[383th]Korean-Chinese man gets death penalty for Suwon murder//Samsung to hire more people from regional universities// Pakistan: Buddha attacked by T

[용필[Yongpil]]

Korean-Chinese man gets death penalty for Suwon murder

A Korean-Chinese man accused of kidnapping and killing a 28-year-old woman was sentenced to death Friday, two months after the high-profile murder that also exposed the carelessness of the police.

The Suwon District Court in Suwon, south of Seoul, handed down the death penalty to Wu Yuanchun, 42, citing the ruthlessness of his crime and his lack of remorse.

"The defendant killed the victim with sinister intentions that were not limited to rape, and has remained insincere ever since the crime. He shows no sign of repentance," the court said in its ruling. "The death penalty deprives a person of his or her life and may be a punishment against humanity, but a strict call to accountability is unavoidable."

The court also ordered Wu to wear an electronic anklet for 30 years and a public disclosure of his profile for 10 years.

According to the ruling, Wu attempted to rape the woman twice in his home on April 1 before killing her and carving out 365 pieces of her flesh.

The case dealt a blow to the police after officers were found to have delayed their initial response to an emergency phone call from the victim and wasted the opportunity to save her.

It also led to the resignation of then police chief Cho Hyun-oh, who took responsibility for the incident. (Yonhap News)

Questions

1.     Some say that whatever evil deed has been done by a criminal, People should not sentence a death penalty to a criminal. Do you agree to the idea of Death penalty which might be against humanity?

2.     In the article, it says that Wu’s profile will be publicly disclosed for 10 years. There might be a possibility of Sex criminals committing sex crimes again once their profiles are disclosed to public because they would feel less risky to commit a crime again. Even though there is this kind of side effect, do you agree to the idea of public disclosure?

3.     These days, People could hear lots of atrocious crimes. What could be the reasons for this kind of crimes increasing rather than the past?

Samsung to hire more people from regional universities

Samsung Group said Wednesday that it will hire up to 35 percent of its new recruits from regional universities from the second half of this year.

The country’s largest conglomerate also said it will introduce a 5 percent quota for applicants from low-income and underprivileged families at the same time.

“The group plans on expanding the portion of new hires from universities located outside of Seoul to 35 percent from the current 25-27 percent range during the regular recruiting session in the second half of this year,” said Samsung’s chief communications officer Rhee In-yong.

Well-known universities located in provincial areas, such as KAIST and POSTECH, are also included on the list of regional colleges. However, not many graduates from those universities apply for jobs at Samsung as most enroll in grad schools, Rhee said.

For the first time, this year Samsung will hold a special recruitment session by receiving recommendations from university deans and chiefs for about 400-500 college graduates from underprivileged homes.

“The measure has been designed to offer workplaces to hard-working young people who have an adventurous mind but come from families with economic difficulties,” said Rhee. “It will give them an opportunity to go after their dreams without thinking about how they will make their daily living.”

By Cho Ji-hyun (sharon@heraldm.com)

Questions

1.     In the article, it says that SAMSUNG will hire up to 35 percent of its new recruits from regional universities. This kind of action would be good because it would hire more people from regional universities which have been almost impossible to get a job in SAMSUNG before. But also this kind of action might be a reverse discrimination to people from universities in Seoul who are more competitive. What is your opinion of SAMSUNG’s action?

2.     Democratic United Party(민주통합당) has made a party platform of abolishing Seoul National University to get rid of university ranking. Do you agree to the idea of Democratic United Party?

3.     SAMSUNG is a private owned company. But they are making quotas in recruitment for the people from regional university and low-income families in the article which is a kind of action done by public institutions. Why do you think SAMSUNG is doing this kind of action although it is a private owned company?

 Pakistan: Buddha attacked by Taliban gets facelift

JAHANABAD, Pakistan (AP) ― When the Taliban blew the face off a towering, 1,500-year-old rock carving of Buddha in northwest Pakistan almost five years ago, it fell to an intrepid Italian archaeologist to come to the rescue.

