The 43-year-old Busan man who was recently convicted of raping his 25-year-old Filipino wife — Korea’s first conviction for the crime of marital rape — has committed suicide.
According to the KT report, he left a note complaining about the court decision. According to the Segye Ilbo report, police didn’t say what was in the note, but the man had complained in a recent telephone with the media that after their marriage, his wife had been negligent with the housework, kept asking for money and even ran away, so he couldn’t enjoy a normal life. He said he had “accidentally” (OK, not really accidentally, more like “unplanned”) made his wife have sex, but besides a gas gun, he didn’t brandish a deadly weapon.
OK, then.
The late husband said his wife, whom he’s met in the Philippines through a marriage information company in July 2007, ran away just four months after their marriage. When she was caught by Immigration a year and six months later, he paid her 1 million won fine and brought her home.
Anyway, in related news, the Korean Bar Association has released a position statement opposing the recognition of marital rape, saying it prevents reconciliation or the smooth negotiation of divorces, including issues like child custody. One lawyer said with frequent instances of foreign women coming to Korea to marry Korean men to simply make money to send home rather than love, a careful legal judgment is needed.
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Oh, my! Those terrible Filipinas taking advantage of Korean men looking for only love.
More like looking for money to mail back to their 25 member family back in the Philippines, not love.
I think this whole deal is so wrong.
1) The lawyers arguing marriage rape shouldn’t be recognized.. who are these clowns anyway? This country needs to consider rape as a serious crime.
2) For goodness sake, do something about the marriage brokers who bring women from foreign countries and treating them like commodities – like outlawing them all.
3) Korean government should stop and really think if forced multicultralism is really a good thing. There are zillions of educated ethnic Koreans from North America, former Soviet Union, Japan, China who can be useful – why not encourage them to immigrate, instead of inviting people who have zilch in common and who have difficulty adjusting and melting into a totally alien culture?
I do wish the Filipina wife would have cut off his pecker, but I’ll settle for his suicide. Plus it keeps the missus out of prison.
I also wish the international media and human rights organizations would report on the rape laws and judgments in Korea. Hell, even noraebang owners can force 15 year old girls (Korean age) to be sex workers and only get a few months in prison.
Protect Korean women from foreigners? Ha. Start protecting them. Period. That starts with these rape cases and 99% of the time involve Korean men.
It never ceases to amaze me how quick Asians (read Koreans and Japanese) are to commit suicide. At the slightest provocation it’s off to the bathroom with a rope or power cord.
Coward-dude gets a slap on the wrist in the form of a suspended sentence yet he feels so hard done by that he must off himself. That right there is pretty serious mental instability. But I suppose suicide is better than burning down the still-standing Dongdaemun or setting fire to a subway car full of people.
Almost instantaneous karmic retribution.
Hopefully, it’ll be a sign to potential rapists that although you’re most likely get just a slap on the wrist, you’ll feel so hard done by that you’ll have no choice but to off yourself.
Perhaps they know better.
Good. One less fuckwit rapist adjoshi to steal the oxygen I breathe. As an aside, while on business in Bandung the other day, I was having a beer in an establishment well known for its ladies of the night. Playing pool with one, she tells me, and completely unsolicited, mind you, that the two types that the girls won’t go with are the Africans and (guess who).
“Let justice be done, even if the heavens fall”
This is the price that must be paid when a society shifts from a subjective view of law to a more objective one.
If upholding a very just law makes the dipshits who’ve broken the law off themselves, so be it!
Crying,whining,wearing hospital p.j.’s, and threatening suicide (and/or doing it) can get you far in a (legally) backwards society; but justice (ideally) is blind in societies with a genuine respect for law.
Now this jerk is the victim?
It is a shame that millions of people actually believe this.
A shitty story all around. I don’t care too much for rapists – and he definitely comes across as a real prick – but he was convicted and sentenced (albeit a suspended sentence I think) through the system. Maybe not justice at its finest, but a step in the right direction.
I’d have been happier seeing him have to live with the conviction. As a rule, I try not to rejoice in people dying, but just as important, I worry that this guy’s suicide could have the effect of making the authorities here unwilling to prosecute rapists in similar cases. Which, unfortunately, does little to help women – Korean or foreign – who are being raped by their partners.
Hope I’m wrong about that.
The KBA is full of shit. If they were so concernced about reconciliation, then I would expect a speedy overturning of the adultery law that amounts to revenge and nothing more. Furthermore, even if these women are coming to Korea for the wrong reasons (sending money home, etc…) that does not permit or excuse rape.
I wonder if “marital rape” is simply bad for their business, thus they are against it. I find their reasoning to be lacking and puzzling.
You guys are nuts. So much blame here for the guy. Some of you think he deserved to die. Do you know that these foreign brides often come over under false pretenses? Many come with plans of running away.
Who’s worse? The woman who gives nothing in the marriage and then runs away, thus making the guy look like an idiot to the whole community? Or the guy that says, in a moment of sexual (among other) frustration, “fuck this, I’m takin’ a piece”.
Marital rape… I don’t know. I think I’m on the Korean Bar Association’s side on this.
By the way, why didn’t the guy just deny it?
