Designer Shoes

A 59-year old man has been caught by Korean police, after stealing over 600 pairs of designer shoes to stock his second-hand shoe shop! Although normally I wouldn’t bother writing a post about a shoe thief, this man used a pretty interesting method to pinch the footwear.

The man managed to steal huge numbers of very expensive shoes by visiting hospitals and funeral homes and posing as a mouner. To clarify the technique, allow me to tell you what the police caught him doing.

The man arrived at a funeral home in the Suseo district of south Seoul, dressed all in black – like a mourner. Before he went inside, he removed his shoes – a respectful tradition in Korea – and left them outside with all the other mourners’ shoes. After a fleeting visit inside to ‘pay his respects’, the man left the funeral home, slipping on a highly expensive pair of designer shoes as he did so! Sounds to me like he’d been watching too much Slumdog Millionare!

According to the Korean police, they caught him stealing three pairs for shoes, with a combined value of nearly £1200! To be perfectly house, that sounds dubious; that’s an average value of £400 per pair of men’s shoes… Either way, the police traced him to a warehouse where he kept over 1200 shoes (that number again) to supply his second-hand shoe shop. The shoes are now all on display in Seoul, in the hope that the owners can reclaim them… If that sounds too stupid to be true, check out this picture:

Looks like it’s a good day to be a shoe-thief in Seoul!