SOFA Jurisdiction Waved for “Beer Bottle Incident”

The Marmot is all over the development that Uijongbu city police have decided to wave SOFA jurisdiction over two of three soldiers involved in a drunken fight that ended with one soldier seriously injuring a Korean national by hitting him over the head with a beer bottle.

Here is what the Marmot thinks on this:

Korea had primary jurisdiction over the case, given how the incident occurred when the soldiers in question were off-duty. Just because USFK asked them to give up jurisdiction didn’t mean they had to comply. USFK had primary jurisdiction over the Dongducheon incident, since it occurred when the soldier was on-duty. Did USFK consider giving up jurisdiction when the Koreans asked them to? Maybe. Did they give it up in the end? No. So there was no reason for the Korean prosecutors to give up their right to stand the two suspects before a Korean court, unless, of course, they thought trying them would be more trouble that it’s worth, in which case they need to get a bigger set of balls. The point is, these guys took part in the maiming of a Korean national during an off-duty incident, and the prosecutors owe it to the victim and the taxpayers who pay their salaries to do everything in their power to ensure justice is served on their terms. And the fact that they waived jurisdiction should in no way be read as a victory for USFK, because ultimately, it’s going to be USFK that gets blamed for the fecklessness of the Korean prosecutors who apparently have other things to do than try individuals that smash beer bottles in the faces of the people they supposedly serve.

The fact that the two were released to the US military is not uncommon. Very often I have seen myself small crimes such as petty theft, shop lifting, urinating on a building, drunken fights, etc. handed over to the US military. In this case maybe the two soldiers released were just walking down the street with the third soldier when he got in the argument with the Korean national and hit him with the beer bottle. Maybe they had no part in the attack, just wrong place at the wrong time? Right now we don’t know the extent of the involvement in the incident of the two soldiers who were released. Let’s not condemn these two soldiers when they may have not been complacent in the attack. Obviously the Uijongbu police felt that the two must not have had much involvement in the incident because it wasn’t worth their time to try them on anything.

The actual assaulter they are going to try and hopefully this idiot gets punished to the fullest extent of the Korean judicial system. I do agree with the Marmot however that the anti-USFK groups will jump on this to spread the image of “big bully USFK” pushing around the “little helpless Koreans” to further advance their own agendas.

Make sure to check out the comments discussion at the Marmot’s Hole. Some good discussion going on about the whole SOFA topic.