Should’a Made ‘Em an Offer They’re Not Likely to Refuse

I laughed so hard when I read about it this morning that I knew I wanted to write it up, but I was too busy until tonight - places to go, people to see, bidness to get done — and, in the meantime, the Marmot already has publicized the story of the downtrodden pimps with the hearts of gold so cruelly harrassed by the police who insist on shutting them down.  So I’ll content myself with directing your attention to this nugget in the story:

“We are the same Korean citizens as other lay people. In this sense, at least, the police should guarantee our rights to live. But now the police are relentless,” a pimp Cho Hyun-hee told The Korea Times.

Pimps in the district said they did not oppose the action but found it too harsh. They said they want to sit at a negotiation table with the police to find a practical win-win solution.

That about sums it up when it comes to the subject of Korean attitudes about the rule of law.

But don’t think it’s just the lowlifes who believe and act this way. They’re just trying to get the same action as the major players. The police officer in charge has justified his offensive against the brothels in part because of their complicity in the tax evasion that is pandemic in Korea. But as Wedge reminds us in The Marmot’s comment section, that’s a crime in Korea that on the 100 Million Dollar Level doesn’t even warrant a single day in jail because, as the judge in the case involving former Samsung Chairman (and still eminence grise) Lee Kun-Hee,explained

“We ruled against an actual jail sentence as the degree of illegality was not significant enough.”

I gotta give Korea’s finest credit, though, for keeping their guns in their holsters - at least as far as we know, for now.