging in a spot of bigotry.
“That whole area is like some warped version of Korea seen through some demented global lens.”
IOW, it’s the spoken version of the Marmot’s Hole.
Read the article in the KT today about the Korean guy kidnapping the Canadian teenage girl. It happened in Busan. does that make Busan a ghetto and cesspool too?
#17.
Here’s a recept example from Australia in which four Pakistani brothers attacked 18 victims and the case was kept secret.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles…..94208.html
You’re talking about the Ashfield Gang Rapes here.
The case kept secret? In what way? Two brothers had their names suppressed as they were juveniles when the offences took place. It isn’t widely reported that their accomplice was a Nepali immigrant and there wasn’t a lot of introspection into Hindu culture and sexual violence. The four brothers are now serving between 15 and 24 years. If they ever see the light of day again (the two eldest were bashed in Goulburn’s Maximum Security Prison last year), you can bet your bottom dollar they’ll not get a moment’s peace.
#3,
“What is lacking in a sizable minority of foreigners here (among whom Muslims are overrepresented - wonder why?) is the consciousness of being guests at all.”
Mmm…I’ve lived most of my adult life here and according to my observations one reason for this may be that many Koreans are a bit too overzealous at reminding us that we are guests (I am not. I’m a permanent resident. I have the right to be here.)
Just last night, some old lady interrupted my shopping by asking me, “Where are you from?” with a look of concern in her eyes. I blurted out the name of a random Korean town and went back to my shopping.
#17,
Dude, that guy is a sick criminal. Don’t use his crimes as justification for your own bigotry.
I can appreciate the feelings of a lot of the people posting here. Rapists - especially those who prey on kids - are some of the lowest forms of life on the planet. However, the tone of some of the posts leaves a lot to be desired.
I don’t see the benefits of having a sizable population of illegal Muslim men…
true colors shining through?
i dont see the benefits of sizable population of illegal Christian Canadians, but there is ahelluva of a lot of them
26/bigrich: “Yes, if you wander around there at 3am, you’re likely to see some bad stuff (I saw a Bangladeshi guy get shanked recently), but the same goes for my hometown in England. In fact, I’d say I feel considerably safer walking alone at night here.”
Where in the world do you see someone “shanked” and think it’s normal or an “acceptable” level of crime?!?
17 is right on. My hometown has a sizeable Muslim population and I even had a few friends. That religion’s penchance for violence against women is disgustingly high. Say what you will that most Muslims are good people. I know they are…
Now turn it around and say most Fundamentalist Mormons are good people too… it’s just a case of the few making a bad reputation of the many.
You know what, turn it again, a few Nazis made a bad reputation too… Complicity is no excuse. If I was judge at Nuremberg, I would’ve executed anyone who belonged to the party.
31/Tripod is right. Fanatics can be found anywhere… It’s just coincidence that there are more psycho Muslims than psycho Christians… of course, that’s mostly because Christians immediately label extremists as cults, while Islam’s natural tendency to Catholicism (look it up if you think I mean Roman) allows these whackjobs to still call themselves Muslim.
Can you prove there are more psycho Muslims than Christians? I mean, can it even be done? It’s all a matter of perspective.
People who rape and molest children should be sent to the gallows or put in prison in gen pop.
There is also rape in the Holy Bible.
Judges 21:10-24, Numbers 31:7-18, Deut 20:10-14, Deut 22:28-29 and the list goes on.
Strange, a lot of you are totally fine spewing bigotry and racist remarks in this thread…but when the Korean government/society gets pissed that a foreign bank makes money in Korea…you go all “open your hearts! Why is Korea so anti-globalization? Korean’s are so racist!!!!!!!!!”
#38…..which racist remark? If I say that I dislike Islam, that’s not racism. Islam isn’t a race.
#37…. and you point is what? That two wrongs make a right? That Christians make spousal rape legal on the grounds of holy texts just as Islam does? I hardly think so.
Let’s be clear about this….over half of all women in Yemen are married by the time they are 15 years old. And the justification for this socially accepted child abuse is - Islam.
Show me where the Old Testament is used in a Christian country to justify such things.
#1 - The best thing that ever could happen to Itaewon is a match. It is a slum and should be leveled and juicy bars closed. Too many lives have been ruined over that crap.
#2 - Illegal aliens are ILLEGAL and as such need to go back to where they came and at such time re-enter LEGALLY.
#3 - Muslims seem to be the main ones killing people with car bombs, strapping bombs to their body and blowing up airplanes…..hmm wonder why no americans have a fond place in their heart for muslims.
Idiology is all fine and dandy but at the end of the day, realism is what we have. Get real and stop living in your glass house and watch Barney and Teletubies…
If it was my country and I was LMB, I would deport illegal aliens and screen persons of interest coming in and out of this country. Korea is more tolerant than some OTHER countries but if something of a 911 occurs, watch the hammer come down. And our course it will be committed by someone who is a Muslim. Reality sucks huh…
Racism: a word bandied about so much by assorted victim groups that it is now practically devoid of meaning.
Just some food for thought, but looking through here, it seems that several of the E2 countries are represented in the upper part of this graph*.
http://www.nationmaster.com/gr.....per-capita
Just wonderding what these figures say about culture and attitudes to sexual assault in the west?
*NB, I know reportage will be an issue, before someone else brings it up, but that doesn’t mean that there are still a large number of rapes going on in these places.
#41 - Norway is number 18 on your list, and yet it is a fact that two out of three rapes there are carried out by immigrants from a non-western background (see #23), so your list says nothing about ‘culture and attitudes to sexual assault in the west’.
