Originally Posted by JDiver

Your Taejon experience is a common benign experience in Japan, and in other places can be legitimate - or not.

In Seoul the same thing happened to me and my military buddy when we went in for a day after finishing a TDY (temporary duty) job in Osan, the day before we were to return to Japan. We were toured around by a very articulate young man, and we wound up in a tea house. He excused himself to call home, as he was late, and when he returned, asked us to his home for a Korean meal with his family.

When we entered the home, several guys came out at us with knives, lengths of pipe... and we "cooperated" by turning over our cameras, watches, money, after which they threatened us again and tossed us out on the crowded back street leading into a maze of other streets.

My sense of direction has always been pretty darned good, and found our way to a main street and a police officer, and we escorted several cops back to the house. When we arrived, we found a young US Army Private in bed with a young woman, one of the armed thugs going through the Private's effects (left in the living room, conveniently.)

The way the cops handled things was unorthodox, to say the least: they told the young woman to go out and retrieve our cameras and watches, or they would begin working over the man, who would carry out retribution on her for letting him down. After many protestations she knew nothing, she left - returning within fifteen minutes with our stolen items, which were returned to us.

One officer drove us to a nearby Army base, where we also filled out a report with the MPs. The MP Sergeant confiscated our stolen items and told us they must be kept as evidence for prosecution, in accordance with Korean law, and had us sit in the waiting area - for two plus hours, making us lose our last bus back to Osan Air Base. We found a couple of empty beds in a barracks, overnighted, and took the first bus to Osan the next morning.

At Osan, we proceeded to the AFOSI office and made another report. A few phone calls and ~two hours later, a motorcycle courier arrived - with our watches and cameras, and we were told the MP Sergeant had been arrested and confined to the brig for theft, and he had apparently scammed some others under color of authority.

We were not injured, but it came close, and we did lose all our money (we were told basically, no serial numbers, no evidence - but I suspect one or two police officers received an unexpected cash "bonus" that day.

Same beginning of story, vastly different consequences. When? 1966. The experience certainly helped me develop my "scamdar."