GIs Murder of Girls Fuels Korean Anger           Main Site / Email Me

Intentional Murder  

“Let’s drive out the Yankee murderers!” This is not a slogan chanted by a radical anti-U.S. or nationalist group but an outcry raised by teenage girls in South Korea. It was heard on June 20 as a large group of South Korean junior high school girls faced a large group of heavily armed American troops at the Garrison Camp Red Cloud of the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division, located in Euijeongbu in the vicinity of Seoul, as they marched in protest of the killing of two of their schoolmates by Americans. They were joined by some 70 civic groups at a protest rally in front of the U.S. military base. They were enraged by a U.S. Forces “investigation report” claiming that there was “nothing wrong” with the American driver and his senior riding beside him and that it was just “an accident.” The parents of the two slain girls claim that the driver intentionally ran over their daughters.

The incident took place on the morning of June 13. An armored vehicle belonging to the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division ran over to death two junior high school girls, Shin Hyo Soon and Sim Mi Sun, who were walking to a friend’s birthday party. The civic groups claim that the U.S. military authorities tried to silence them by bribing the victims’ bereft families with money and spread a false rumor they wanted it. These actions of the Americans angered the bereaved families and their friends.

On the evening of June 19, officers at the 2nd division camp held an unofficial briefing on the incident and claimed that the Americans did nothing wrong and that the dead girls were asking for it. They left the briefing hurriedly even while the victims’ families and friends were asking for more information, apparently in an attempt to restrict new coverage of the briefing.

The incident itself had drawn little public attention partly because of nationwide enthusiasm about the on-going World Cup 2002 co-hosted by South Korea and Japan, but mostly because of a traditional passive coverage of the incident by South Korea’s media as a whole--actually, coverage and reporting on such almost daily occurrences, such as crimes committed by U.S. GIs against Koreans, have been by and large controlled and restricted by the Seoul authorities.

Violence Against Reporters

Another incident, however, attracted more media reporting. Two reporters--Ms. Lee Jeong Mi and Mr. Han Yoo Jin, reporters from an Internet news site “Voice of People” (www.voiceofpeople.org)--were beaten harshly with clubs and tied up with reinforced plastic wire by U.S. officers when they were detained in the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division’s headquarters at Euijeongbu, north of Seoul. They were later handed over to local police.

The incident occurred on the evening of June 26 when about 500 activists rallied in front of the U.S. base to protest the June 13 incident. They were demanding an apology from the US Forces Korea and a trial in a South Korean court of the two soldiers who crushed to death two Korean girls. The reporters were there to cover the rally.

Letter of Protest

On the day, in its letter of protest to the Commander of the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division, a “Joint Committee to Address the Killing of Shin Hyo Soon and Sim Mi Sun” raised some key questions as regards the incident. They included: 1) The armored car was moving at a low speed and had ample time to notice the victims walking by the road. Is it true that the driver did not see the girls?; 2) Why didn’t the crew’s leader order the driver to stop?; 3) Tracks show that the armored car went off the road. In addition, the victims’ bodies that they were crushed by the tracks with dirt off the road. Yet the Americans claim that the armored car stayed on road.

At the briefing held on June 19, “the ‘joint’ U.S. and Korean fact-finding team avoided touching on these key questions and reiterated your line of ‘no fault’,” the letter said, and continued: “This briefing was nothing but a sham to whitewash this incident. Clear to us is your intention to suppress the facts about this incident and carry on your business as usual as if nothing had ever happened.”

Criticizing U.S. officers’ attempts to silence the public calling for justice, the letter said: “You are trying to squash the dead girls once more with your shameless, inflexible action and inaction for justice. You belittle the Korean people and drive stakes through the hearts of the victims.”

In the last part, the letter of protest demanded the following:

1) The commander of the 2nd Infantry Division as well as the commander of the US troops in Korea and the U.S. ambassador to Korea make a public apology to the bereaved families and the Korean people using major news media; 2) Form a joint fact-finding commission with active participation of the victims’ families and civic groups for the purpose of getting to the truth; 3) Let the Korean court prosecute not only the guilty driver but also his superiors; 4) Compensate the victims’ families without any further delay; 5)Erect a memorial for the victims at the site of their death as a gesture of U.S. apology; 6)Stop using Hyochon-ri and its neighboring roads and close down the training fields nearby to prevent similar incidents in the future.

On June 28, protesters gathered again in front of the Garrison Camp Red Cloud of the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division and gave a press conference, calling for: 1) An immediate release of the two arrested reporters; 2) The U.S. President’s official apology for the violence against the two Korean journalists and dismissal of the commander of the 2nd Infantry Division; 3) A thorough probe into the truth about the confinement of and violence to the two reporters, and punishment of the U.S. perpetrators based on South Korean law; 4)compensation to the two reporters for physical and mental damage inflicted upon by the U.S. Forces Korea.

“SOFA” Justifies GIs’ Crimes

And, in a very rare move, the National Human Rights Commission, an independent state organization, received a petition from the “Voice of People.” Under the “Status of Forces Agreement”(SOFA) between South Korea and the U.S., however, South Korea has no jurisdiction over U.S. soldiers involved in incidents including crimes while on duty. More than 400 vehicular violations by American troops in South Korea are reported each year, which accounts for 60-70 percent of crimes by the U.S. military there. Yet only ten cases have so far been brought to the court of law to date.  

Lawyer Lee Deuk Woo in a press conference on June 28 said that he would take all possible legal procedures to solve this incident including an appeal to the United Nations Human Rights Commission if the South Korean judiciary fails to address it of its own.