The Naeil Shinmun ran a piece on Tuesday that points to an essential irony concerning GI crimes in Korea — despite the fact that the number of crimes committed by USFK personnel has been dropping rather dramatically, largely thanks to the efforts by USFK command and individual soldiers to prevent incidents, public opinion concerning concerning GI crimes is actually growing worse, in large part due to the increasing media attention given to even smaller incidents that would have been ignored in the past. It’s a good read — assuming you get past the first part, which is a roundup of USFK’s rough month of July — even if some of the suggestions made by the civic group leader at the end are absolutely ludicrous (How do you ensure objective investigations of GI crimes? By allowing victims’ families and civic groups to participate, of course!). I’ve translated the story below for your reading enjoyment, although the Korean-proficient are always advised to go to the source itself.
Crimes by U.S. soldiers have been greatly decreasing since last year, but public opinion is still prickly. Even small incidents that would have been overlooked in the past are receiving media spotlight, igniting indignation and creating a social environment in which “GI crimes will no longer be tolerated.”
Because of this, we’re in a situation where if USFK command doesn’t take greater efforts to prevent crimes, U.S. soldiers could provoke anti-American sentiment among Koreans on their own.
In particular, misbehavior has been non-stop this month, including U.S. soldiers assaulting normal citizens and even children of soldiers throwing a liquor bottle at a moving bus.
A string of incidents this month = On Saturday, a drunk USFK corporal assaulted three Koreans when he was stopped from entering a rock cafe in the entertainment district of Bupyeong-dong, Incheon. One of the victims was the 29-year-old owner of the cafe, identified by his family name of Park.
Following testimony by Park and the others that the corporal usually came by drunk and misbehaved, police plan to call the soldier in for questioning and investigate the exact circumstances of the incident.
In Uijeongbu at 11:44 p.m. Friday, a 20-year-old USFK private who was with his two friends climbed atop a taxi as it waited at a red light and engaged in outrageous behavior. They beat the 55-year-old taxi driver, who tried to stop the private, and assaulted a 32-year-old and 35-year-old who got involved. Police turned the private and a corporal over to U.S. MPs after questioning. Next week, they plan to call them in again, along with another private who ran back to base, for further investigation.
There has even been a U.S. soldier who assaulted a policeman. At 6:00 a.m. on a road in Mapo-gu, Seoul, a U.S. soldier committed a disturbance in which he assaulted a police officer sent to the scene. The officer suffered facial injuries.
The Seogang residential area police division of Mapo Police Station got a tip that morning that an American who had gotten out of his car was screaming and causing a disturbance. They sent four officers to the scene to restrain the soldier.
The soldier shook off attempts to restrain him and punched one of the officers twice in the face and bit him on his side.
On July 3 in Uijeongbu, three soldiers with the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division assaulted two pedestrians. They were booked without detention on Friday after turning themselves in to police for questioning on July 8. According to police, they seriously wounded a 34-year-old man with a beer bottle after they bumped shoulders with him.
Following these assaults by U.S. soldiers, even the child of a U.S. soldier got drunk and engaged in misbehavior right in the middle of the city. Yongsan Police Station is investigating three children of U.S. soldiers who were caught after one of them shattered the windshield of a bus by throwing a liquor bottle at it on the road in front of Defense Ministry headquarters in Yongsan-gu, Seoul.
According to police, the 45-year-old bus driver said, “As I was slowly driving after picking up passengers, one of the Americans sitting on the side of the road suddenly threw a bottle at the bus windshield.”
Citizen sentiment, “No toleration for GI crimes” = According to Justice Department statistics, crimes committed by USFK personnel totaled 298 last year. The number was not only the lowest figure ever, but it was 16 percent drop from the 356 cases of 2003. Moreover, during the first half of this year, crimes by U.S. soldiers totaled 111, indicating that the number of crimes is decreasing from last year’s total.
During the 1970s and 1980s, USFK crimes stood at 1,500~2,000 annually. In some quarters, they estimated that with U.S. troops from Korea fighting in Iraq, the number of crimes would come down, but it’s significant that an objective number reveals that the number of crimes has actually reduced.
This is due to efforts to prevent crimes made within USFK command following the deaths of two middle school girls crushed by a USFK vehicle in 2002, and activities by U.S. soldiers themselves to prevent crimes, such as efforts not to cause problems when they leave base, have also played a part.
Despite the objective numbers indicating a reduction in crime, however, public opinion is still not good. In particular, since the deaths of the two middle school girls, a social atmosphere intolerant of crimes by U.S. soldiers has spread greatly.
