SBS and OhMyNews report that three U.S. servicemen with the 2nd Infantry Division stand accused of beating up a taxi driver and two citizens who came to his aid during an alcohol-assisted act of mayhem in Uijeongbu on Friday night. According to the reports, one of the soldiers — in a state of drunkenness — climbed a top a taxi as it waited at a red light in Uijeongbu 2-dong. When the 49-year-old taxi driver tried to get him down, he was assaulted by both the man on top of his vehicle and his two friends (I assume this is NOT the reason USFK instituted the buddy system). Two citizens who came in to help the taxi driver were also assaulted.
Police arrested two of the soldiers at the scene, questioning the lads and turning them over to U.S. MPs. The police intend to ask that the third one, who managed to run back to base, appear for questioning next week.
Do I need to point out that coming on the heals of “the beer bottle incident,” this is not a good thing?
P.S. — Good on SBS and OhMyNews for NOT using the soldiers’ names this time around.
UPDATE: The Lost Nomad posted on the incident earlier, and offers a little advise that might help cut down on some of this nonsense:
Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to stop holding only the individuals accountable. Maybe, just maybe, it’s also time to hold their supervisors accountable. And their supervisor’s supervisors. Or, if someone from a unit screws up like this, make the entire unit pay for it - lock them on base/post for 30 days with no liberty, period. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to stop concentrating on stopping prostitution (which should be left to the Koreans in the first place) and start concentrating on what’s causing this recent rash of incidents. Something is broken and it needs to get fixed.
Sounds like sage advise to me.
UPDATE II: GI Korea also believes that if true, the idiots need to have the “book thrown at them.”
15 Comments
They need to be educated at what we called the Uijonbu Agricultral College aka local prison farm. Year round at Cp Stanly you’d have the prisoners coming on post to do labor jobs, with at that time one American among them, for doing stupid things. Needless to say, during my 3 years there, we had no incidents like that. Maybe during in processing they should give them a taste of a Korean Prison. Not a fun thing, subsistance farming up to your knees in mud in the rice paddies, and very cold in the winter. Let alone the language barrier.
What the fuck is wrong with you people?!?!?!
U.S. soldiers arrested for assaulting taxi driver, bystanders
UIJEONGBU, South Korea, July 16 (Yonhap) Two U.S. soldiers were arrested on charges of assaulting a South Korean taxi driver and two bystanders on Friday night, with a third suspec…
I don’t know if I’m bitching but I just want to make this clear… as much quirks as korea has america itself has the same/similiar quirks as well.. Jesus in suburbia crap,microwaved cats,death sites,goths(god help these idiots),babies in toliets etc etc… Every country has its ups and downs korea isn’t the only country with it’s problems for godsakes… Be a man and take korea’s quirks right up the AXX. Stop complaining about how bad korea is… if it’s so bad just leave. Other then that alot of the posts are quite funny.. and I wish the G.I’s and koreans would stop beating the shXt out of each other… we’re on the same SIDE! Having spent a third of my life in N.Y abit in australia and japan… I think the only difference between people and country is understanding and the willingness to understand… koreas is only like a couple of thousand miles away from america and you expect it to be home? uh-duh~
Funny thing is to americans I am too “asian” and to koreans I tend to be too “american”, what do you make of that? Let’s not get too political/yankee doodle dandy/kimchi on each other. I served in ROKA to protect freedom for those who couldn’t protect theirselves not because I had to. I would like to believe all the american military personnal think the same. Freedom comes at a cost I’m willing to pay anytime anyplace, are you?
There are always two sides to these stories. I doubt if these GI’s suddenly took it into their heads to start acting this way, as the Korean accounts evidently imply. Please, let’s not have too much shaking of heads here over the intrinsic American propensity to violence etc etc.
Quote from comments section of GI Korea:
“Since it involved a taxi driver that is why I say we should reserve judgement because I have had one to many run ins with taxi drivers myself who make up stories to get money out of GIs. Especially around curfew time where they know the GIs got to get back to post and that is when they will really try to find ways to extort GIs.”
This sounds extremely probable to me. Disputes by GIs with German taxi drivers used to be a familiar story when I was in Germany (they were notorious for extreme short-changing on the exchange rate). The stories about these incidents circulate around the barracks, brought back by other soldiers who were victimized and who reluctantly parted with their money instead of getting into fisticuffs.
Often such soldiers would make a complaint to their chain of command and nothing would happen, especially if they didn’t get the taxi driver’s name, number, company. I suspect it’s not readily possible to do this with Korean taxis? If none of this info is posted in the cab in English, then of course the average GI won’t be able to read it. And of course who’s to say if any translation is accurate anyway.