I think it was GI Korea who found that Korean men were more likely to assault women than foreign men. However, public harassment of women varies across cultures. I experienced more verbal harassment in Indonesia and Malaysia than in Korea, China, or Japan. In Malaysia, ethnic Chinese never bothered me. The catcallers were mostly Indian men. An Indian-born acquaintance living there told me that in India, men would touch her on the street. Other women who have lived in Korea or China and somewhere else have also noted differences. A very attractive young Canadian felt liberated walking the streets in China after frequently hearing sexal remarks in Mexico.
Although apprehensions of undocumented residents have increased in the US, most go free while awaiting their deportation hearing, which they rarely attend. Shockingly, even violent crime suspects have been freed on bail, including one of the thugs who robbed and shot to death execution-style four young people in New Jersey last year. He had previously been arraigned on charges of child rape and aggravated assault.
#42, Marcus, and the rest of the story? Australia?
36 “Can you prove there are more psycho Muslims than Christians?”
Well, according to this article, Catholics are less likely to commit crimes than other groups: http://www.ucanews.com/2008/03.....-indicate/ (note that Protestants are 2nd albeit not a close 2nd)…
This source is ancient (1925) and archive by the Wayback Machine and doesn’t include muslims but shows that religious groups made a disproportionate percentage of the prison population (compared to the state’s population): http://web.archive.org/web/200.....risons.htm
Or how about comparing hard statistics yourself? Muslims make up less than 3% of the UK population but 6.7% of the prison population in England and Wales?
As opposed to Christians who make up more than 71% of the population but only 59.2% of the prison population?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.....ed_Kingdom
http://www.adherents.com/misc/adh_prison3.html
Pfft. You can use statistics to prove anything…
Can you prove there are more psycho Muslims than Christians? I mean, can it even be done? It’s all a matter of perspective
yeah there is your perspective
and then there is reality
#45….would you like me to find statistics for each and every country on this list?
You post to say that the level of sexual assaults are high in E2 countries, I point out that in at least one of them, Norway, it is a proven fact that two out of three rapes are committed by non-western immigrants.
Now you ask about the country in which 4 Pakistanis brutally assaulted 18 young girls and women and then claimed to have been set up because they are Muslim. Is it too much to suspect that what is true about rape statistics in Norway might also be true in Australia?
#47… So you are asserting that the majority of rapes in Australia are the doing of the Muslim population? Could you honestly say, or even back it up with evidence that Muslims there commit more rapes than Whites, Asians or Aboriginals? I don’t know myself, but you seem to be clutching at straws even more than with your Norway argument. BTW, last time I checked, it was not an E2 state, or maybe you work with a bloke called Knut and know something I don’t.
The crime rate for illegal immigrants is 100%, by virtue of the fact they are in the country illegally. They probably committed other crimes in the process as well. If an illegal immigrant commits a crime, or even does things that don’t fit with the local culture, they are not going to get any sympathy from me.
If all the illegal immigrants were caught and deported, crime by illegal immigrants would be at an end.
People who are criticising Robert in this regard are barking up the wrong tree. People have a right to be sensitive about their wife, and when it happens to be just one ethnic group of questionable visa status doing it, then you are going to hold it against them.
#49…”one ethnic group of questionable visa status doing it”
Must…resist…mentioning…the…Canucks….
Too late.
What makes you think the visa status of West Africans here is any more questionable than other groups?
I think my previous comment, which tells me is “awaiting moderation” is invisible, and throwing off the post numbers for some people.
I guess a moderator doesn’t like the fact I actually found statistics that seem to show that muslims do commit more crimes than other religious groups. Of course, similar stats are used in the USA regarding blacks making up a disproportionate amount of prison population…
I’d like to note that I’m not trying to spread hate. Though I quote Homer Simpson in the previous post, let me quote Mark Twain… “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.”
#34 “Where in the world do you see someone “shanked” and think it’s normal or an “acceptable” level of crime?!?”
I don’t, and I didn’t say that at all. All I was saying is that kind of crime is far more prevalent in other places. Like I said, I’m from the UK, and the press there is constantly reporting on an ‘explosion’ of knife crime. Incidents like the one I witnessed recently are incredibly rare here in Korea. They are much more prevalent in any number of major cities around the world.
Like I said, Itaewon is bad by Korean standards. By global standards, it’s very safe.
#42 Just wonderding what these figures say about culture and attitudes to sexual assault in the west?
It could mean a broader definition of rape and a feeling amongst sexual assault victims that the criminal justice system may provide redress.
I suspect tourists outnumber locals on some of those vacation islands listed in the top ten thus inflating rape statistics.
Each country’s laws are different, obviously, but in the US, overstaying one’s visa or entering without a valid visa are civil offenses, not criminal offenses. Using false IDs or working without proper authorization are criminal offenses.
Cut his penis off.
@2 Chiamattt
What race is “illegal immigrant?” Are they from Illigalimmigrantia? While natives and legals also commit crimes, the important point of an illegal immigrant committing the crime is that he was one more criminal that this country could have done without. One part of immigration law is to stop criminals from entering the country.
Twenty women were raped, but (while tragic) you are more concerned over the “greater tragedy” of RK’s use of “illegal immigrant,” a fact of the story.
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but you seem like a mildly sexist, misogynistic person dude. Sorry, but you do.
Crime isn’t something preordained by God and anyone unlucky enough to be nearby is slotted in to do it. Crime is a choice and if there are no illegal aliens, then a country is spared any crimes that such would choose to perpetrate. Doesn’t matter if the illegal population in question is Muslim, Irish, Catholic, Guatemalean, or whatever — makes no difference.
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