Some 20 Government Buildings Robbed

A robber who had recently robbed government office buildings in the metropolitan area was caught by the police.

He was Mr. Ahn against whom the Inchon Central Police Station asked the court to issue a warrant of arrest for a special robbery act.

He was caught red-handed while he was ransacking the offices of the Inchon Local Ocean Fisheries Building on June 20th. He was stealing some cash worth of 300 million won and 1000 yen.

He admitted to the police that he robbed Inchon city Hall on May 20th, Buchon City hall on May 29th, Inchon Keyanggu Office on June 1st and Inchon Chunggu Office on June 3rd of some 7 million won.

He also admitted that he stealed some 25 million won worth of items from some 20 public offices in Busan, Daegu and Chonnam Province. The police is investigating details about these cases.

However, some doubts about the robbery incidents are rising since some of the stolen offices did not report the incident to the police office and the others reduced their amount of damage by purpose.

Mr.Ahn stated that he stole 3 million won from Buchon City Hall on May 29th. But, the city did not report the case to the police. Only after the police came forward with the truth, the city argued that its damages only stood at 1 million won.

An official from the city said, “We did not lose major internal documents, so we did not report the incident to the police because we assumed that it might be done by one of our employees.”

In the same way, the Inchon Keyanggu Office reported only 360,000 won out of the real damage amount of 2 million won.

The police found 13 checks of 1 million won denomination, 15 checks of 100,000 won denomination, 8 gift certificates of 50,000 denomination and 10 bank books. It is tracking down the original issuers of those checks to assess factual damages.

Mr.Ahn said, “It was difficult to earn my living, so I ran out of my house to rent a car in Daegu and started robbing public offices since it was relatively easy to do a job in those places. “

One of the police offices said, “He does not exactly remember where he robbed since he was not good at directions or geographic locations of the victimized public offices. But, he might be the one who robbed Goyang City Hall, Kimpo City Hall and the Second government building in Kyunggi Province.”

run-juno@donga.com kchwang@donga.com