Category: crime & punishment

I have to give a hat tip to the Lost Nomad for pointing this Stars and Stripes article out. It appears there may be truth to the rumors I reported before.

Much of Friday’s testimony centered on Davis’ alleged relationship with a South Korean woman whose family owns a club in Songtan that base officials had declared off-limits to U.S. servicemembers.

According to testimony, Davis offered her guidance on how to get the ban lifted and eventually began a sexual relationship with her, concealing from her the fact that he was married.

So he did have a Korean girl friend who’s dad was a club owner. I guess we will see if the rest of the rumor is true as this eventually goes to trial.

Here is something I hadn’t heard before though:

Davis also faces prosecution by South Korean authorities on charges of possessing weapons at an off-base residence, in violation of South Korean law. South Korean authorities may file additional charges later, U.S. Force Korea officials have said.

I’m wondering how this guy could of had weapons which I’m assuming to be a gun in his apartment. Maybe Nomad can help me out here, but is the Air Force allowed to bring hand guns over here? I know the Army cannot. Anyway this 1LT Davis is looking more and more like a real bad apple. The legal system will determine if he is or not but I have already pretty much made up my mind.

On Oranckay’s blog he brings up a theory due to the recent stand off in the East Sea between the South Korean and Japanese Coast Guards, that detaining people is some what more acceptable in Korean culture compared to the US or Japan. He uses the 2002 USFK soldier abduction incident as an example:

Reminds me of the subway incident with some USFK soldiers in 2002. In my view the incident was a series of cross-cultural misunderstandings. I’ve met Suh Kyung Won personally on a few occasions and his public behavior over the years does make me believe that he probably touched one of the three US soldiers in one way or another, as he is accused of doing. No responsible public figure wants to be seen with him anymore, and he likes to make a scene and make himself a victim at demonstrations. But a man of his age can physically push a young man around in Korea, or at least do it and not then get a violent response, which appears to be what he got from the soldiers.

Americans think that once someone touches you you are authorized to unleash more than is necessary to merely get out of the situation. Angered by that, the students accompanying Suh dragged one of the soldiers on to the campus of nearby Kyunghee University to make him “apologize.” Well knowing that a US soldier had been taken by Korean students somewhere against his will, the riot police outside the school still chose not to raid the campus and rescue the guy. Like I’m saying, Koreans just don’t think “detaining” someone to make a point is full-fledged kidnapping or hostage taking, and the police, being Korean, knew instinctively that the soldier would be coming back soon enough. It was not worth breaching the unwritten rules of engagement that exists between students and riot police.

I’m convinced Mr. Suh intentionally provoked the fight in order to start an incident for his own propaganda purposes which he succeeded in doing. Oranckay is right that in American culture if some one slaps you or hits you, you feel you have the right to self defense. We brief soldiers that if a Korean national is trying to provoke a fight with you to walk away. If someone is comfortable enough to provoke a fight they probably got plenty of “concerned citizens” to help them out. “Concerned citizens” is Korean media code talk for an unrulely mob. The best thing to do in this situation is to swallow your pride and walk away. We use the 2002 subway incident as a perfect example of why you should do this. If those guys would of just walked away they may have been able to avoid the incident that happened.

We also brief the soldiers on the Shinchon Stabbing incident. That soldier was getting beat down by a mob so he pulled a knife out to defend himself and in the process seriously injured one of the Koreans involved in the melee. The soldier involved I have actually spoke with before and he maintains that the group he was with was assaulted by the “concerned citizens” after getting in a drunken arguement with them and that he pulled out the knife in self defense after the mob became to big and violent and had their own weapons. Carrying a knife in America is no big deal, here it is. In Korea if you pull out a knife their cultural norms treat it as if he pulled out a gun on someone in America.

Who knows who started the fight but the soldiers involved were wrong for being in the off limits area past curfew to begin with. That is why we have these policies to begin with to prevent stupid stuff like this from happening. So because of his stupidity he got convicted for attempted murder and got 3.5 years in ROK prison. He probably wishes he kept that knife at home now. However, in this incident the soldiers that did not pull out the knife were also detained by the Koreans on the scene and beaten. No Koreans were ever charged in this incident that I know of.

