October 14, 2007
Living near a criminal who isn't going to jail
Sorry for not posting yesterday but we had some excitement in our apartment building (we live in an apartment complex for foreign faculty) when one teacher beat up an old Korean man (with a chair).
He's not in jail. Apparently according to Korean law you have to hurt someone 4 weeks worth to earn jail time. The old man went to the doctor and will "only" be hurt for 2 weeks so the teacher is safe in that sense it seems.
Still something obviously needs to be done. When my wife went outside to see what all the yelling was about the bad guy yelled and cursed at her a lot. By the time she woke me up (heavy sleeper) things had calmed down somewhat but we're still pretty mad about it all...
I have a couple of articles coming in the next few hours but meanwhile, I thought I'd pose a discussion question inspired by the Korean law (as it was explained to me) that if you injure someone for less than 4 weeks you don't get prosecuted (I mean when a young man attacks an old man with a metal chair the young guy deserves to go to jail, right?):
What crazy laws have you learned about places you've been?
Let me qualify this by saying that I'd rather talk about laws that actaully matter or affect people. We've all heard crazy laws like "In Delaware it is illegal to get married on a dare" or "It is illegal to have sex with a porcupine in Florida" (who knows if those are even truly laws?).
Anyway, I'm not talking about weird, obscure laws that people will never encounter. Let's share laws that might be worth knowing or might actually matter to travelers.
Posted by James Trotta at October 14, 2007 9:39 AM | TrackBack