A former South Korean national soccer player who was desperate for money after being banned for life for match-fixing has been arrested for robbery and kidnapping, police said yesterday.
Kim Dong-hyun, 28, and former professional baseball player Yoon Chan-soo, 26, are accused of kidnapping a woman and commandeering her Mercedes in Seoul’s wealthy Gangnam district.
The pair stole a van late on Friday and toured the neighborhood for hours looking for a victim, a senior detective at Gangnam police station said on condition of anonymity.
They followed the woman to her apartment car park where Kim allegedly threatened her with a knife and forced her into the passenger seat of her vehicle. He drove off as Yoon followed in the van.
Things went wrong when the woman, 45, jumped out of the Mercedes as traffic slowed. She hailed a taxi and told the driver to follow Kim and Yoon while calling the police. According to the Korea JoongAng Daily, the pair told police they planned to steal the victim’s jewelry and force her to withdraw money from her bank account.
Kim was one of 10 players slapped with a lifetime ban by the Korea Football Association for their roles in match-fixing schemes that shocked the country last year.
In total, 46 current and former players and 11 gang members and bookmakers were charged with fixing the results of 15 matches. Over 11 months, two players and a former coach committed suicide after they were charged or investigated.
Police said Kim had borrowed 100 million won (US$85,000) after his ban and launched a business, but fell behind on repayments.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese