Yomiuri: Altered S. Korean coins facing meltdown
The Yokohama District Public Prosecutors Office intends to melt down for reuse as industrial materials South Korean coins used illegally in vending machines, according to sources. Until now, employees at the prosecutors office made the coins unusable, but the number of won coins sent to the office reached about 120,000 last year as the statute of limitations for the crimes, which peaked in 1999, expired. The office became unable to dispose of the coins manually, so came up with the idea of melting them down. The office will ask relevant companies to melt down the coins, with the cost of disposal covered by profits made through sales of the raw materials taken out in the dissolution process, the sources said...Since most theft cases at vending machines using the coins have remained unsolved, last year the Yokohama prosecutors office received a large number of coins used in theft cases that took place in 1999...Employees at the office destroyed those coins by breaking them into pieces with an electric drill or bending them with pliers. But even if an employee spent a whole day on the job, the work resulted in the disposal of only a few hundred coins. Officials at the prosecutors office became concerned that such a workload would affect other operations in the office and since the autumn began to consider alternative methods of disposal...more...
