Drug Woes, Celebrities, and Kidnapping

A female celebrity was kidnapped pretty recently. It was later found out that a drug addict committed the crime.

The suspect, whose identity remains undisclosed, but just known as Kim, was arrested at 11:45 p.m. on Wednesday. At the time of the arrest, according to the police, he was found to have taken 30 pills of some type of hallucinogenic drug.

Tracking down on the ransom-demand phone call to the entertainer, the police got to know that Kim was making the phone call from a pay phone near a convenience store in Ilsan, Gyeonggi Province.

Kim has run afoul with the law thirteen times already, and has basically lived without any permanent residence for some time. Several clubs also knew him as a regular. He reportedly committed the crime without premeditation, looking at a woman getting into a BMW sedan alone in the hotel parking lot, where Kim visited frequently.

The police stated that, he made six phone calls to the celebrity`s cell phone on Wednesday, when the kidnapping case was made public in the newspapers. He allegedly threatened to kill the female entertainer if he failed to receive a ransom of 100 million won (or approximately, $80,000).

It also was later found that Kim stole two more BMWs so far. For example, on May 17, he called a used-car dealer and asked the dealer to deliver the BMW up to Ilsan, saying he wanted to test-drive the car. The dealer brought the car to the place designated by Kim, but ended up being robbed of money and the car.

The police announced that they obtained the facial and physical features through recorded surveillance tapes, which led to his arrest.

podragon@donga.com