Even small USFK crimes are coming under the concentrated spotlight of the media, creating public opinion against such crimes. Moreover, with the circumstances of crimes by U.S. soldiers being brought into the open one by one on the Internet, citizens are growing indignant, claiming, “We cannot bear the situation as it stands.” The public’s view of crimes by U.S. soldiers has changed.
Some analyze that this anti-American sentiment would be difficult to improve as long as the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) is not amended. Chae Hee-byung, the chairman of the executive committee of the civic group that organized the candlelight memorial services for the two middle school girls in 2002, said, “U.S. soldiers who cause incidents believe they’ll receive protection for their crimes with the SOFA?????????? In the long term, if the SOFA isn’t amended, crimes by U.S. soldiers will occur endlessly.” He also said, “The fundamental thing it that the thinking of U.S. soldiers must change?????????? Rather than being engrossed in covering things up when incidents occur, measures must be taken so that the family of victims and civic groups can participate to ensure an objective investigation.”
{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
Kimbob,
“This year, USFK members committed over 1,675 crime a day including violent crimes like rape and murder. PFF X was charged with strangling a Ms. Lee in X and then using a knife to slash her throat almost severing her head.”
“The offical numbers indicate US soldiers commit an average of 4.6 crimes a day in Korea — including violent assaults and even murder. However, Mr. X, the leader of a civic group in Seoul who researches GI crimes says, “Most of the crimes by US soldiers go unreported or are hidden by the government.”
You can’t explain to me why the fact that a traffic ticket in Korea is a crime means it is perfectly fine for the press and Koreans and sometimes Korean assemblymen to use them to inflate the stats to reenforce the very commonly held notion that GIs are raping and murdering Koreans left and right year after year.
Traffic tickets, parking tickets, and other offensese punishable by small fines are a violation of law and criminal acts in the US too. They are not things handled by civil courts. They are not,however, tallied with murder, rape, arson, thefts, and other acts to decide which cities have the most crime in the US or which have the most violent crime or which ethnic group commits the most crimes.
I think what he’s saying, usinkorea, is that in Korea “crime statistics” are often lumped together. When general amnesties occur, they talk about the number of “criminals” this includes, and it is all of these lumped together. I agree with you 100% that it is misleading when this is done, but it is not a double standard only involving USFK.
However, it is a distortion when usacrime.org utilizes this kind of thing using rhetoric to make it seem like the actual incidence of violent crime is higher.
I don’t consider the article as a bashing, I just don’t believe it will do anything but reenforce the misconceptions. It will not “fan the flames” so to speak, but the part about crimes dropping will go through the eye and out the brain while the examples of a string of crimes in one month will be filed away in the folder of “already knew that happens” with a tiny draw to consciousness.
If the Korean press and people had felt like venting, the media would have drum beat the anti message. As is, so far, it just helps keep things in the back of the mind.
There isn’t enough “positive” in the piece to even whittle away at what Koreans are convinced is true — and I mean Koreans who are pro-US-SK alliance too.
Just as we suspected. USFK crime decreasing, but only increasing in the minds of the Korean public because of the media (and I particularly blame the mass communication, or what I call the mob rule of the internet). One more reason why the USFK crime is decreasing that was not mentioned, the number of USFK personnel are shrinking. It will be down to 25,000 soldiers versus 38,000 a few years ago. Pretty soon, the USFK crime rate will be 0 percent once they all leave.
Well, the figures from the 1970s and 80s is more than likely misleading. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that the US got the Korean government to stop putting in traffic tickets, parking fines, and other “crimes” that were handled by small fines.
The article doesn’t say much beyond the standard routine. It does say crimes are decreasing, but it has all the usual —- the phenomenon of Korean attention to crimes is recent and getting worse, allowing civic group leaders to put out the commonly held notion that the SOFA still protects GIs from facing their crimes, the crimes are still covered up and only now being exposed, yada yada yada.
Except for the “crimes are actually dropping”, I could be having flahsbacks to news and attitudes from when I first came to Korea when the 1993 Markle murder case was still news and the 1994-95 subway brawl was the talk of the town.
And if they covered up GI crimes before recently, the did a very bad job of it, because from the moment my feet hit the ground and I was teaching Korean adults in the mid-1990s, it was painfully obvious the vast majority of Koreans considered GIs — in the abstract sense — nothing better than common criminals and bums.
A good Korean friend (who became a KATUSA shortly after I arrived) told me early on that US soldiers “rape and murder” about 10 to 15 Korean women a year.
He did not mean rapes + muders. He meant rape and kill a girl about 15 times a year.
Since he also used to complain about how America was anti-Korean based on in part the fact that in, I believe it was the movie Ghost, Demi Moore’s character was a teacher and one of her students who got up to speak was a fat Korean.
