Friday, May 7, 2010

Organized Crime

Post articles here dealing with organized crime in Korea.

8 comments:

  1. JiHye Kang

    Number of criminal gangs rising in Korea

    The article deals with the ever-increasing number of criminal gangs in Korea. They are called as “Jo-pok” which is the abbreviation of organized criminal gangsters in Korean. In the article, Prosecutors’ Office claimed that while the number of criminal gangs has increased, the crackdown on them has decreased. They put out specific number based on the statistics made of the reports of local police stations. They also added that the reality is likely to be worse than this that more bad guys are out there, giving the readers a grim warning as follows: Should we fail to round them up in the early stages, Korea risks becoming a gangster-dominated society like Japan or Russia.
    The article implies several interesting points. Firstly, as Prosecutors’ Office acknowledges in the article, statistics are not reliable. PO claimed that the numbers of criminal gangs would be far more than what it is in statistics. But it is unreliable in the opposite way of what they think. The statistics itself might have been exaggerated. According to the textbook, the organized crime has changed its way of operation in more flexible and adaptive to social changes, becoming more fragmented and smaller. If gangs are operating in more segmented small subgroups, it is questioning how Police could count gangs and what counted as a gang or not. Many small local gangs could belong to the same one big group. In this case, Police could count the number of small local gangs thus exaggerating the reality or just count the one they found out the connection. However it is more likely that Police have done the former since it is easier, it makes look they are more productive, and it sounds more ‘dangerous’. Contrary to the worries of Prosecutors’ Office, the actual number of criminal gangs in Korea may not be as high as they assume. Plus, the foreign gangs which they suggest as a new “budding” threat is groundless. When we still do not know how many of them exist in Korea and what kind of forms they took here, it is groundless to say inclusion of the number of foreign gangs would show the seriousness of actual scale of organized crime in Korea. Not only we cannot figure out the actual figure, but also they are not a serious threat.
    Secondly, this article shows that Korean criminal organizations also made changes in the new society. Like the U.S. examples in the textbook, Korean criminal organizations also moved their business to more sophisticated and more profitable ones such as loan and construction business. And this is also good evidence showing the deep penetration of gang influence in Korean economy. It is becoming the part and parcel of our economy. But it is interesting that Prosecutors’ Office interpreted these changes in a different way. They do not think criminal organizations have changed, rather they think society has changed in more criminal organizations-friendly ways not police-friendly ways. However, this sounds like a desperate excuse for their inability to crackdown criminal organizations. Gangs transformed themselves in order to survive while Police was still blinded by myths regarding organized crime which were established decades ago.
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  2. (WOOOPS, I put a wrong line at the end of my first post. This is continuing part of the comment.)
    Lastly, the connection between the ending of the article and PO’s blames against the society and suspects’ basic rights is very interesting. PO complained society is just not the right environment for them to crackdown and blamed suspects’ basic rights as an obstacle to strict crackdowns. After complaints, PO warns that if we fail to round them up in the early stages, Korea risks becoming a gangster-dominated society. It seems to me that PO made the report on increased number of gangs to be assigned more power in crackdowns than they are now. Instead of blaming themselves and thinking about what they could have done wrong, they are talking about inevitability of more power on law enforcement to prevent Korea from being a gangster-dominated country. But who says Korean organized crime is in the early stages? It has been here from about 1930s. It has a long history and lots of historical organizations have been the stories of many movies so far. This is surely not an early stage as they want to believe so.
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    The number of gangs here has been on a steady rise, but the police crackdown on them has been on the wane, said prosecutors.

    According to the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office yesterday, the number of gangsters reached 5,450 last year, a 31.2 percent increase from the figure back in 2001.
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    http://www.koreaherald.com/national/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20100412000643

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  3. Young-Ju Lim

    Mushrooming Gangsters

    This article is about ‘mushromming gangsters’ in Korea. The article said over the last 8 years, the number of gangsters, and crime has continued to rise. However, gangster’s arresting ratio has been decreased. Because, firstly the police were corrupted. Several policemen accepted briberies from criminal rings. It’s like having the fox guard the henhouse. To win a war against gangsters, the National Police Agency should clean it’s own house. Secondly, gangsters are expanding their business to private loan and construction. It means they become complexed entities to investigate and arrest.
    I think, this article has 2 interesting points. First, this article points out korean police’s corrupts. Korean police usually receive money from gansters, and turn a blind eye to their crime (but only in small crimes like gambling, prostitution, etc. ). We should fix this problem to arrest gansters but I think it’s not a individual policeman’s problem. The National Police Agency should understand gangster’s problem in social context. Also in textbook, we must understand its social context. This article indicates 2 points : official corruption and the exigencies of the political economy. However NPA just transfer their problem to individuals. They don’t face fundamental corruption. Also, I can’t trust the article’s statistics. It has long periods(2001~2009) and increased about 1,000 for 10 years. It makes sense allowing for population growth. I think NPA just make excuses for lack of abilities to arrest gansters.
    Second, korean gangsters with the Hong Kong-based Triads, Japan's Yakuza and other overseas groups. It is interesting information for me, because traditionally korean gangs do their business only in Korea. Also when I was young, they owned clubs or casinos and earned money from that. But in these days, ganster’s intellectual levels were grown up. Several years ago, ‘Itaewon-pa, 이태원파’, the name of gangsters was arrested. Quite a lot of members were university graduates. It is same as in Japan and Hong-Kong, and other countries. Nowadays korean gangsters are involve in legal business enterprises, so it makes hard to eradicate them.
    .