While I might ordinarily be incline to agree with much of what you said, Seth Gecko — the “international marriage” racket seems pretty open to exploitation on both sides — your question at the end begs the answer, “The guy wasn’t playing with a full deck.” The fact that he would openly admit to forcing a woman to have sex with him by threatening her with an
airgas gun and apparently not find anything wrong with it tells us a lot about him, IMHO.BTW, here’s the telephone interview he did with Yonhap the day before he killed himself:
http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=102&oid=001&aid=0002460450
“Do you know that these foreign brides often come over under false pretenses? Many come with plans of running away.”
Sure, but how could that ever justify rape?
#13 Robert
A “가스총” is a pepper spay gun not an air gun. Though I should think it can still be considered a dangerous weapon at point blank.
Seems the Korean Bar Association wants to keep my country trapped in a Joseon mindset, where a wife can’t be raped by her husband because it is her duty to have sex with him. Rape is rape, it doesn’t matter what the relationship between the assailant and the victim is. I don’t think this a difficult concept to understand, it’s too bad the KBA are too retarded to get it. Or maybe they just enjoy raping their wives and don’t want to be thrown in jail for it.
Typo. Thanks for the head’s up.
If most of the commentary here isn’t is a prime example of hypocrites with planks in their own eyes casting stones at another, I don’t know what is.
The very same hypocrites who would bend over backwards and do all kinds of mental hoop jumps and leaps to rationalize a waegook child molester, for example, with accusations of media bias and what not, delights in the suicide of a Korean man who committed what is obviously a crime of passion in a story of compounded tragedy.
Korea, these are the foreigners living amongst you. Take not.
That was unfair.
Please be careful about imputing attitudes and behaviors to others that are not really in evidence, NK. You appear to be doing precisely what you are accusing them of – rationalizing the behavior of a convicted rapist because he happens to be Korean.
Spock
Are such things not illegal in the hands of ordinary citizens? I seem to recall a website owner getting arrested for selling pepper spray and other such items on his site not long ago.
So NK, because we’re waegooks we don’t understand his special situation? Dude, you’re way out of line on that one.
The police should release the suicide note and the the newspapers should publish the suicide note with all of the writing blurred out and have a caption under the photo of the note explaining it’s the suicide note.
#20 Darth
A ordinary citizens can own a pepper spray device if he gets a permit. You also need a permit to buy one. The website sold their products to people without permits.
How popular is the traditional arranged marriage thing among Koreans these days? I used to keep my nose out of this business, as it was none of mine. Cross-cultural marriages involving mail order brides, with brokers, etc. is another story. We have a friend who works in a Korean mission in Hanoi who reports involvement in numerous cases of abuse and hidden intentions, scams, etc. of which men and women take part. She says a significant number of men would not be considered to be marriageable in Korean (for any number of reasons), and many of the women come from miserable backgrounds. It does not take much of an imagination to make this assumption without her story, nor does it take much of one to see where these commitments are headed. Pathetic stories like these that come out of the international arranged marriage racket can be found on the police blotters all around the world. Any man brave or foolish enough to embark on one of these schemes really ought to shrug his shoulders if it does not work out. This dude got off light (suspended sentence), and by the act of taking his life, demonstrated his mental instability.
Netizen Kim, you sound like pawi more and more every day. I can’t wait until you go the way of that dodo.
The Philippines’s economic divide is 0.x% upper class, 20% middle class, and 80% underclass. It’s not difficult to find a friendly local wife there looking to marry up the economic ladder. However, one must also understand that you’re marrying into the family, and expected to support them.
There are many lonely men who’d benefit from going to PH. But among them are bad apples who are single for a good reason. Some men are simply sociopaths or consider their wife to be purchased merchandise. Others hold a grudge against women from past rejections. Many poor girls marry into abusive marriages, but these are in the minority and get all the bad press.
I’m not familiar with S. Korean stats, but for US and Taiwan, there are many men who married foreign women. Just a few years ago you could still drive around Taiwan and see huge ads for Vietnamese brides. Consequently, local women’s groups put a stop to it and forced laws to make marrying foreign brides extremely difficult, “for the protection of these women” — the few abused cases get all the press. The men are pathetic to allow women in their countries to eliminate sexual competition to make men more subservient. LoL. So now men have to become expats and go abroad to be men, instead of being sexually oppressed at home against puritan expectations.
Seth Gecko “Who’s worse? The woman who gives nothing in the marriage and then runs away, thus making the guy look like an idiot to the whole community? Or the guy that says, in a moment of sexual (among other) frustration, “fuck this, I’m takin’ a piece”.”
That’s a real easy question, the rapist is much much worse. Not saying the women has done no wrong, but rape is never justified. Period. He could have divorced her if he wasn’t happy. No one says you have the right to be in a happy marriage and getting ass at all time. If he thought she had came under false pretenses, he should have left her locked up on the immigration charge.
By the way, from reading the account I am sure the guy already looked like an idiot to the whole community before she even showed up. Again even if this was not the case rape is not justified ever.
Seth Gecko: “Who’s worse? The woman who gives nothing in the marriage and then runs away, thus making the guy look like an idiot to the whole community? Or the guy that says, in a moment of sexual (among other) frustration, “fuck this, I’m takin’ a piece”.”
______________________________________________
Clearly Seth is sounding a lot more like his namesake’s brother, Richie Gecko.
Speaking not of the specifics of this case, and knowing nothing about it, the concept of “marital rape” is absolutely frightening.
Considering that divorce brings about false accusations of domestic violence, and sometimes even child abuse, against men involved in legal cases against their former wives, “marital rape” is sure to be another weapon in the false accusation arsenal.
Surely the solution to “marital rape” is divorce and not jail time.
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