Toe trade

When South Korean Choi Mal-ja defended herself against a would-be rapist by hurting her attacker in 1964, the then 18-year-old was prosecuted for grievous bodily harm.

The following year, Choi was sentenced to 10 months in prison and two years of probation for biting off half of her assailant’s tongue, ABC News reports.

Now 78, Choi wants her conviction overturned. A lower court in Busan dismissed her application for retrial in 2021, so she elevated her case to the Supreme Court. Last December, the high court granted her request for a retrial.

Meanwhile, a female staffer at an animal shelter in Victoria, Australia was almost jailed for trying to trade the remains of a pet owner whose two dogs were surrendered to the facility in February 2024.

Joanna Kathlyn Kinman, 48, was facing a two-year sentence when she pleaded guilty last 14 March to offensive conduct involving human remains, NBC News reports.

Magistrate Andrew Sim sentenced Kinman to an 18-month non-custodial sentence, including 150 hours of community service, for bringing home two toes of the dead pet owner that were eaten and then vomited by the latter’s two dogs at the shelter, according to NBC News.

A police report said the human toes were retrieved from a bin at the shelter and Kinman placed them in a jar of formaldehyde in her home before trying to trade them online.

Police who raided Kinman’s home also found an alligator claw, a bird skull, a guinea pig trotter, and her children’s teeth that she kept to trade with other specimen collectors in the Facebook group called “Bone Buddies Australia.”