So, I went to the very nice and friendly early 30s female Korean teacher I worked with and asked her about it. She was a very good source for understanding Korean society my first year in Korea. When I was confused about something, she was good at giving me examples and explaining it clearly.
And when I mentioned the idea about killing 10-15 Korean women a year but most of them getting covered up, she said, “That sounds about right.”
This was not a politically minded Korean. This was not an anti-US or anti-GI Korean. This was not a stupid Korean. This was not an uneducated Korea. This was a nice Korean who enjoyed meeting foreigners — American, Canadian, Japanese, and GIs if she ran across them in the city we worked in — but it was just common knowledge to her and to the future KATUSA that, yes, GIs slaughter a good number of Koreans each year and fly home free as a bird.
And this was about 7 years before the two girls were crushed by a tank and 4 years before the 2000 water dumping case and 2 years before the start of the Sunshine policy……
Korean society just won’t put up with things that many of its members used to take as just part of the price to pay for protection. Also, there was a time when perfectly legitimate complaints about USFK or the alliance would’ve gotten you in “trouble,” to say the least, and obviously that isn’t the case any more.
Then there’s the internet….
When Yun Geum I was murdered, it took forever to get into the press. The revered who ran the halfway house orphanage told me the press had spoken to him but no one was covering it. Not Hankyoreh, not Chosun Ilbo, nobody. Eventually he went and yelled at the church-based Gungmin Ilbo and eventually it ran the very horrific story. Today anyone who wants to can publish at OhmyNews. Also, remember how many have credited pictures of the flattened bodies of the two middle school girls with contributing to the anger and the candelight protests. Didn’t used to have that, and the pic of Yun at that link used to be shown at exhibits on university campuses and such.
I agree with bringing them home but in trying to look rationally at how it’s going to happen, I don’t see anytime soon. Kushibo makes the case here effectively for them to stay and I’m forced to admit his assessment of the situation is currently the correct one.
The speculation about how Rumsfeld was going to leave office has died down now as US media attention has moved to other things, but if he does leave in the next year or so then that may open up the possibility of new withdrawls, especially if a new SecDef has some experience with this issue. A contributing factor would be if the land acquisition for the new bases is stalled and the moves south delayed.
For example, somebody like McCain would come into the job open to drastic shifts in policy and I think Bush would be willing to listen. (I’m not saying that McCain would be a candidate for SecDef, just that somebody with pronounced views like him might get the ear of the President).
Much depends on how things go in Iraq and with future terror attacks. If US trains and subways start getting blown up and if things don’t improve in Iraq, a worsening of the climate between ROK and the US might just produce a decision to withdraw forces that are needed elsewhere.
“Korean government to stop putting in traffic tickets, parking fines, and other ?crimes?? that were handled by small fines.”
USinKorea, under Korean system, those are indeed “Crimes”. Have you not heard of the annual national pardons where masses of convicted criminals in Korea gets pardoned, and their criminal records expunged? The above crimes would be eligible for full pardon.
There’s also a blurring of civil cases with criminal cases. What would be a matter of civil cases in the West, in Korea, they can be criminal. I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding on both sides, because of this difference.
I’m curious to what the Korean definition of “assault” is. All these articles say the Koreans were assaulted by the GIs. Is assault pushing and shoving or is it actually a closed fist hitting the other person. When I think of assault I think of someone walking up to another person and punching him out or striking him with a weapon.
Also it continues to be frustrating that Koreans think all these GIs get over with the SOFA agreement when from the day a soldier enters the country he is briefed that if he commits a crime off duty he is under Korean jurisdiction. I still have not seen a off duty crime that was not given to the Koreans first. The Koreans sometimes refer the case back to the military because it was not worth their time to process such as catching a soldier urinating in public. There was another time a soldier was caught by the KNPs stealing a laptop from a club. The KNPs gave the club owner back the laptop and soldier was given to the military to process a Article 15 on. Never the less the KNPs had initial jurisdiction on him but felt it wasn’t worth their time to process him if the US military is willing to do it.
This whole thing has reached the point of ridiculousness. Could you imagine the up roar if the US media documented on the front page of every paper crimes committed by Koreans against US citizens?
GI Korea,
Small world! One of my guys stole a laptop from a juicy girl’s upstairs room in Stanleyville, pawned it, and was prosecuted by the Koreans. He repented and was given a 6-month sentence (suspended), but I chaptered him out.