On the opposite end of the spectrum here is an incident where “concerned citizens” should of helped detain a violent Korean male who had just killed a US Army Major. Two officer friends of the Major held down the attacker while the crowd looked on and tried to take the murder weapon away from the soldier who secured it. No effort was made by the “concerned citizens” to help detain the attacker until two more US Army soldiers walked up to the scene and offered to help hold down the murderer so the other two officers could begin first aid on the Major.

So you have a case where a Korean guy is hit in the nose by GI after the Korean guy provoked the fight and three soldiers are detained and beaten.

Then you have another case where a soldier pulled out a knife and cut a Korean involved in the melee on the neck and he and everyone with him is detained and beaten.

But when a US Army Major is murdered no “concerned citizens” step in and help detain the murderer. The murderer wasn’t detained until two Americans arrive and held down the murderer. Who knows maybe if some of the “concerned citizens” stepped in and helped to immediately detain the murderer the other officers who were trained medical professionals may have been able to help perform first aid on the Major in time to help save his life.

Then in another interesting side note LTC Steven Boylan who was the 8th US Army spokesman was attacked and stabbed in a subway station near Yongsan while traveling to work. No “concerned citizens” bothered to detain his attackers either.

So I think that the detention issue in Korea is not really a cultural norm but a legal problem. If certain Koreans feel that they will not be prosecuted for detaining and harming foreigners than that is encouraging them to do just that. The “concerned citizens” on the subway kidnapped the soldiers off the train because they knew they could use them for propaganda purposes and could get away with it because the police would do nothing to them. It is the same thing with the fishing boat that detained the two Japanese Coast Guard personnel. Those fishermen know they aren’t going to get in any real trouble for what they did.

So with all the complaints that the SOFA is unfair I have decided to join the bandwagon and agree that it is unfair too, but not in the way most people think. I propose that when Koreans commit crimes against US soldiers they should be sent to US military courts. Seems fair to me because that is only way these kooks that commit kidnapping, assaults, destruction of property, and even murder of USFK personnel will receive proper punishment. The saddest thing about this though, is that very few Koreans even know about the kidnappings, assaults, and murder of US soldiers to begin with.

However, with all of this, the best policy if you are an American soldier in Korea is to swallow your pride and walk away. That would avoid many problems here to begin with.

The Stars and Stripes has an update about the Osan officer currently jailed at Camp Humphrey’s for alledgedly shaking down bar owners.

A U.S. Air Force lieutenant was charged Friday with bribery, extortion, rape and other misconduct in connection with an alleged shakedown scandal while he headed the Air Force police team that patrols the bar district outside Osan Air Base.

The officer, 1st Lt. Jason D. Davis of the 51st Security Forces Squadron, also was charged with assault, larceny, adultery, violations of regulations and lawful orders, willful dereliction of duty, making false official statements and conduct unbecoming an officer, according to a U.S. Forces Korea news release.

The assault and rape charges throws a new wrinkle into this case because I have heard absolutely nothing about those offenses. It is safe to say 1LT Davis is in some extremely serious trouble looking at these charges.

I have posted before about what rumors I have heard. However, what I still can’t understand is how the bar owners thought that 1LT Davis had the power to put their clubs off limits? In 2ID the club owners before being put off limits can make their case to a board comprised of senior leaders in the division about why they should not be put off limits. I’m not sure how they do it in Osan, maybe the Nomad can help me out here, but the process should be similar. If the club owners felt like they were being shaked down by the town patrol why didn’t they make their case to the board in Osan about it? If they did launch a complaint, then why didn’t the board launch an investigation into the allegations? If I was this guy’s lawyer this is what I would be looking at.

Even so 1LT Davis is still got charges against him he can’t possibly beat such as making a false official statement, conduct unbecoming of an officer, and adultery. These charges are all serious and pretty cut and dry. He better hope his lawyer can work out a good plea deal for him because he is going to get convicted of something, it is just a matter of what and how many.

A Korean woman earned herself $1.2 million dollars by illegally signing people on to the installation, according to the Stars and Stripes:

A 48-year-old South Korean woman was arrested Tuesday on charges of using her access to Yongsan Garrison to charge entrance fees in exchange for signing in almost 180 South Koreans during the past three years to gamble, according to Seoul police.

