Source: AP

Suspected infanticide in South Korea: investigation opened in France

PARIS (AP) - [French] Ministry of Justice asked last week Tours’ [Indre et Loire] prosecutors to open a preliminary investigation on a French couple living in Seoul [South Korea], the husband, aged 40, having reported on July 23 the presence of two babies in their freezer.

Alerted by Korean authorities, via France’s State Department, the Ministry of Justice expects to receive an official request for mutual judicial assistance, although nothing has arrived yet, the office of the Secretary of Justice confirmed.

Meanwhile, the preliminary investigation is expected to yield basic information on this expat couple, presently on vacation in France, in the region of Tours.

Of particular notice is the fact that the husband himself, only identified as “C”, informed himself the Seoul police of the discovery of two babies in a freezer in his appartment, in the southern part of Seoul, where many French expats reside.

According to the south-korean police, the husband had come back from France on his own, where he had gone to earlier with his family. Preliminary DNA tests showed that he was the father of the babies, which he consistently denied. However, the results of these tests were only made public on July 28, after he’d left back for France.

Last Monday, the police declared that further DNA tests showed that it was highly probable that “V”, “C”’s wife, was the mother of these babies. Meanwhile, the couple refused to return to Seoul, where they had been living since 2002, before August 2002. Inbetween, the Korean authorities asked France to gather more information.

Yonhap news agency reported that “V” had undergone surgery in 2003, and had her uterus removed. Thus, babies would have been born before that date. The couple has two other children. AP

Korea, Courjault, Frozen Babies

This case has finally reached the French news. Here’s a translation of an article, the first I saw about the subject, in Le Figaro. I could provide a summary and a bunch of links, but since the Marmot has everything…

As an aside, I have now their address and phone number – since France’s Yellow pages are quite efficient… Even got a satellite photo of their village

South Korea suspects two French citizens of infanticide

JUSTICE
Two newborns discovered in Seoul in a freezer at French expats home

This case has been puzzling Seoul’s police for three weeks already. And now it is embarrassing the French justice system, which has received a description of the two people through diplomatic services. Recently, South Korean authorities have communicated to the Tours DA the identity of two French citizens, who currently reside in a village in Indre-Et-Loire [150 miles south of Paris]. The man, aged 40, and his wife, are sought for by Seoul’s police in relation with an investigation after deux newborns were found at their place of residence in Sorae village, the French community in Seoul. We have requested to France to request their current whereabouts, in order to persuade them to return to Seoul as soon as possible, and provide us with an explanation, the Korean Embassy in France said.

The work of the detectives started on July 18, when a French expatriate, who’d just come back to Seoul, reported a macabre discovery. He explained that he found that morning two newborns, parts of the umbilical cord still attached, wrapped in plastic bags, in a freezer, situated on his veranda.

DNA tests positive
According to The Korea Times, the man was unable to explain to the police the presence of these babies in his home — and denied any relationship with them. Released on July 26, he was then allowed to go back to France and resume his vacation. while the investigation went on. That was until a new element stirred things.
Last week, a series of DNA tests done at the National Institute for Scientifical Investigation established that the man was indeed the father of these babies — which appear not to be twins. It would also appear that they have been dead for over a year. These new elements led the Korean police to ask the French Embassy in Seoul to convince the couple to come back to Seoul to answer more questions. But this time, the French couple stated that they would only go back at the end of their holidays, end of August.
Korean authorities have tried repeatedly to convince the French couple, hoping they could speed up the investigation. They demand to bring in the French woman as a suspect. French judges, meanwhile, play for time. Orléans’ DA explains that We haven’t received so far any request for judicial help. Nothing indicates that charges have been brought against these people. However, should charges be brought up, and the French couple refused to return to Korea, French judges could declare themselves competent to try this case. While France and Korea have signed in 1995 a mutual judicial assistance treaty, Paris doesn’t make it a habbit to extradite its citizens.

Korea, Courjault, Frozen Babies

The party will also support lifting the limit on cross-affiliate investments, a long-standing wish of the business community, Mr. Kim said. Under the anti-monopoly and fair trade laws of Korea, the government imposes restrictions on a conglomerate’s cross-ownership, including a ceiling on investments equal to 25 percent of its net assets in affiliated firms.
Uri head courts business with promises of pardons, via Drambuie Man

This [cross-affiliate investment] is precisely one of the things that caused so much pain to chaebols in the late 90s, the demise of the Daewoo group, and the garage sale of many units of other groups. Beside the issue of control of large groups with only a few percent stake in one company, which is bad enough, it creates a shallow shell that may look good on paper – and only until you start scratching the glossy surface – but is a recipe for disaster. As we say in French, you’re just taking from Peter to give to Paul. It doesn’t bring anything to the individual companies, since the money is just running around. No injection of fresh capital, no “new blood”, no innovation. Zilch. This is just buttressing two shoddy houses by making them lean one onto the other. 1997 again anyone?

6. Zero-based arrays

C arrays began at zero to match memory addressing. In a weakly typed scripting language, there’s exactly no reason to do this. There hasn’t been for decades. Can’t we please start the arrays at 1 where God intended?

I dunno what god[s] have to do with numbers and arrays. But while myArray(VIII) would certainly be geeky enough, there’s a reason why the Roman civilisation disappeared – crashed like an 8-bit processor running Flex or CP/M on January 1, 2000, rather – and the Arabs, after millenia of internal and external fights, massacres and general disarray, are still there. They have the zero, and the Romans dinna have it. Of course, arguing – like some did in the comments – that 0-based [which I favour, if you hadn’t noticed yet] are POLS is a bit disingenuous. See the battles that raged in 2000/2001 regarding when the 21st Century started – people expecting the new century to start on ~0, whereas it starts on ~1. Surprises can smack you in the face – or sour a dinner party – at any corner.

Paid a visit to the 韓國學 用語/用例 辭典, and entered a simple query. And clicked search. Woops…

1. Don’t use IIS / ASP. They suck goat’s teats
2. Hitting the enter/return key is supposed to submit the form. Not reloading the page.
3. Don’t use EUC-KR. That encoding suxxors big time. And ‘English’ looks crappy in that encoding – not really the encoding’s fault, since euc-kr makes the browser default to Korean fonts, and Latin characters *do* suck in Korean fonts. Use Unicode, dudes. Which is exactly what you are using – sans charset declaration, wherever there is M-R, like here
4. M-R is nice, but be consistant, if you please. shi or si? oe or oi? Pick one each. Oh, and check both transcriptions. 二軍六衛 doesn’t transcribe to either yigunyugi or Yikunyuki. Really…
5. Making the HTML standards-compliant would be nice – and lose the tables, the <font> and other stylistic bits. After all, you seem to use CSS, too. <td class="font12" bgcolor=white align="center"><font face="굴림"> could be replaced with a better ‘font12′ class – or possibly forks of this class…

This looks like an ad-hoc effort handled the good ole Korean way I have learned to recognize, sometimes admire, but usually despise. Act first, plan later [and order lots of green tape and silicon]. Ah well, I still ould have liked something like that when I was a student…

Hat tip to The Marmot.