Even in such a monetary dispute, my experience was that even if the MP’s (or a member of the unit chain of command) took the time to track down the offending cabbie and company, they would always deny it anyway (at least that’s what would happen in Germany, and somehow I doubt from what I read here that Koreans are more virtuous). In such a “he said/ he said” situation the German cops would shrug their shoulders and I don’t imagine the Korean cops can be any different.
Thus the scene is set for an eventual and inevitable drunken overreaction on the part of some GI’s, which then gets implicitly portrayed here as a sudden assault by naturally violent Americans.
Of course, if facts are correct and the GI’s are in the wrong for starting a fight, probably they will be punished. However, instead of mass punishment for the whole unit (as suggested above) a better solution would involve first ascertaining if a monetary dispute is in fact the cause of the dispute (I’d say the odds are pretty good).
Then the USFK chain of command for this particular garrison ought to look into negotiating a standard fare to/from base with the taxi companies, posting it prominently at the various taxi stands (in English).
The Korean local authorities should be involved in this as well and should make it clear to the taxi drivers and companies that screwing drunken Americans isn’t to be tolerated. Of course, if cagey Korean taxi drivers are routinely doing this also to their drunken Korean fares, then I suppose such an admonition could be seen as “discriminatory” and therefore another cause for resentment of the US presence.
I never had a problem with a taxi in Korea, but I was clearly not a soldier.
I seem to remember my Korean adult students (20-60 years old) did not think too highly of taxi drivers themselves, though I never understood why exactly. I remember a 27 or so year old jumped into a taxi and had it follow the taxi of a female 27 or so student because the taxi she got in made a turn that wasn’t in the direction of her house. I have heard tales of taxi cabbie rapes after dropping a lone female at home, including a GI and a ESL instructor. But, from the amount of stories I heard and read in the news, it seemed to me — from this limited information, cabbies were getting too bad a reputation. But, then again, I’m not Korean, so I don’t really have any position to say they are correct or not about what they think of cabbies overall.
I do know that street incidents with GIs and cabbies is fairly frequent. — Frequent in the sense that when a new event like this comes up, a good percentage of them involve taxis and cab drivers and even Korean passengers.
And given the level of the event, we’ll never know what happened.
It isn’t a big enough crime to get any of the GIs to flip if one of them is clearly guilty of a crime. If the taxi driver or Korean had been killed or put in a comma, and any verdicts of guilty would result in long terms in prison or major penalties, the MPs and Korean police could put more pressure on the people involved so far, and the chances of getting to the bottom of the event would be higher.
Right now, we’ve just got a handful of people fighting in the street.
I know from first hand experience how this would work out in the US. The police would seek who the primary aggressor was. That would be either who started the fight or the person who did a clearly greater amount of damage — with the idea being that at some point in even defending yourself, you have to stop if the threat is taken away.
And of course, you get a “he said/he said” situation. So what the police end up doing most of the time is writing a report with the statement from both sides and whatever witnesses and whatever the officer observes, and the police tell both parties — if they wish to take the matter further, they can pick up a copy of the report, talk to a violent crimes detective if they wish, or go directly to court to swear out a warrant. Warrants are the way the US system wants to handle things in general. Even the police are encouraged to take it to the court to get a warrant rather than just arrest who they believe is guilty or more guilty.
I can also tell what will happen in this case.
Which ever soldiers are finally arrested, they will be found guilty in a Korean court (if Korea decides it wants the case), perhaps sentenced to some jail time, and more than likely, that time will be converted into a fine on appeal.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of these taxi incidents where the cabbie was arrested or tried or found guilty when a GI was involved.
I forgot, the bottle and knife in two of the latest incidents is what would have cause the GIs to be arrested in the States even if they were not the ones who started the fight or if they were outnumbered. In Korean society, too, using a weapon like that is going to cause much more of an outrage in both the public and courts.
Even if you are defending yourself, leave the weapons alone — unless you are faced with one yourself….
I am telling you from personal experience that GIs continuosly get screwed by taxi cabs. So it is quite possible that the altercation was started by the cab driver. Where these soldiers are wrong is in escalating it into a fist fight if they were in fact provoked. More information will need to come out on this but rest assurred that 2ID severely punishes people who are arrested for alcohol related incidents. So these soldiers will receive punishment from the US military along with whatever the Korean courts decide what to do with them since they were off duty at the time.