Bring ??em home. We need those troops somewhere where they?ll be appreciated and more easily deployed to help fight the GWOT. 2ID is a very powerful unit and frankly we don?t owe Korea anything.That would be a mistake, not just logistically and politically (as well as economically). It would be a mistake because it would show fifth-column infiltrators that their sustained efforts do work: even if a majority of the public appreciates and/or desires the U.S. presence, if leftist or North-sympathetic NGOs or their sympathizers in the press hurt our pride enough or say enough nasty things, we’ll leave. Regardless of what the majority thinks.
Then watch the same thing happen in Okinawa, Iraq, perhaps some parts of Europe, maybe even Guam, Kuwait, etc. (The NGOs in Korea and Okinawa work closely together, by the way).The whole mindset is different. We cannot fix that.Yep. Jumping up and down on taxis just hasn’t worked.
I may be one of the few people here who sees some positive in this story. Despite listing the rash of stupidity that has recently broken out (and it is stupidity; smart GIs and dependants don’t assault taxi drivers or throw bottles at buses), the article makes sure at least twice in the article that one point is clear: despite these recent crimes, USFK-related crime is actually going down very significantly. It even suggests that the problem is not USFK itself, which is working hard to prevent the crimes, but how the public is perceiving them.
My only complaint is that they didn’t do a comparison of USFK-related crime with the general Korean population (or the general Korean population of a similar age group, which can be a more favorable comparison for USFK’s image), to really see how well most USFK personnel are behaved.
I would be willing to bet that my own professional duties, and some personal interest, has put me in a position of explaining the low crime rate despite the public’s (mis)perception to more Koreans than most people reading this blog. I have even done academic research (for a professor who works at the Korea Institute of Criminology) on it to underscore the point.
But it’s weeks/months like this that make it a headache. One of these events by itself can be explained away as something that will inevitably occur amongst the population of a small city (I once got a police blotter from a comparably sized small city to make this point). But this rash just makes it difficult. And the nature of some of it, especially the bottle-throwing that is just random violence, is sort of scary (and as Oranckay said, jumping up and down on a taxi is rather alien and looks very obnoxious and arrogant to boot).
Whoever said it, I like the idea of putting units on lock-down for a while as “punishment” when someone from their group gets involved in something like that. I know from my days as a regular sub at an American high school that getting the students to self-police (within safe limits) can be a very effective check on bad behavior.
Don’t worry; we’ll be on virtual “lock-down” next month for Ulchi Focus Lens (UFL). You’ll see a spike in crime Labor Day weekend when everyone is “unlocked,” I can guarantee it.
Thanks for the info, Mark. How workable is the idea of restricting a unit whose members were involved in something like this? Was it you who had suggested that, or someone else?
Kushibo,
It was someone else who suggested that, definitely. “Lockdown” can easily be imposed by company or higher commanders; however, it is usually a field grade battalion or brigade commander who will impose it, knowing that he/she is still free to go home to his/her family and won’t feel the pain.
I have been in “locked-down” units before…the peer pressure thing only works if the unit is cohesive, disciplined, and if the incident has caused the unit to lose pride in comparison to other units. This is effective in basic training units, Ranger units, and combat arms units with no females.
On the other hand, if a unit has a disfunctional chain-of-command and NCOs, racial cliques, sexual escapades, fraternization, or poor standards and NCO enforcement, then placing them on “lock-down” will frustrate the situation and cause more divisions and problems within the unit. These types of units do not police themselves day-do-day, so they cannot be expected to do so under lockdown. They will be worse-off once the lockdown is lifted.
The field grade and sergeant major henchman solution is usually to apply a tourniquet to a paper cut, so they would most likely impose lockdown regardless of the situation.
OTT, but perhaps personal, anecdotal evidence might not be appropriate. Next thing you know, you’ll be talking about your mother in law as an authority.
GI Korea — The Korean word usually used to describe the attacks is “????,” which a translate as “assault,” but it’s a bit more broad:
???? ?? (an act of) violence; an outrage; violation; riotous conduct; an attack; an assault
????? behave violently; act outrageously; assault; attack
????????????? ???? outrages committed by a drunken mob
?????????? ??? ???? an outrage on a woman
???????? ?????? do violence ((to)); commit an outrage[act of violence] ((against))
??? an outrager; a rioter
??(?????) ????? an aggravated assault
The word I hate, however, is “???,” which is kind of a broad term covering a wide range of general misbehavior:
??? ???
????? do violence; misbehave ((oneself))
?????? ?????? behave badly; commit an outrage
Always a tricky word to translate. For example, it’s the term used to describe the actions taken by GIs once they have actually secured their position atop the taxi. In context, it usually means, “Misbehave, cause a commotion/scene, act outrageously, etc.”
