How the Korean Press Works GI Crimes

 
Echo ..... echo......echo.....echo. Echo

Under the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that stipulates the legal status of U.S. troops and their dependents here, the Korean government is allowed to have primary jurisdiction in crimes committed by U.S. soldiers outside of working hours.

However, many U.S. soldiers have avoided the South Korean jurisdiction by claiming that they engaged in criminal acts while on duty. (Korea Times)


The South Korean government is granted primary jurisdiction in crimes committed by U.S. soldiers outside working hours as outlined by the Status of Forces Agreement that governs the legal status of U.S. troops and their dependants here.

However, many U.S. soldiers have evaded the South Korean jurisdiction by citing their exemption from the SOFA clause by claiming on-duty status.

(Korea Herald)

It must be true - if they all agree.
Also notice how the actions of others are described --
three U.S. soldiers attacked a South Korean pedestrian in Uijeongbu with a beer bottle before further assaulting him and his friend on July 3.
At least in some other reports, the friend was described as having come to the rescue of the first Korean and thus getting mixed up with the GI bastards.
Additionally, two U.S. soldiers were arrested Friday on charges of assaulting a South Korean taxi driver, 50, and two bystanders in Uijeongbu
Here again, the same effect common in Korean media coverage of crimes by US soldiers -- the Koreans involved were either innocent victims pounced on by the GIs, or they were good citizen Koreans who bravely charged to the rescue of an innocent victim.
I believe we have a justification for taking the Korean media to task for this, even though we don't have enough information to claim with certainty what happened on the scene and never will, because this is always how the story is presented. Maybe the man who got his faced smashed with a bottle really did next to nothing and the soldier(s) attacked him for no reason. Maybe the US soldier(s) did jump on top of a taxi and just started going nuts on the spur of the moment, beer induced moment of insanity. Maybe the Korean citizens who joined in are just good Samaritans and if they saw the same thing happen between a group of only Koreans, they'd have charged forward like Patton in the Battle of the Bulge. But when this same, carbon copy story is repeated year after year --- every time a US soldier is involved --- it gets old and irritating.
Also notice the trend in which the claim of the Korean victim is given exclusively or in such a manner that USFK or the US soldier's counter-claims are undermined. Part of this is the fault of the USFK and US criminal system. You are not supposed to make comments on a pending case and investigation, especially in the military system, because a commander or ranking officer is not to give the appearance he is trying to sway the opinion and work of the investigators or the jury. And the soldiers are surely told by their lawyers to keep their mouths shut until trial -- which is also standard in the US. But, when USFK does speak out, more often than not it is undermined or it does cause a backlash. 
 
It might help to remember how the Korean media reacted the first few days after the 2002 subway attack --- (I don't have the page back up on the www.usinkorea.org site yet, sorry).
 
For those unfamiliar -- during the first period of widespread demonstrated public outrage at the tank accident that crushed two middle school girls, a group of college students and a former politician kicked out of the National Assembly for making an illegal trip to Pyongyang, who is one of the fixtures in the anti-US ngo groups, were passing out flyers on the subway to promote a very large anti-USFK/US-SK alliance rally at a stadium at a nearby university. When they saw the three crewcut headed white young men, they tried to give them a copy of the Korean language flyer (among other things). When the soldier refused to take it and then dropped it on the seat, the students decided to display some of their righteous anger. The politician got into the mix, and then, according to him, "lightly brushed the soldier on the cheek to keep him from using curse words" while the students were pushing and pulling on him at the same time.
Things deteriorated from there with the soldier and the 8 to 12 students and politician went at it. Eventually, supported by other students at the subway station when it stopped, the three soldiers were taken under control, and according to the soldiers spit, pushed, and kicked, while the students decided what to do with the American bastards. The students said they decided to take them to the anti-US rally because they didn't trust the Korean police to handle the case justly.
 
Before they could leave the subway platform, a significantly sized number of Korean riot police spotted the situation. The riot police were at the station and a nearby hospital in large numbers,because not many days before, radical students had stormed the first floor of the hospital to lay siege to it in solidarity with striking nurses. The riot police at the subway station managed to free two of the soldiers then run them through the gauntlet of protesters in the street to get them to the hospital where the riot police had enough numbers to handle the students. (Here is a link to the video the students shot and promoted on the web).
 