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    According to the Supreme Prosecutors' Office, the number of gangsters surged 31.2 percent to 5,450 in 2009 from 4,153 in 2001. And the number of organized criminal groups jumped 12.1 percent to 233 during the same period. However, only 604 gangsters were arrested last year, down 55.2 percent from 1,348 in 2001. The figures imply that the authorities' crackdown has not caught up with the mushrooming number of gangsters. In other words, the nation has been long on words but short on action in its fight against crime.

    It is deplorable that some police officers have still maintained corrupt ties with crime syndicates.

    Another factor is that criminal rings are expanding their operations from gambling and prostitution to private loans and construction. That is, criminal groups have become sophisticated by turning themselves into corporate entities.

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    http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2010/04/202_64131.html

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  4. *Yujung Kim

    *U.S., Korea net dozens in drug trafficking sting

    This article talks about arrest of Korean gangs smuggling drugs into Korea.
    Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office arrested a number of drug traffickers and detained them and also, indicated an involvement of yakuza. According to the book, the global market for illicit commodities(along with licit ones) is being unified. And even Korea, which was relatively free of illegal drug problems,
    drug inflow is gradually rising.
    In the last part of the article, it was mentioned that the crackdown was a result of recently intensified efforts to eradicate illegal gambling and the sex trade in Korea. This makes police forces are doing their job properly and relatively make the Korean gangs look like evils who are taking the lead in those kind of illegal businesses. And also, there are some details described about how the smugglers and the process of catching Moon, who seems to be
    the gang member who organized the trafficking, which makes the article look more interesting and the media can use this kind of global organized crime as a good story source for them.


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    Prosecutors are zeroing in on Korean gangs involved in large-scale drug trafficking.

    In cooperation with the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office last week detained 46 alleged smugglers and seized 307 grams of methamphetamine and 484 grams of marijuana brought into the country since last December
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    *http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2917305

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  5. Agnes Seul-Gi Kang

    Korean-American gangsters in Korea

    This article deals with several crimes, including gangster activity, drug smuggling, drug taking and fraud.
    A former member of a Korean-American gang in Los Angeles had fled to Korea after stabbing a man to death in Korea Town of LA. After arriving, he changed his name in court with the benefit of his dual citizenship, created a false college diploma which helped him obtain a job in a language school, and took drugs while working there.
    Similarly to this man, another man named Lee did so also, but he also sold drugs to the workers at the language school he was illegally working at.
    From this article, I felt that some procedures are too easily done – for example, changing names, creating false diplomas and smuggling drugs. I think each department should strengthen their verification techniques, and that carelessness in the department was what caused this event to happen.
    I also felt that committing crimes involving documentation as proof (such as fraud in this case) is still all too easy with the help of the internet, but considering the vast number of people using and uploading resources on the internet is so great, that internet organized crimes are almost unpreventable.

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    R, 26, was reportedly a member of a Korean-American gang in Los Angeles when he got into a fight on July 14, 2006, at a cafe in the city’s Korea Town, stabbing to death a man identified as B, 27. Four days later, R fled to Korea.



    During his time on the run, R worked as an English teacher at a hagwon in Suwon, Gyeonggi, for two months. While there he allegedly took methamphetamine and marijuana.

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    http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2918361

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  6. 1. Mai Cha Vang
    2. "S Korea, Italy sign MOU on international security"
    3. This short article reported that South Korea and Italy have signed an agreement on cooperation of international security measures, with the goal of sharing information and enhance security measures on issues such as drug and human trafficking and organized crime. Although this article is very brief, the contents are very relevant to the current chapter because with with the success of such an agreement between international states, there are possible holes for organized crime to occur. According to the reading, criminal organizations have already "developed strategies for circumventing law enforcement in both in both individual nations and across international boundaries" (pg. 128). If criminal organizations could already operate transnationally without being caught, then [with constant information passing back and forth between South Korea and Italy], there are even more opportunities for criminal organizations to conduct its business. Yes, there are higher risks of getting caught because South Korea's national security will be tighter with further enhancement. However, since criminal organizations are very adaptive to changing circumstances, they will find ways to operate. Furthermore, since there is a direct route from Korea to Italy and Italy to Korea, this made it easier for criminal organizations to operate between the two countries.

