Korea Asks for Jurisdiction
The Justice Ministry is asking USFK to hand over jurisdiction over the accident in June that killed an elderly Korean woman in Dongducheon:
The Justice Ministry said Friday it asked the U.S. Forces in Korea to waive their jurisdiction in the matter of an American serviceman whose truck fatally hit a woman in Dongducheon, Gyeonggi Province on June 10. The USFK, which has primary jurisdiction in criminal cases against its own personnel, must respond to the request within six weeks, otherwise Korea will exercise jurisdiction, the ministry said.
Now why is the Justice Ministry pushing this? The family of the deceased has already forgiven the driver and doesn’t want to push legal action on him. The Justice Ministry knows that USFK will not hand over jurisdiction so they are making the request just like the local police department did just to cover themselves from the anti-American protesters. So if anyone criticizes them for not doing anything they can come back and say, we tried to do something but that SOFA agreement stopped us from doing anything. This really isn’t surprising.
Now, this is a case where I can see it being mainly political. In the GI crimes I've followed and found, the justice ministry – the legal system – has been fairly fair. There is only one case that I think it is clear the GIs were found guilty when they were most likely innocent — the 1995 subway brawl where the Korean wife of a soldier told the court that the Korean man who said he was protecting the honor of a Korean woman from being sexually assaulted by a soldier was talking about her husband having his hand around her waist and that when the noble Korean man heard her say she was the GIs wife, he cussed her and slap her face, thus initiating the brawl — and she was found guilty too!! —- but besides that, in the other crimes, I've found the court giving a sentence in line with the same crime I had found when a Korean was guilty.
The 2002 and 2000 water dumping case are hard to judge, because USFK didn't sacrifice the USFK members. In the 2000 water case, the prosecutor recommended a fine, which is exactly what would happen to a Korean, but a judge, listening to the frantic, wide spread public outrage, threw it out and ordered a criminal trial which USFK refused to honor for a few years until the court held the case without him and came out with a fine.
I just put up a couple of article sfrom 1962 and 1964 where Korea was pushing for a SOFA and wanted to put US soldiers in jail in two cases where US sentries, at least one of them right at the DMZ, shot a couple of South Koreans who were in the area when they weren't supposed to be and then fled at the challenge of the sentries. This was at a time where if you look at the news archives, most of the stories coming out of Korea were of clashes with North Korean soldiers or infiltrators resulting in the frequent deaths of South Korean and US soldiers.
http://www.koreasojourner.blog-city.com
And I found that the first case of a US soldier standing trial in Korean court happened in 1967.
But, what we are dealing with today is a Uri party government. They are in control of the prosecutor's office. They are pushing to reform the judicial system for both civilian and military. And I'm sure there are things in the Korean system that needs work.
But, another by product will likely by pushing harder for putting GIs in jail for crimes they don't Koreans. Because, I am sure they are even stronger in the belief that is common throughout Korean society — that "GIs commit hundreds of crimes in Korea each year, including murders and rapes, but they go unpunished and simply fly away to America." That is exactly what the Korea Times editor said last year, despite all the major cases that have happened over the years which simply will not sink into the Korean brain!!!
And remember who are in leadership positions in Uri and Roh's government. We just saw this week the Unification Minister talking about the "secret hand" that has been manipulating South Korea its entire history.
And remember back to the 2002 election cycle. One of Roh's top people who went to Washington for a routine type meeting, handed the White House some papers and demanded "that the US leave its hands off the Korean election…" because he (and how many others in Roh's camp?) believed because Roh was a former civil rights lawyer —- and not a Korean neo-con —- America would do "as it always has" and seek to "control" the Korean election.
The guy had to be sacked when he got back to Korea when the news of his warning to the US got out. But again, the key question is how deep such feeling is in the Roh administration —- which would include at least the top layers of the Justice Ministry.
We'll have to wait to see how much Korean society wants to support them with this recent case….