Thanks to the efforts of Luca Olivieri and his partners, the 6-meter-tall image near the town of Jahanabad is getting a facelift, and many other archaeological treasures in the scenic Swat Valley are being excavated and preserved.

Hard-line Muslims have a history of targeting Buddhist, Hindu and other religious sites they consider heretical to Islam. Six months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the Taliban shocked the world by dynamiting a pair of 1,500-year-old Buddhist statues in central Afghanistan.

The Jahanabad Buddha, etched high on a huge rock face in the 6th or 7th century, is one of the largest such carvings in South Asia. It was attacked in the fall of 2007 when the Pakistani Taliban swarmed across the scenic Swat Valley. The army drove most of them out two years later, but foreign tourists who used to visit the region still tend to stay away.

Olivieri himself had to leave in 2008 after more than two decades of tending to the riches dating back to Alexander the Great and the Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim invaders who followed. The 49-year-old head of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Pakistan returned in 2010 and is back at work.

Taliban militants climbed ropes to insert explosives in holes drilled into the face and shoulders of the Jahanabad Buddha, said Olivieri. The explosives in the shoulders failed to detonate, but the others blew off most of the face above the lips and cracked other parts of the carving and surrounding rock.

Olivieri and his team began work this month on fixing the cracks and what’s left of the face. A full reconstruction is impossible because detailed documentation and fragments of the face are lacking.

“Whatever you do in the absence of perfect data is a fake,’’ said Olivieri, who says he has wanted to be an archaeologist since age 6 and still brings a youthful exuberance to his work even as his beard grows gray.

Arriving as a university student in 1987, he was fascinated by Swat, once an important center of Buddhist culture and trade. The monk credited with introducing Buddhism to Tibet, Padmasambhava, was born in Swat.

In more recent decades, the area was known as “the Switzerland of Pakistan,’’ popular with religious tourists from China, Japan and South Korea, and the hope is that restoration of the Jahanabad Buddha will spark a revival of tourism here.

Olivieri’s mission is funded by the Italian government, which works with local Pakistani antiquities authorities. It has uncovered over 120 Buddhist sites among Swat’s soaring hills and rushing rivers. Of roughly 200 Buddhist rock carvings in Swat, the Jahanabad Buddha was among the few to survive with its face intact for so long, said Olivieri. Most were defaced centuries ago by Muslim invaders who, like the Taliban, consider Buddha a false idol.

Maulana Shamsur Rehman, a leading Islamist politician in Swat, says the attack on the Buddha should never have happened. Islam preaches freedom and protection for followers of all religions, he told The Associated Press, and “in line with Islamic rules, nobody should have an objection to the repair work on the Buddha statue.’’

In 2001, militants damaged the excavated ruins of a 7th century Hindu temple in Swat overlooking a stronghold conquered by Alexander in the 4th century B.C. Unable to protect the temple, the Italian mission had to rebury it.

Ironically, the site that Olivieri was most worried about during the Taliban’s violent reign in Swat was an Islamic one ― the roughly 1,000-year-old Udegram Ghaznavid mosque, the third oldest in Pakistan. He feared the militants would occupy and damage it, but that never happened.

Pakistani security officials say the Taliban are again trying to infiltrate Swat, but militants are not the only threat to the archaeological sites. Looters are perhaps a bigger problem. Many relics looted from Swat are in private and public collections around the world.

In December police arrested several men in Swat and seized a roughly one-meter-tall, 1,800-year-old Buddhist statue that could have fetched tens of thousands of dollars on the international antiquities market.

Questions

1.     There are lots of conflicts between religions such as in the article. Especially, 9.11-terror in 2001 was really astonishing. Why do you think there are conflicts between religions even though their doctrine preaches peace?

2.     It might look irrational being a religious person. Because we could not see or feel God. But there are lots of religious people world-wide. Why do you think people believe religions?

3.     Do you have a religion? How did you become a religious person? Have you ever experienced God in your life? Talk about your story. 

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