Warrant for kindergarten foreign instructor for taking 'devil pot cookies'

On October 11, News 1 issued the following report:

Changwon police arrest foreign native speaking instructor who habitually took drugs

Changwon Central Police Station announced on the 11th that they had arrested P, an American native speaking instructor, for habitually taking smuggled hash oil mixed with food, a violation of the Act on the Control of Narcotics.

According to the police, Mr. A is suspected of making and eating cookies made from hash oil at B Officetel in Seongsan-gu, Changwon, from April until recently.

Police meanwhile announced plans to request a warrant for his arrest [detention] while determining the source of the hash oil.

That opening sentence is interesting, considering there's no proof that it was smuggled. Of course, considering that I can't think of another hash oil arrest that I've ever read of in Korea, it might be safe to assume that it is. Still, the first and last sentences contradict each other, as does calling him 'A' rather than 'P' in the second sentence. Which reminds me (for some odd reason) of a one-off comic strip in a campus magazine (back in Canada) which had one of the shadier Sesame Street characters on the street offering to sell Ernie an 'A', and then another letter, and another, until he finally says, "Hey kid, how about we take this J and roll it." Badump bump. What happened next probably looked like this:

(It's a shame Cookie Monster is absent.)

At any rate, it hasn't been the best year for foreign teachers in Changwon, what with one vandalizing an elevator machinery room and now this. I'm kind of curious how one gets caught taking cookies, though, innocuous-looking as they are.

As it turns out, it was Newsis that broke the story with an article titled "Warrant for kindergarten foreign instructor for taking 'Marijuana cookies'", explaining in more detail that the perp was a 42 year old American who entered the country in January 2009 and worked at a hagwon until last October, when he began working at a kindergarten. Police say that from April 10 to September 10 (6 months, Newsis assures us) he ate 3cm by 4cm pot cookies in his officetel, a fact apparently determined by the results of a hair test by the National Institute of Scientific Investigation. Mr. A apparently told police he bought the hash oil from foreigners somewhere in Busan, but police found that he'd gone to the US in December 2010 and November 2011, and assume he smuggled it into the country that way. [Which makes sense - the only reason a foreigner would return to their home country would be to smuggle drugs.] Police, as always, are expanding their investigation. Still, we have no idea how he was caught.

This was reported by a few other papers and news outlets. Asia News' headline was "Foreign English instructor in his 40s caught taking 'marijuana cookies,'" but this was topped by the Maeil Gyeongje's "And the cookie the kindergarten foreign instructor was eating the whole time was...". Now that's a headline that inspires suspicion and urges constant supervision. Even better is this article by the Gyeongnam Sinmun, titled "Foreign kindergarten instructor habitually took drugs," not because of these paragraphs -

It's known that hash oil is a substance made of concentrated marijuana, and contains 3-4 times more THC than regular marijuana, making it a much stronger hallucinogen.

Marijuana cookies have almost no smell and because most people can't tell they are a drug, as they are in the form of food, they are easy to take without anyone knowing, an advantage that is known to be often abused.

- but because of this cartoon:

That's just awesome. I think the foreign teacher on the right is more convincingly drawn. And, hey, demons want their pot cookies as well.

There have been other cartoons with demonic drug connections published before, of course.


And we can't forget this one (though it lacks a demonic element - unless you count that phallic nose as a horn):


Still, I can't help but wonder if this should be the new header for the blog...

I'll save connecting this image to Japanese WWII propaganda for another day.