■ Broadcasting: FM 94.5 (06:40~06:55, 12:40~12:55, 19:40~19:55)
■ Broadcast Date: October 24, 2024 (Thursday)
■ Host: Lawyer Lee Won-hwa
■ Dialogue: Lawyer Lee Hyun-tae
* The text below may differ from the actual broadcast content, so please check the broadcast for more accurate information.
◆ Lawyer Lee Won-hwa (hereinafter referred to as Lee Won-hwa): It would have been around Chuseok in 2011. Mr. A is going on vacation alone in the Philippines for the holidays. Mr. A got to know Mr. B through an Internet cafe frequently used by travelers while planning a trip to the Philippines. There was also an expectation that it would be a much more interesting trip with B, who knows the Philippines well. These two men were new to each other, but B's personality was so dull and good that they were able to get close quickly. After having a pleasant drinking party, the two moved to their accommodation in a car prepared by Mr. B. However, B turned into a kidnapper in an instant from a friendly travel mate. B is still called a rare Filipino devil. We will cover this in detail in today's case X file. Hello, I'm Lee Won-hwa, the case X file of lawyer Lee Won-hwa. Today, we are also with lawyer Lee Hyun-tae of Law Firm Roel. Welcome, lawyer.
◇Lee Hyun-tae: Hello, I'm Lee Hyun-tae, a lawyer at LOEL Law Firm.
◆ Won-hwa Lee: We talked about criminal cases committed by local people in the Philippines before, and today's story is about cases in which Koreans target Korean tourists traveling to the Philippines, right?
◇ Lee Hyun-tae: Yes, that's right. This is a case in which criminals kidnapped a total of 19 people and killed five of them from November 2008 to May 2012. The main culprits of this case were Choi Se-yong, Kim Sung-gon, and Kim Jong-seok. Choi played his part in planning and directing the crime as the head of the organization, Kim Seong-gon played his part as the head of the organization, and Kim Jong-seok as the head of the action.
◆ Won-hwa Lee: I think I've heard these people's names.
◇ Lee Hyun-tae: When the incident broke out, Choi Se-yong and his gang were said to be Philippine demons and attracted a lot of public attention. In the future, a movie based on this motif was made and introduced in various media, so it became an issue. For a while, the abduction of Koreans in the Philippines has emerged as a social problem, and at the center of it was Choi Se-yong, who was a Korean, not a Filipino gang member. However, before dealing with this case, I think we need to talk about the case that was the starting point of this case. It is the case known as the murder of a female employee at the Anyang currency exchange on July 9, 2007. This is a case in which a 25-year-old female employee was brutally killed and about 185 million won worth of money in a safe was robbed at a private currency exchange located in an officetel in Dongan-gu, Anyang-si, Gyeonggi-do. On this day, the victim went to work around 8 a.m. as usual. That day, when the victim had just come to work, the first customer wearing a motorcycle helmet came to visit, and a second customer came in while that customer was filling out the paperwork. Then the door closes and suddenly the two customers turn into robbers in an instant and subdue the victim. Then he dragged the victim into the president's office where the safe was located, tied his hands with a cable tie, and tied his bound hands to the handle of the safe to prevent him from running away. And I opened the safe and collected all the money in it. Then, after killing the victim with a knife, he left the scene leisurely. Afterwards, the president, who came to work later than usual, came into the office and found an employee lying under the desk, but it was already late.
◆Won-Won-Won-Won-Won: I think I could have stopped the currency exchange if the owner had come to work a little earlier.
◇ Lee Hyun-tae: But I think it would have been difficult because this was a very carefully planned crime. This is because the criminals continued to follow the president of the currency exchange for a few days before the crime, and then checked the president's vehicle and got a flat tire the day before the crime, delaying their commute. Also, before the invasion, they located the CCTV and showed a very detailed appearance as if they were moving so that their faces could not be taken. Everything was a completely planned crime, with some accomplices watching the net outside, and there was a time difference between when entering and leaving, and the routes to and from were different.
◆ Won-hwa Lee: It wasn't just a random currency exchange, it was a very meticulous and planned crime.
