[Daegu Dongbu Police Station]
SEOUL -- A debt-stricken woman armed with a pickaxe, a hammer and a powered drill sweat for six hours all night in an attempt to tear down the concrete wall of a jewelry store for her burglary, but she turned back home after her hard work became unfruitful due to an inch-thick steel plating on the other side of the wall.
On April 30, the 36-year-old identified by her surname Kim broke into a snack store adjacent to the jewelry store in Daegu, some 238 kilometers (147 miles) southeast of Seoul, carrying construction tools to get her through a concrete wall to her glory.
When the woman was arrested by police ten days later, she told investigators that she was fixated on the thought of repaying her credit card debt. Police caught her in front of an inn, based on her vehicle numbers captured on closed-circuit TV footages.
"The tools were ordinary ones which could easily be found at homes," Kim Do-hyun, a detective at the Daegu police station, told Aju News on Thursday.
As a drifter, the woman had stayed at cheap inns with no income or place to rest. Pressured by banks to pay back her credit card debt of about 25 million won ($23,120), she allegedly made a foolish choice.
The detective said the woman was certain of her successful robbery because she worked perfectly and had everything carefully prepared. She gathered information for over a month and even drank coffee with the owner of the jewelry store many times to get information on the store's schematics and vault.
The woman began attacking the concrete wall at about 11:10 p.m., but she gave up six hours later and left her tools at the scene because she came across an unexpected obstacle -- a steel plated wall which was installed by the jewelry store owner a decade ago when his shop was robbed.
"She can get sentenced for more than three years in jail for special theft, burglary and destruction of property," the detective said. However, he predicted a lighter sentence because it was her first criminal act.
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