Kim Rahn is the managing editor of The Korea Times. Since joining the company in 2003, she has covered various beats including the presidential office, Seoul city government, the Bank of Korea and the tourism industry. In 2014, she won the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) award for her coverage of the ordeals of migrant women in Korea.
BTS photo-printed transportation card is property: court
By Kim Rahn
BTS is at a press conference in Seoul in this April photo. A local court ruled Sunday picking up a lost transportation card with a BTS photo is a crime because the owner is unlikely to have abandoned it and the special collection is regarded as property. / Korea Times file
By Kim Rahn
According to a court ruling, if you pick up a public transportation card with a BTS photo printed on it in the street, keeping it can constitute a crime, as the card is unlikely to have been “abandoned” by the owner.
The Seoul Western District Court said Sunday that it recently handed down a 30-month jail term to a 56-year-old man, surnamed Kim, for theft and pocketing lost items.
Kim was indicted for stealing bags and purses over three times in Mapo-gu, western Seoul, in March, and picking up five transportation cards in the streets around Hongdae and Sinchon areas between January and April.
He admitted to the theft, but claimed the latter charge was inappropriate because he only picked up cards the owners had “abandoned.”
Kim called for a jury trial, and four out of seven jurors did not accept his claim. The court made the same decision as the jurors.
The court said the cards were not put in trash bins and three of the five cards had been recharged, and thus the owners had most likely not abandoned ownership of the cards, saying Kim probably recognized this as well.
“One of the cards had a photo of BTS on it and another a Red Velvet member. Beyond the simple function as a transportation card, such cards are regarded as collector's items,” the court said in the ruling.
“The value of these special cards is usually higher than the initial price of purchase as a premium is added. So the cards are assets regardless of how much money was recharged.”
Kim also claimed picking up a lost item in the street was a socially acceptable act, but the court disagreed.
“After picking up the items, he did not take any action to return them to the owners, such as reporting them to police as lost items. We don't recognize this as a proper act accepted as a social rule,” the court said.
It added Kim committed theft again despite three previous convictions of the same crime with jail terms.