This is why we can't have nice things: asshole tourists in Japan

The BBQ Pit
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Yesterday, Korean time, the embarrassment was in court again..

That’s a YouTube video, so I’ll give you a quick run-down.

He arrived, dressed appropriately for court, and acted respectfully. His alleged victim, “BongBong”, finally appeared to testify. When asked by the court if she wanted him punished, she replied yes and stated her reason was because of the backlash she’s getting from Koreans thanks to his alleged crime against her. Also, the male prosecutor has been replaced by a female prosecutor (and don’t tell me the chief prosecutor didn’t do that on purpose) for this and further proceedings against Somali.

Apparently the next court appearence is April 6, 2026. I don’t remember if I heard that date in the linked video, another video on this breaking news, or on Korean media.

This clown’s been stuck in South Korea for over a year now. When he whined to the judge that it’s tough on him how long this case is dragging on, the judge basically told him, “Other foreigners have had cases go on as long as six years; you’re just going to have to wait your turn”.

So, yeah, pissing off the Japanese wasn’t smart and their solution to the problem was simply send the problem away. South Korea might’ve done that with him also except for two things. First, he filmed himself doing a lapdance on the Comfort Woman statue, said sttue which honors the girls and women who were forced to be prostitutes for the Japanese military during World War II. Next, the deepfake he shared is, under South Korean law, a sex crime.

And that’s not a smart move at all.

Dude’s looking at, last I heard, 12 years and 2 months maximum in a South Korean prison. If anyone’s curious, I can dig up some information on the foreigners’ prison which is where he’d be incarcerated after all appeals are exhausted.

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He’ll have interesting stories to tell hardened cons, as in Alice’s Restaurant.

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Any indication of how long he will likely serve? That’s a long time for sometime stupid.

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Many of the commentaries I’ve heard say up to 31 years, but the more grounded ones discuss a maximum sentencing possibility of 12 years and 2 months. The biggie here is the sex offense. In the not so distant past, Korean courts had been lenient on those, but that caused massive public backlash. Laws were changed. Prosecutors got more ardent. And the courts today impose harsh sentences for sex crimes now. And some people have been telling me that along with drug offenses, sex offenses pretty much exempt the convict from getting to serve their sentence in a prison in their home country instead of in Korea.

There’s stupid and then there’s intentionally stupid. Finally, there’s criminally intentionally stupid. Guess which category this clown catapulted into.

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I find myself simultaneously wondering if the possible sentence is grossly unfair and having zero sympathy for the guy. When you go out of your way to cross international borders for the expressed purpose of causing outrage, well, you reap what you sow.

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Yeah, I may be wrong but my understanding is that he did a deep fake with kissing a Korean woman, saying they were dating and such.

There isn’t anything forgivable there, but Like @Odesio , I wonder a bit about the length of the sentence.

However, I also agree that you cross international borders with the explicit intent to create outrage for clicks, you get what’s coming.

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Well, somebody has to be made an example of, and I don’t really mind that it’s this guy.

Also, with that much gross disrespect for women, I’m guessing he’s actually done much worse to women than what we know about.

The lesson is: learn the laws of the country you’re visiting, especially if you plan to make trouble.

May all the other social media idiots heed that warning.

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Yeah, that’ll happen.

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Not just any Korean woman, but one who is apparently famous for being a live streamer herself–obviously a normal streamer, not like Ismael. I was surprised he didn’t get charged with interfering with her business.

I remember taking a car ferry to the United Kingdom from France years ago. The immigration and customs checkpoint on the UK side had a huge sign saying:

Evidently many countries need to have a similar sign:

Besides being guilty of all the crimes he’s pleaded to and those the prosecution can prove, Ismael is guilty of bad timing. As I said upthread, the legal terrain in the Republic of Korea regarding sex offenses is a much more dangerous field than in the past. Cases such as the Gwangju Inhwa School’s sexual abuse incidents as portrayed in the film Silenced got the general population riled up against incredibly lenient court decisions for sex offenses. Since that flick came out in 2011. Another bit of bad timing is he did his deepfake stunt after the legislature passed a bill making the penalties for deepfakes harsher.