◇ Lee Hyun-tae: That's right. There was also a reason for choosing the currency exchange as the location of the crime. Prior to this incident, Choi Se-yong and Kim Jong-seok robbed a Korean-Japanese wealthy woman in Japan, and at that time, they brought yen worth 1 billion won, but they found out about the existence of the Anyang exchange station and targeted it. After this crime, Choi Se-yong and his gang fled to the Philippines, where they planned and committed another crime, and the money they acquired in this currency exchange case became seed money for future crimes. Also, they always targeted only Koreans, and of course, the reason was that it was the easiest for Koreans to target, but they also considered the fact that they could get a lot of money.
◆ Won-hwa Lee: I think it's very intelligent because it seems to have used the anxiety of Koreans traveling to the Philippines?
◇ Lee Hyun-tae: Yes, that's right. In a way, their kidnapping was very simple. First of all, we send a note titled "I'm looking for companions" to an Internet cafe used by Filipino tourists or actively approach tourists seeking companions. After that, I met the tourist there and spent time pretending to be friendly, and there is a bar run by a Korean president I know, and we ask to go there, and then we exchange drinks with each other to build friendship. And after this first drinking session, they pick up the vehicle to move somewhere else, but the kidnapping begins in earnest in this vehicle. As soon as you get in the car, you're kidnapped. Choi Se-yong's main method was to threaten him with "pay or die."
◆ Lee Won-hwa: Since the Philippines is a country that allows guns, it is hard to resist a threat with a gun, so I think the number of kidnappings has increased because no matter how strong a man is, it is hard to resist prematurely.
◇ Lee Hyun-tae: That's right. In fact, some of the kidnapping victims were large and confident in their strength, but when they took out their guns from a narrow car, they had no choice but to obey orders. The kidnapped victims are taken to a residential area on the outskirts of the city, where they are ruthlessly assaulted with handcuffs on their hands and chains on their feet. Since then, the criminals have called their family or friends and asked them to send money, saying they have an urgent situation. And they muzzled the victims by forcing them to engage in sexual activity with a local woman in the Philippines or by forcing them to administer drugs.
◆ Lee Won-hwa: I didn't get kidnapped, but there was a problem in the Philippines, so I needed money. This is how you contacted your family in Korea and extorted the money.
◇ Lee Hyun-tae: That's right. They took advantage of the fact that crimes such as adultery and rape can be severely punished under local law in the Philippines. In the Philippines, adultery can be sentenced to six years in prison, and prostitution is strongly punished to 20 years in prison, and if the subject is a minor, up to life in prison. Choi Se-yong and his gang used this Philippine legal system to extort money from victims. On the other hand, some of the victims were eventually killed or still have not been confirmed to be alive, but some were released if they were lucky. At the end, I let him go and took him to the airport pretending to be a close brother. At the airport, he said, "Your sister was pretty. Let's meet together in Korea later, I know where your job is. He threatened me, saying, "I'm sorry." They even showed pictures of the apartment where the victims' families lived and muzzled in a way that gave them fear.
◆ Won-hwa Lee: According to what you said, these criminals knew all the personal information of their families in Korea, but I think there was someone who talked to them. Just because you want to know your personal information doesn't mean it's easy for everyone to know.
◇Lee Hyun-tae: According to the statements of surviving victims, there was something unique about Choi Se-yong, and he was able to check whether a specific person had a criminal record through a phone call. It is also said that he could not lie that he was a bad credit by easily finding out the victim's financial information on his laptop. It seems that he was in an intimate relationship with someone who could easily find out the sensitive personal information of the victims. But what's problematic is that this information has led to murder beyond just identifying the victim's personal information. Due to the nature of these criminals who were led by the suspect, if the kidnapped victim was judged to be a person who should not be released after a personal investigation, he did not release them and killed them. In fact, if you look at the surviving victims, there were ordinary small citizens who faithfully followed the instructions of these criminals or those who were already wanted. It was judged that there was no possibility that a wanted person would visit the investigative agency and report it on his own. On the other hand, the missing were former Air Force majors and civil servants. Considering their connections, the criminals seem to have judged that if they were released, they could be a threat to them. Also among the missing was the family of an airline employee. I think victims related to airlines may have judged that they could be dangerous to themselves walking around with fake passports.
