Police have arrested a suspect in a late-night incident in which two foreign men blocked a car on a road and threatened the driver. The case had once been classified as unsolved before a reinvestigation identified the suspect.
The Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency's metropolitan investigation unit and the Icheon Police Station said on the 17th that they had made an emergency arrest of a 21-year-old Kazakh national identified as A, a daily-hire worker, on charges including special intimidation and property damage. Police plan to seek an arrest warrant for him.
A is accused of chasing down a car carrying a man in his 30s and a passenger on a road in Haewol-ri, Majang-myeon, Icheon, at about 11:40 p.m. on July 29, together with an acquaintance of the same nationality, a 25-year-old identified as B. The two allegedly cut in front of the vehicle and threatened the occupants, kicking the front of the car.
The case came to public attention on the 6th through JTBC's "Han Moon-chul's Dashcam Review." Dashcam footage aired on the program showed two men getting out of a car that had blocked the victim's vehicle on an outlying road and rushing toward it. The men laughed while speaking in a language the victim could not understand, and one kicked the hood. The other brandished an unidentified object.
The victim said on the program that he had been parked on the shoulder of an outlying road when a car coming from the opposite direction pulled up close beside him. Finding it suspicious, he drove off immediately. The other car then made a U-turn and followed at high speed, he said, and when he pulled over on the shoulder again out of fear, it blocked his path and the men got out and acted threateningly.
The victim also voiced frustration with the police response. He said officers on night duty had told him he "should have locked the doors, called the police and waited." He said he later filed a formal report at the police station but that officers tried to handle it as little more than a hit-and-run property damage case.
Police did struggle to identify the suspect vehicle early in the investigation. The license plate captured by the victim's dashcam could not be read by the naked eye or through analysis by the National Forensic Service. With the investigation at a standstill, the case was briefly classified as an unsolved case under management in the middle of last month. As criticism mounted, the provincial police agency and the Icheon Police Station launched a joint reinvestigation on the 21st of last month.
Forensic specialists at the provincial agency recovered part of the plate number through detailed analysis. Investigators narrowed down candidate vehicles by combining the recovered digits with the car model, then confirmed the plate number through canvassing. They went on to trace social media accounts commonly used by foreign nationals to buy and sell cars in Korea, where they found a listing for the vehicle used in the incident along with a contact number.
Police identified A by analyzing closed-circuit television footage and other material from the area where the phone's actual user lived. After tracking his movements for three days, officers arrested him at about 8:25 p.m. on the 16th at a low-rise multi-unit home near Anseong, where he was having dinner with acquaintances. The car used in the incident was also seized.
In questioning, A said he had been on his way back after a failed attempt to sell his car to another foreign national on the day of the incident and had mistaken the victim's car for that of the prospective buyer, according to police.
B, named as an accomplice, was found to have been deported early this month after being caught in a separate case on charges of violating the Immigration Control Act by overstaying his visa.
Police plan to investigate the detailed circumstances of the incident and any additional offenses once an arrest warrant for A is issued. For B, who has left the country, they are considering international judicial cooperation procedures, including a red notice.