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I dug up a Korea Herald article from May of last year about Ismael. That’s a fun read if you like reading about stupidity. The big takeaway I got from it, although it was not stated in the article (“reading between the lines”), is he did some research before heading to South Korea to see what the most offensive things he could do there. Congratulations are due to him. He found out. He did them. And now he’s facing consequences.

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I just read the kid’s Wiki page. His crime spree was only a couple of years long and he’s clearly mentally ill. He was kicked out of Japan for being disruptive and making Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Fukushima jokes. He was fined around $1400 and kicked out. He went to Israel and taped pictures of Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein on the Western Wall. Then Korea. He arrived to his first court appearance an hour late and refused take off his MAGA hat.

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Someone should challenge him to sneak into North Korea and see how long he can evade detection.

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The guy is a self-proclaimed troll. It’s his profession. He did it for notoriety and greed. He made a calculation that it would be worth it to risk legal consequences and he miscalculated badly. His job is to make the world worse, and the longer he is locked up, the better the rest of the world is. I hope he fucks around in prison and extends his stay indefinitely.

I disagree. He plays a mentally ill person on the internet for money and fame, and it was working for him until it stopped.

The fact that he even has a Wikipedia page for you to read shows how successful he was at one time.

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His Wiki page is pretty short. What surprised me is that he is 25 years old and his streaming “career” was for less than 2.5 years which ended with his arrest. The fact that he has a Wiki page has everything to do with the Korea situation.

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I don’t think he’s mentally ill. At least not in a way that prevents him from understanding the ramifications of his actions. He deliberately set out to piss people off. He persona is calculated. When faced with the possibility of suffering for his behavior he issued an apology. This is someone who is fully in control of their actions.

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That’s factually incorrect. His Wikipedia page was created on October 13, 2023, almost a full year before the incident in Korea. When it was created, he was living in Japan, and the controversies surrounding him were primarily from things he did in that country.

You can view the original version of the page here:

His career is due to his controversies, but again, that’s intentional. He is a professional troll, and turned illegal behavior into a career. He’s more-or-less a career criminal, and like most criminals that’s not a career path with longevity. And he’s the stupidest kind of criminal; one that literally broadcasts his crimes to the world. But again, it worked for a while for him.

Think about it this way… It’s pretty remarkable that he was able to do what he did for 2.5 years. How many people do you think could livestream themselves breaking the law for years?

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I stand corrected. He’s just an asshole. I’m surprised after all of this he hasn’t been more humble in court and was still up to shenanigans.

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This. If you know anything about streaming platforms, he was banned from Kick. Which is an impressive achievement in and of itself.

Kick- Controversies - Wikipedia

A New York Times article stated that some of the website’s content creators have committed what appeared to be crimes, such as sexual assault and trespassing while streaming.[18] Other content creators of the platform have had sex while streaming, brandished sex toys at children and made sexual remarks toward underage girls.

Kick has been called “a playground for people to be degenerate” by Kristin Gillespie, a co-founder of the New York-based Rights to Unmute, a not-for-profit organization that seeks to combat racism, bigotry, and harassment in gaming. She said in May 2024 that Kick has tolerated overly sexual and, sometimes, “predatory behavior” on the platform.

In late 2023, Kick content creators Ice Poseidon and Sam Pepper were detained by Australian police after an incident involving a man they had met earlier that day. They attempted to film the man and a sex worker, both of whom had consented to be filmed, engaging in sexual activity.

On 24 August 2025, Raja Jackson, best known as the son of former martial artist Quinton Jackson, also known as Rampage Jackson, knocked independent wrestler Syko Stu unconscious with a wrestling slam and then proceeded to hit his unconscious head over 20 times in what was considered to be an unprompted attack. Raja, who is also known to livestream on Kick and other services, was livestreaming on Kick throughout the entire ordeal, and his cameraman captured all footage (including both the incident that sparked the attack and the attack itself)

Kick is a cesspool of degeneracy and unmoderated content. Getting kicked from it is something you have to work exceptionally hard at to do.

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Kick is where you go when you are banned from Twitch after going to Twitch because you’re banned from YouTube. Getting banned from that is absolutely an accomplishment.

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I suppose the only higher (read “lower”) honor would be being banned from X for being excessively evil.