Kushibo — I’m glad you saw the positive, because that’s what I saw when I read the piece. Those thinking its a “GI-bashing” piece are missing the point — as even the headline pointed out, the story’s main point is that USFK crimes are not only dropping, but dropping precipitously, mostly thanks to efforts taken by USFK since 2002, but public perception hasn’t caught on because EACH AND EVERY LITTLE INCIDENT is coming under media and Netizen scrutiny.
Before I read the read the rest of the comments, I thought Oranckay’s comment was insightful. A good bit of the belief against obvious fact and still insisting that the majority of GI crimes are covered up (including murders) stems from the previous type regimes in South Korea controlling the newspaper and only infrequently using bad acts if it wanted to pressure the US on another issue.
Still doesn’t make the environement today much easier to swollow
This topic brings to mind the nature of Korean society and its intrinsic irrationalism. I can mention several examples of what I label “irrationalism” such as the “death fan” myth which seems to affect only Koreans, the persistence of belief in things that have been proven wrong, i.e., fogging pesticide for mosquitos and to prevent cholera, hidden murders committed by USFK personnel, and a flourishing extreme religious fanaticism. This irrationalism is like an antique in an otherwise modern mind, an antique of great age that sits unnoticed until one bumps into it once and a while.
The perverse, religious-like devotion that North Koreans demonstrate for their leadership is not unique to North Koreans either, rather, a trait that is all too common in their southern counterparts, that only lies dormant.
Because of this persistent “antique”, I have a secret fear that a horrible future awaits South Korea, a future very much governed by such irrationalism rather than a mature and responsible government of the people. Mind you, this is my fear but I worry that it is more than just a beast of my immagination, rather, the beast of the Korean psyche, yet to be unleased.
Marmot wrote:
public perception hasn?t caught on because EACH AND EVERY LITTLE INCIDENT is coming under media and Netizen scrutiny.
So true – and it’s one reason why many in the ROK have a nonplussed or less-than-pleased reaction to the idea of US ground forces being based here. It’s not a question of being truthful or not; it’s about distortion or magnification of the truth.
But some media reports seem to go farther. For example, check out this Korea Herald article. Is that last line really true?
usinkorea, kushibo explained it better. Crime statistics are lumped together in Korea, it does not just involve the USFK.
Even if true, it does not alter my point. If presentation of Korea’s annual crime rate includes counting all traffic tickets and lumps them together to saying something like, “Last year Korea suffered 1.9 million crimes including rape and murder” does that translate into Korean society believing Korea is the most dangerous place on the planet?
No. Obviously not.
But, when in the past, Korea has published the annual stats and further back involving the bastard GIs, the statement of a very high X number coupled with the phrase “including rape and murder” or “including murder and other violent crimes” — anc usually coupled with well known examples of either a murder or DUI fatality or if no really juicy crime happened that year, a reference back to something like the Markle murder of 1993 –
does what?
Convinces the average Korean yet again that USFK members are commonly uneducated criminal types that it would be much better if South Korean security could do without, but since it can’t, the least they can do is keep a watchful eye out for these criminals and remind each other to be on their guard by remembering how bad they are for Korea.
If the Korean press reports common traffic and parking fines along with real crime stats, it does not translate into negative views of the base nature of Korean society like it does for USFK.
Calling a spade a spade, certain Koreans are trying to make the USFK out to look bad by scrutinizing “crimes” that wouldn’t make the Korean press if they were done by a Korean. Then, other KOreans, the ones who are overly nationalistic, as well as the ones who lack the grey matter to figure out that they are being manipulated by their press, draw conclusions from these “crimes” without matching them up pound for pound beside Korean crimes. The result is that the USFK, individual soldiers, as well as Engish teachers have to bear the abuse of self-righteous,less than intelligent Koreans, which at last count, numbered in the millions.
Koreans like to think this way for the same reasons that racists like to think blacks are inferior, or jews control the world, THEY WANT TO. This perceptions will never change among Koreans.
USFK personel are not in Korea to be scapegoated by South Koreans, while protecting them from their misunderstood brothers in the north. The situation is beyond absurd.
The only solution is to bring the boys home. I have a bottle of expensive chanpagne that is constantly chilling in anticipation of such an announcement.
ya’all bunch of fun lovin’ criminal rednecks
Cracking the GI/X-Pat Jingo in the X-Pat Korea Blogosphere Network
I have been perusing much of the expat commentary in the Korea blogosphere network about news items regarding USFK (US Fucks Korea). Lots of acronyms and unfamiliar jargon. So I did a little research: Camptowns Municipalities located near US Army
You must log in to post a comment.