    4. ----------------------------------------------------

    5. South Korea and Italy have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to cooperate on enhancing international security measures, the National Police Agency said Friday.

    Under the agreement, the first of which South Korea signed with a European nation, the two countries will share information and enhance security measures on battling drug and human trafficking, as well as organized crime, the agency said in a statement.

    6. -----------------------------------------------------

    7. http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90777/90851/6977458.html

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  7. Ethnic Gangs Make Growing Presence Felt

    Korea Times

    By Park Si-soo
    Staff Reporter

    Ethnic gangs are sprouting up within their own communities across the country, particularly in the Seoul area, and in some cases, are linking up with Korean criminals.

    Their nationalities are as varied as those of the foreigners living in Korea ― including Thai, Vietnamese, Pakistani and Chinese.

    Police believe that these gangs have been preying on people of the same ethnic background, committing extortion, running illegal gambling pits, prostitution rings and meddling in small-time business disputes.

    But, as indicated in cases in other countries, it may only be a matter of time before they grow in strength and expand beyond their own communities. There have also been signs that they are aligning themselves with Korean gangsters.

    On Tuesday, Suseo Police in Seoul arrested seven Vietnamese men for kidnapping a Vietnamese woman and extorting $5,000 from her family in ransom. Of them, six were detained and the other was deported, police said.

    Six of them arrived here in 2003 as industrial trainees while the other is a member of the "Hanoi Gang," officers said.

    Police are widening their investigation after being tipped off that the Hanoi clan is funding their operations by running illegal casinos and exporting used vehicles.

    The Gyeonggi Provincial Police Agency recently arrested a group of Thai gangsters for extorting millions of dollars from expats running businesses in Ansan, 30 kilometers southwest of Seoul, where the nation's largest expat community is located. Around 10 Thais were either beaten up or forced to pay protection money, police said.

    In a separate case, a group of Vietnamese gangsters were caught last month for running illegal gambling houses and for extortion in satellite cities around Seoul. More than 14 Vietnamese people were beaten up or kidnapped for not paying money on time.

    Police said they also extorted more than 160 million won ($128,000) from their families at home and abroad in exchange for their release.

    According to the Supreme Prosecutors Office, the number of foreigners arrested was tallied at about 5,000 in 2000. It doubled to 10,000 in 2003. In 2008 alone, a total of 34,108 foreigners were caught.

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  8. In the latest crackdown between June and July in Gyeonggi Province, police arrested 1,836 foreign offenders.

    According to the National Intelligence Service (NIS), those from Nigeria, Pakistan, China, Taiwan, Vietnam and Bangladesh account for the majority of foreign criminal groups across the country.

    The NIS believes they collect funds by running illegal casinos and brothels, and by engaging in the drug trade and loan sharking.

    Some of these ethnic gangs are forming ties with their Korean counterparts.

    In March, a group of Vietnamese gangsters were arrested for hiring Korean prostitutes and selling drugs to native Koreans. Another group of Pakistani gangsters were caught smuggling 339 pieces of construction equipment worth 100 billion won ($80 million).

    Police presume domestic crime syndicates pulled the strings from behind the scenes. Recently, police were tipped off that a Chinese gang based in Zirin, a province in the northeastern part of China, was looking for "Korean partners" to branch out here.

    Criminal experts are divided over whether ethnic gangsters will expand beyond their own communities.

    In an interview with a local media outlet, David Southwell, author of "the History of Organized Crime," said, "Throughout history and across every country where crime groups have sprung up from immigrant communities there are clearly visible, repeating patterns."

    "At first these (illegal immigrants) will usually only be involved in preying on their own immigrant community through extortion, loan sharking, illegal betting, but with a solid base of criminal activity and income established, they will quickly look to expand into other areas. What these areas depend on is the organized crime set-up in the host country," Southwell said.

    But professor Yang Kee-ho of SungKongHoe University, who is also vice president of an academy on multiracialism, opposes the view, saying, "Korea has its own unique immigration trends that keep foreign criminals from expanding into Korean communities.

    "As seen in other countries, organized crime groups are usually created in closed, ghettoized communities, in which those from countries with similar cultural and linguistic backgrounds are crowded," Yang said. "Neither ghettoized foreign communities nor those alienated from mainstream communities have been reported. Also, the government has come up with various measures to embrace them and bring them to center stage. In this sense, I believe too much worry about foreign criminals expanding into Korean communities is unnecessary."

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