Unlike other criminals, many owners of chaebol found guilty at courts used to avoid prison terms or receive lighter punishments. Emphasizing their contribution to the Korean economy and the negative impact that their imprisonment would cause were often cited in court during the course of requesting judicial leniency toward the tycoons.It worked for many years, but a court’s landmark ruling against SK chairman Chey Tae-won on Thursday broke the long tradition of such leniency and demonstrated tha

The Seoul Central District Court sentenced former baseball player Kang Byung-kyu to one and half years in prison on Friday for fraud.Kang, a former pitcher for the Doosan Bears in Korea’s pro baseball league, was accused of borrowing more than 300 million won from his friends in 2008 without paying them back.The Seoul court also sentenced Kang to one year in prison with a stay of execution for three years for violence and making threats against actor Lee Byung-hun in a separate case filed in 200

A lower court sentenced SK chairman Chey Tae-won to four years in prison on Thursday for embezzling corporate funds for stock investment. The 53-year-old tycoon was put in prison immediately following the verdict by the Seoul Central District Court. Separately, a Seoul higher court also gave a two-and-a-half-year prison term to Lee Kuk-chul, chairman of SLS Group, on the same day on several charges including bribing a former vice culture minister and other high-ranking government officials. Lee’

 A 41-year-old man living alone in Korea to support his wife and children abroad was arrested for charges of prostitution with a minor on Thursday. According to the Saha Police Station in Busan, the man lured a 16-year-old girl he met online to a motel where he had sex with her on Jan. 16. He paid her 100,000 won ($92). The man is a so-called “Goose Father,” a term used in Korea to describe men separated from their children and wives, usually because the family goes abroad for education.Police f

A runaway teenager lied about being kidnapped to avoid getting in trouble with her mother, according to police. The 18-year-old surnamed Kim, who had left home 8 months ago, called her mother early on Monday morning to tell her that she was locked in a room in Busan, South Gyeonsang Province. “I’m on the third floor of a red brick four-story building in Moradong, Busan. There are three rooms in the hallway,” said Kim to her mother on the phone.Some 80 police officers searched Moradong area build

A new form of phishing crime, stealing a victim’s accredited certificates by hacking into email accounts, has been spreading, the police reported.Phishing is a compound word of “private data” and “fishing” and was first reported in Korea in 2004. Scammers have been refining fraud techniques to steal personal data over the last 8 years and a variety of tricks like voice-phishing and smishing, one by text message, have hit many unsuspecting users.“Offenders of the new phishing fraud break into vic