The woman has been accused of charging each person 30,000 won ($30) for access an estimated 900 times between April 2002 and January 2005, and the numbers could be higher, said Chief Detective Jang Sung-yoon, who works in the foreign affairs section of the Seoul Police.

The woman is officially charged with running an illegal currency exchange business, in which she charged interest while exchanging won and dollars, Jang said. The police found a bank account in her name containing more than 1.2 billion won, or $1.2 million, he said.

The woman, whom Jang would identify only by her last name, Kim, gained access to base through her membership in the Korean-American Association, Jang said. He said Kim never had worked on base or for U.S. Forces Korea.

To gain access to a USFK facilty an ID card holder only needs to sign that guest on to post and the guest gives up their ID card until they are signed out by midnight that same night. This whole scam is really amazing. The fact that illegal gambling is going on isn’t amazing, what is amazing is how much money she made signing people on to post. $1.2 million dollars and signing in 900 people in 3 years!? How the heck didn’t anybody notice she was signing in all these different people all the time?

The biggest question I am concerned about is force protection. If USFK has a curfew because of all the terrorists lurking in Itaewon just waiting to get us than you would think access to the camp would be much tighter. Heck the terrorists can get on camp for $30 and bomb us there too unless they get caught up to long on a slot machine. Maybe soldiers are safer in Itaewon after all?

The Chosun Ilbo is reporting that the overall crime rate for foreigners in the country has been on the rise:

According to statistics announced by the National Police Agency on Friday, foreigners committed 9,103 crimes last year, an increase of a massive 48.2 percent from the 6,144 crimes committed the previous year. Crimes by foreigners have doubled in two years from the 5,221 crimes committed in 2002. The biggest increase was in nonviolent crimes such as fraud and document forgery, more than doubling from 834 incidents in 2003 to 1,965 in 2004. But murders also nearly doubled from 32 to 60, and drug offenses grew from 120 to 218 – increases of 87 and 82 percent.

The sudden jump is being attributed to a growth in the number of illegal immigrants. The blind spot in police control appears to be getting larger. In late 2002, there were about 289,000 illegal foreign residents in Korea, but following measures to legalize some of them in the fall of 2003, the number dropped to about 138,000. Despite a plan to reduce them to fewer than 100,000, however, their number rose again last year, reaching 188,000 by the end of the year, an increase of 50,000.

I did the math on these statistics and determined these results:

Percentages of Foreign Crime

Total Crime in 2004 – 9103 crimes

Murder – .66% (60 total)

Document Forgery – 21.5% (1965 total)

Drug Offenses – 2.4% (218 total)

Other Crimes – 75.4% (6860 total)

So the vast majority of foreign crime is not listed in the article. I would think it is safe to assume most of these crimes are probably traffic violations. As far as document forgery that is to expected with illegal immigrants wanting to gain residency here. Now what I wonder is how the murder rate which is less than 1% and the drug offense rate at 2.4% compare to the Korean rates for these crimes. Now that would of made this article much more interesting and legitimate.

Fortunately the USFK crime rate has dropped overall:

But rising anti-Americanism in Korea in the wake of the Iraq War as well as a special law against prostitution has meant that crimes committed by U.S. soldiers in Korea greatly decreased. Prosecutions for crimes like grand larceny and burglary involving U.S. soldiers, the families of U.S. soldiers and U.S. military civilians went down from 83 in 2003 to 59 last year. Special crimes like traffic offenses and sexual assaults also decreased from 98 in 2003 to 57 in 2004.

That drop is likely due to more stringent USFK force protection in response to rising terror threats after last year’s deployment of men from the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division to Iraq. Another reason is better crime prevention education for U.S. forces in response to growing anti-American feelings in the wake of a June 2002 accident in which two middle school girls were crushed to death by a USFK armored vehicle.