Soldiers are getting severely punished and it still hasn’t stopped incidents. If the Army wants the incidents to stop they need to change the conditions that cause these things to happen in the first place. You can read more about this over at my blog.
http://jetiranger.tripod.com/B.....id=1165088
Uijeongbu is just so nineties! The guy was up banging on the top of that taxi for quite a while and no one got video!?!?! No pics?? Should’ve tried that nonsense in Sinchon.
Last week when a Chosun Ilbo Hong Seok Jun misbehaved like that with a taxi in front of Koreana Hotel and then inside the hotel, it was the driver of the taxi driver who shot video with his phone and gave it to OhmyNews.
I’d also like to point to the Irish incident again.
http://www.usinkorea.org/issues/sungod/index2.htm
Large group of drunk Western expats. Big fight in the street. Bigger by far in the number of expats involved than the 2 or 3 GIs you hear about in these common stories.
And the fight involved security people.
And weapons were used. Bats, clubs, tear gas or pepper spray —- and gas guns were also used.
People were bleeding and one of the expats was shot in the head.
The Korean police came — and it was in Itaewan - but…..
…..since the expats turned out to be Irish, not a peep about it in the mainstream Korean press.
And the police quickly decided it wasn’t worth dealing with. No arrests of the Irish or Korean secruity guards.
One of the quotes by the police according to the expats or the Korean girlfriend was that the police told them they had to make a statement right that moment — while people were still bleeding and highly emotionally and confused — or forget about it.
It seemed from the discription given by the expats that the police clearly didn’t want to touch the case with a ten foot pole once they realized the expats weren’t soldiers and the Korean security guards might have been in the wrong.
And again — big fight. weapons. blood. expats. No coverage in the press at all except a couple from an online English language journal.
I’m not sure, sometimes, if problems work out for the better or worse, regarding how civil problems are handled here in Korea.
As per an example, I personally witnessed one event where one fellow slapped some Korean adjuma that had been sneaking around our neighborhood, illegally sticking up advertising. Apparently, the woman provoked the man but anyway, the police came and took them to the station. Since I know the fellow I went down to the local station for moral support. When I arrived there, the adjuma and another person came to an understanding where the sneaking adjuma was paid about 3-4 thousand (US) to not file a complaint against the man, thus avoiding charges. The police lectured the adjuma about putting this junk up, the bum that hired came down there and said some bad things, whereupon the guy and this bum almost got into it right there, only stopped by the police. It turns out that the bum that hired this woman was hiring people from one of the local churches to sneak through the entire Gu, putting up this junk.
The adjuma nor the bum that hired her were never charged with violating any law.
I was much suprised and enlightened by all this.
Oh darn… another news “drunk kids of US military parents throw bottles alcohol bottles at city bus” ( http://news.naver.com/news/rea.....enu_id=102 )
I know that considering the number of US military personnel in Korea that the actual crime or misdemeanors are lower than the norm and I applaud the USFK for that. It is unfair to a certain extent, but the actions of the military personnel are vewied under microscopic scrutiny by the Korean public. Having that said, I hope the supervisor’s take their reponsiblity more seriously. If the superviors respond in a timely and earnest manner to such incidents (police requests) many of these will not reach the level of irritation it produces in the media.
While the acts of the minority tend to get more coverage then the majority of Foreigners both military and non-military here in korea who actually are quite nice it is up to the majority of the people who are good for soemthing to keep up the good work. Unless people find away to erradicate stupidity(which I dont think will happen anytime soon)there will always be incidents like this. I know its cleaning up someone else’s shXt but what else can you do? Let’s try to keep the minority in check.
Best way to handle being ripped off by a cabbie: take the man won or two he wants out, show it to him, spit on it and throw it on the ground in front of his feet.
The look on the guy’s face will be unforgettable, I promise you…
OUCH AND DOUBLE OUCH!
I have never had a problem with cabbies here; we redheads are either really liked, or really, really scary. :O Anyway, those soldiers should have had a plan before they went out, but, hindsight is 20/20. The old addage ‘Instant asshole, just add alcohol’ still applies. Poor parenting and bad home-training can create poor people skills in adult life. This especially applies to the ‘X-Box’ generation that grew up getting everything they want from Mommy and Daddy. Those troops could have handled the situation better, but, I’ve seen this happen in Germany as well. 
Total lack of discipline. Time for the commander to step in, and get the word out to the troops that this misbehavior WILL NOT be tolerated. There is not a place on this planet where American troops should be allowed to get away with this behavior. If passes have to be lifted, so be it. Dancing on taxis, cutting faces with beer bottles, assualt and battery - this has to be addressed and repaired, forthwith.