◆ Lee Won-hwa: In these cases, it was not a grudge, it was not a case of enjoying murder as a slang, and it was a crime that was aimed very thoroughly at money. But why did he end up killing? No matter how much I think about this part, I think it will be too bad.
◇Lee Hyun-tae: I think we need to look back on the murder scene of the Anyang currency exchange I mentioned earlier. In the Anyang currency exchange case, the victim's neck was left with a wound of more than 10cm from the bottom of his right ear, and the right carotid jugular airway was completely cut off and the bones were damaged. If you attacked the victim from the front, you would not have left such a long wound on your neck, and if you attacked from the back, you would have stabbed him in the back, not cut his neck. But this wound means that the criminals put the victim on the desk and put a knife in his neck to pull him. Seeing this, the police concluded that the criminal unilaterally executed the victim for his own negligence. In other words, it wasn't accidental, it really literally executed the victim while trying to stop him from reporting or trying to escape. Meanwhile, Choi Se-yong and his group were publicly wanted as important overseas escape criminals due to the Anyang exchange station incident, and the investigation authorities went all out to catch them.
◆ Won-hwa Lee: I don't think it would have been easy because I was in a situation where I left the country.
◇Lee Hyun-tae: In fact, Choi Se-yong was not caught in Thailand until the fall of 2011, four years after the Anyang currency exchange incident, and their crimes continued until then. After receiving information that Choi Se-yong has fled to Thailand, the police ask for cooperation in the investigation by the Thai authorities. Since then, Choi Se-yong's wife has entered Thailand several times, and Thai checkpoint immigration officials identify her and secretly follow her. Finally, immigration officials handcuffed Choi when Choi and his wife sat opposite each other at a coffee shop outside Chiang Mai, Thailand. When the boss Choi Se-yong was caught like this, the group was soon arrested one after another.
◆ Won-hwa Lee: Although the criminals are Korean, I wonder how they went legally because it was not an incident in Korea and even arrests were made overseas.
◇ Lee Hyun-tae: Caught in Thailand, Choi will be sentenced to nine years and 10 months in prison by a Thai court on charges of forging passports and official documents. Meanwhile, Kim Jong-seok wrote a suicide note and killed himself while in prison. And Kim Sung-gon was arrested in December 2011 and escaped prison once, but was arrested again and imprisoned in a Philippine prison again.
◆ Won-hwa Lee: There are more than one or two cases. Since he committed more than 10 crimes, I think he would have been in prison until he died.
◇Lee Hyun-tae: Choi Se-yong was sentenced to 25 years in prison in the first trial after being found guilty of robbery and death in the Anyang currency exchange case, but he was later sentenced to life imprisonment in the Philippines after two robberies and dozens of kidnapping charges were merged. This was confirmed by the Supreme Court in September 2017. After the trial, the justice minister worked closely with Thailand's justice ministry, including delivering a personal letter to Thailand, and changed the decision to finally deliver Choi from temporary delivery to South Korea. Without having to be repatriated back to Thailand, he continued to serve his sentence in a domestic prison. However, what I want to point out here is that Choi Se-yong's allegation of the Anyang currency exchange case was recognized as a robbery death, not a robbery murder. In order for the robbery and murder to be admitted, the intention of murder must be proved, and the court applied the crime of robbery and death instead of the crime of robbery and murder, saying that it was difficult to say that Choi Se-yong had the intention of murder. It was Kim Sung-gon who entered the currency exchange with a knife, and Choi Se-yong was outside the currency exchange at the time. It was the court's judgment that even when plotting the crime, there was no intention of killing a female employee.
◆ Lee Won-hwa: Case X File Today, we looked at a series of kidnapping and killing Korean tourists in the Philippines. It's a really absurd thing. It is said that these people showed a very double behavior in the Philippines, teaching children to study and distributing food on weekends. Too many people have been sacrificed and damaged to satisfy their greed. I pray for the rest of the victims. You all deserve to be defended. Incident X file, thank you everyone.
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