The most obvious reason for the drop is of course the overall decrease in forces in the peninsula. The other main reason is the change in the driving policy. With only E7’s and up being allowed to drive in the non-Area 1 units that means less people getting into traffic violations. According to my prior math traffic violations is the vast majority of the crime. Plus now with more restrictions on the soldiers more soldiers are staying on post which means less interaction with the general Korean population thus causing less possibilities for incidents to occur. But I can’t help but think according to these statistics that USFK committed a total of 116 crimes. Now there is currently about 32,000 soldiers here after the 2nd Brigade deployment and then you add in family members and contractors and you probably have at least over 50,000 USFK personnel here (somebody help me if they know the actual number). So 116 crimes out of 50,000 is a really low crime rate.

Something that bugs me is the implied idea in the article that the accident in 2002 tragically killing the two girls was a crime. We do not receive crime prevention education in USFK because of the accident. The accident was not a crime but just that an accident. We receive more extensive driver’s training and safety classes in response to the accident not crime prevention briefings. Crime prevention briefings are given to reduce crimes like sexual assault, alcohol related incidents, and theft which the leadership really works hard to reduce.

In response to this article I decided to locate Korean crime statistics. On the web I found this report on Korean crime data up to 1998. According to this report there was a total of 2,010,814 Korean people arrested for crimes in 1998. I divided this number by the Korean population of 48 million and determined that 4% of the Korean population are the ones committing crimes. By using the data in the report it is safe to assume the total crime number is much higher in 2004 with the continual increase in crime in Korea over the years. I then divided the 9103 total crimes committed by foreigners in the Chosun article by the total number of foreigners in the country which is 420,000 according to the Korea Times. By doing this I determined that 2.17% of foreigners are committing crimes. Lower than the Korean number.

Also during my search for data I came upon this report from the State Department travel information site:

SAFETY AND SECURITY: In recent years, the U.S. Embassy and U.S. military installations throughout the Republic of Korea have taken steps to increase security at all facilities. The dispatch of Korean troops to Iraq raises the potential for terrorist and violent actions against Korean and US government facilities and personnel in Korea. Moreover, the Department of State remains concerned by indications that al-Qaida continues to prepare to strike US interests both domestically and overseas. Terrorist actions may include suicide operations, hijackings, bombings or kidnappings. These may involve aviation and other transportation and maritime interests, and may include conventional weapons, such as explosive devices. Terrorists do not distinguish between official and civilian targets. These may include facilities where US citizens and other foreigners congregate or visit, including residential areas, clubs, restaurants, places of worship, schools, hotels, and public areas. U.S. citizens in the Republic of Korea should review their own personal security practices, be alert to any unusual activity around their homes or businesses, and report any significant incidents to local police (tel: 112).

Several demonstrations occurred in 2004 with participants protesting either for or against labor accords, the impeachment of the Korean President, the war in Iraq and the Republic of Korea’s decision to send troops to Iraq. While political, labor, and student demonstrations and marches have on occasion become confrontational and/or violent, the majority of these demonstrations were not violent in nature. Nevertheless, American citizens in the Republic of Korea can minimize personal risks to themselves and their property by exercising caution and avoiding areas in which demonstrations are being held, as well as by avoiding confrontation with protestors.

CRIME: Although the crime rate in the Republic of Korea is low, there is a higher incidence of pickpocketing, purse snatching, assaults, hotel room burglaries, and residential crime in major metropolitan areas, such as Seoul and Busan, than elsewhere in Korea. U.S. citizens are more likely to be targeted in known tourist areas, like Itaewon and other large market areas. Incidents of rape have been reported in popular nightlife districts in Seoul. Travelers should exercise caution when traveling alone at night and should use only legitimate taxis, such as black-colored cabs, or public transportation. Travelers may reduce the likelihood of encountering incidents of crime by exercising the same type of security precautions they would take when visiting any large city in the United States.

If you have never been to Korea before you would think this place had suicide bombers on every street corner and rapists hiding in every alleyway after reading this. The point is that I’m not about to hide on camp from the Koreans after reading this and Koreans shouldn’t run in fear when seeing a foreigner after reading the Chosun article. I know Korea is an extremely safe country and is something I really appreciate about the country. On the same note Koreans shouldn’t stereotype foreigners as a bunch of criminals. Statistics are easy to interpret to justify whatever you want them to. Each post does not provide quantitative comparable statistics of the actual reality on the ground. I prefer to deal with reality before jumping to conclusions.

For a funnier take on foreigner crime read this classic post from the Party Pooper.