The look on the guy’s face will be unforgettable, I promise you…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Even if you are defending yourself, leave the weapons alone — unless you are faced with one yourself….