Christ, this is ugly.
Yonhap reports that the Foreign Ministry is investigating a report in the Canadian gyopo press that several Korean exchange students in Toronto sexually assaulted a teenage Korean girl at a Korean church they attended in March of last year.
According to the report, the Canadian police have arrested three suspects, but another three are on the lam in Korea.
According to the Seoul Sinmun report, a total of nine exchange students are implicated in the assault, in which the girl was apparently locked up at the church.
Marmot’s Note: Why is this making the news just now?
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
First!
Didn’t something similar happen in Australia a few years back? Minus the church.
외교부, “토론토 ‘성폭행’ 사실 여부 파악중” Right, what a nice turn of phrase. Making it sound doubtful…
Dogbert,
There was a case in my home town of Brisbane involving a Korean male student who raped a Korean female in a public toilet. IIRC he said something derogatory about her seeing white males and insisted on a bit of equal opportunity. I also recall his mother crying out something about the wicked Australian justice system ruining her son’s life when the guilty verdict came down.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/articles/2007/05/16/1178995209467.html
Or if it involved a church, you could be looking for this
http://www.occidentalism.org/?p=253
or this
http://www.occidentalism.org/?p=60
http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=103&oid=001&aid=0001084028
And this was the offending Naver allegedly slamming the Australian justice system for not taking ‘Korean culture’ into account when judging the case. Or would that be asking for the establishment of their own version of sharia law?
Here’s a lengthy piece from Toronto’s “Korea Times”
http://www.koreatimes.net/54731
aaronm:
#3
Interesting. I read the article you linked. It mentioned the mother sobbing but not her cursing the evil Australian justice system. Do you have a source for that?
#6
I have just read the paragraph that allegedly slams the Australian justice system. I didn’t see it slamming the justice system so much as pointing something out. I will get a second opinion from a native speaker Korean and come back to you.
Criticism where it’s due, sure, but let’s be accurate. These actions (the rape and the assault) were crimes under Australian law, and the perpretators were rightly punished for them. I have not yet found anything by a Korean saying that that is wrong.
I wish I could read Korean better but can anybody tell me what’s with that church? I know Toronto may not be a mega-metropolis but that church looks like it’s in the sticks and while Toronto might be sprawls of crappy suburbs but there is literally nothing in the background…
looks like this is viagra to some.
looks like this topic gets the blood flowing for some.
Oh, and let’s not feed the troll, aaronm!
I thought the right to molest and rape rested solely with the church’s charismatic leader / preacher. Respect ain’t what it used to be.
BTW, adsense presents an add for the Nexus One mobile phone. Is that more appropriate than Korean Cupid for this topic?
hamel, I think aaronom is going by what Occidentalism is translating.
The article says the female victim’s parents who allegedly got beat up by the church member, paid for the accused’s legal defense, and felt a mixture of gratitude and sorry that this happened to him. And that Australian legal system didn’t understand this part of Korean culture.
(I’m presuming corporal punishment)
The article also says that the sensationalized Australian media which falsely surmised that the girl was beaten because she didn’t attend church (and other gossips), negatively effected the case.
That’s what the paper says. I didn’t read any terrible slamming of Australian justice system. But you’re in a foreign land, you have to live by the rules of the foreign land. And in Australia, corporal punishments are illegal.
#9 Bipolar Mindscrew, I don’t know what the exact nature of the church is. They rented a bunch of apartments in an old run down part of the town and lived together in groups. They sound like a cult to me, or at least fanatical church goers. The accused are vehemently denying the charges according to the article. I think we need to wait on this case before we can decide what happened here.
The church is a small one – 50-60 people so the article said. (Toronto has at least four 2000+ worshipper churches) According to the article, it’s situated at Bloor and Islington, which is not quite the sticks – probably a twenty minute subway ride from the downtown core.
There are literally hundreds of churches like this in Toronto – either offshoots of “church splits” where a number of families have started their own churches, or churches in the more central core targeting younger folks/exchange students. There are at least three or four in my area (Yonge/St. Clair) catering primarily to Korean exchange students.
And there are lots of those in Toronto these days.
The other thing to note is that the Korea Times, the major Korean daily, is not quite known for its journalistic standards and does the occasional misreporting for dramatic effect.
cm @ 13:
And you will note we have not seen much of the Shak since last year when his (self-confessed) Korean prowess took a beating here on this blog.
I read the same paragraph, and I got this: the aspect of Korean culture that was not taken into account seemed to me to be that in Korea many incidents like this are settled outside of court, before a judgement is given (through 합의금, etc). It is mentioned in the story above that the two parties (or at least the family of the victim and the perpetrator – interestingly the victim is not mentioned here) had come to some sort of arrangement. I think it is this aspect of Korean culture that was ignored in sentencing (and rightly so, under Australian law).
The only criticism I can find is the word 냉혹한, used to describe the Australian justice system. This word translates as cold-blooded, cold-hearted, heartless and harsh, depending on the situation. It can be used in phrases like “harsh criticism,” “harsh reality,” “a heartless man” and so on. Any non Korean who has ever been accused by a Korean of being “too rational/too logical/cold,” for trying to argue a point logically instead of understanding a thing emotionally will sense a similar theme here.
In that context, the criticism (or is it just a description) is neither particularly harsh, nor surprising.
The following paragraph about the Australian media’s focus on the sensational aspects (well yeah, media anywhere tend to do that) seems to misunderstand how sentencing in Australia is supposed to work. Hopefully, the judge made his or her judgement based on law, not media sentiment.
I would still like to know aaronm’s source for the mother of the foul rapist decrying the Australian justice system for giving her son a paltry 3 years of jail for the aggravated rape he committed.
#15 There seems to be a lot of Korean public’s frustration with Korea’s light sentencings, especially the high profile rape and murder cases that have appeared in the news lately. A lot of Korean comments I’m reading, are saying the accused should be thrown in jail and rot there, and that if this had happened in Korea, they would have been free after about a year. But since they’re in Canada (thank god), they’re facing 20 years in jail, which many Koreans are happy about.
cm,
Alot of Asian countries seem to trivialize rape or keep it hush hush.
Shame to the family seems to be a bit factor even if the victim has nothing to be ashamed of.
Korea ‘seems’ to be one of those. Makes me wonder if this outcry from the citizenry will actually spur the lawmakers in to making some changes.
That same outcry in Japan hasn’t done squat. Seems like a bit of groveling and a fake apology along with some lame excuse is enough to get them off the hook. The exception seems to be China….where rape might actually get you the death penalty. In China’s case, hopefully the perpetrator is actually the guilty party and not there on trumped up charges).
Marmot’s Note: Why is this making the news just now?
The humor at this site is one of the things that makes it tolerable.
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