Unfortunately, the police were unable to save one of the soldiers. He was taken to the rally, forced to participate in it by making statements against himself and USFK, and he was forced to write out and sign "a confession" for the subway brawl.
 
After a few hours of this, he was taken by the students to the hospital where the riot police and/or regular police leader helped the students to force the GI to apologize to the former politician and try to get him to state for the camera that he had started the fight and attacked Mr. Seo without provocation. He did apologize, but he said he was throwing punches blindly because people all around him were kicking and hitting him at the time.
I have gone into an extended description of these events because it will help you understand two reactions the Korean media (and Koreans at large) had to this event -- which are two reactions common to the anti-US process. (the image is of the three soldiers in the Korea police station where they were held for questioning -- as noted below --- to get evidence they needed to be charged with assault. Notice, no Korean activists being held.)
"We are sorting out details and collecting evidence to discover the truth. We plan to summon the soldiers again in the coming days, " Paek Doo-hyun, a police inspector in charge of the case, told The Korea Times. "But we are having difficulties, as the soldiers reject making any statements unfavorable to themselves."
 
"We were distributing pamphlets about the deaths of the schoolgirls. After the soldiers threw away the pamphlets they were given, and I scolded them for disrespecting our activities, a soldier suddenly started throwing punches at me," Suh told reporters after being sent to a hospital.
The latest incident involving U.S. troops has further enraged the Korean civic organizations hat have been demanding that the U.S. military relinquish its jurisdiction over those involved in the girls' deaths.

(This sentence translated in Korea-speak would be, "Korean reader, you should be enraged further by yet another example of US troops creating despicable incidents in our society.")

When the train stopped at a station near Kyung Hee University, where the rally was being held, angry students seized one of the servicemen and later handed him over to the police.

About 6,000 students and civil rights activists attended the rally in memory of the two girls who were crushed to death by an armored vehicle from the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division on a narrow country road north of Seoul.

Noticed how the soldier was simply "later handed over to police" ------ with no mention of what happened to him during those 2 to 4 hours. and as per the process, the claims by the soldiers are absent or undermined.

Here is the Korea Times in its first efforts on the story --
An elderly lawmaker-turned-activist is in the hospital with his nose broken and eyes bruised after being assaulted Saturday by a U.S. soldier in Seoul.

Police said Suh Kyong-won, 65, was punched in the face during a subway train fracas between a group of college students and three U.S. soldiers in civilian clothes.

Make sure you watch the video, then read how the Joongang Daily first covered the incident --
The video footage was taken by the Voice of People, an activist group with anti-American leanings. It also showed Private Owens and Private Tucker being chased and captured by Korean riot police. The three men appeared obviously shaken in the footage.
This was how the story was covered for the first two or three days, until they realized USFK was hopping mad, and Koreans with influence and some understanding of the American media and society - realized they were holding a handgrande -- that the fact the soldier was held against his will and forced to make a "confession" had the potential of being covered in the US press and causing an uproar in American society. (They shouldn't have worried, because only the LA Times and NY Times ran one shallow report of the incident.)
 
So, the Korean media and politicians put the word out that Korea should shut the fuck up if it knew what was good for them, and the message was received so loud and clear, it even killed off the massive anti-US demonstrations over the death of the middle school girls -- for a month or two.
This is the easiest example I know of to point out the active formula in the Korean press and society at large when it comes to incidents involving US soldiers.

It took an extraordinary, negative event, and fear of a major anti-Korean backlash, to get the Koreans to break away from the uniform habit of laying all the blame on the US soldiers and gnashing teeth about not being able to put the GI bastards on trial for assault.
It has always been much, much less difficult for Korean society to maintain the habit of forming an instant conclusion GIs involved in a "he said/she said" confrontation were the guilty party and the Koreans were just innocent bystanders attacked in public by USFK criminals in all the other GI incidents I've watched over the years.
 
We almost never get enough information to decide with any reasonable clarity who is at fault in these street confrontations or if both parties share the blame.
In cases like the one this year where a GI pulled a knife to threaten the mob trying to take him into custody, and in this recent case where a US soldier hit a man in the head with a beer bottle as part of the fight, the soldiers in question pushed their actions beyond the bounds of even someone defending themselves. We can reach this kind of conclusion in those two cases given what we know about them. In most cases, we can't. It is one party's word against the other.
(17 July 2005)