Taxi cabs are probably the top area where incidents between USFK servicemembers and Koreans happen. In fact the first USFK servicemember tried in a Korean court all the way back in 1967 was a taxi cab related incident. The place where the second most amount of incidents happen between servicemembers and Koreans has to be the Seoul subway. Gusts of Popular Feeling has an informative posting that brings to light one of the most well known subway incidents that happened back in 1995 when an American soldier was assaulted for trying to protect his Korean wife. Here is an excerpt from the New York Times article that explains what happened:
It all began when an American soldier put his hand on a Korean woman’s rump.
The version that has captured the local imagination is that a group of drunken American soldiers were rampaging through the subway, molesting Korean women, and that the soldiers then attacked good citizens who dared protest the errant hand.
The American understanding of events starts with a fact that the Koreans tend to leave out: The American soldier and the Korean woman whose behind he patted were in fact a married couple.
The Americans say the problems arose when some angry young Koreans on the subway accused the American of sexually harassing the Korean woman. When the Korean woman explained that she was the American’s wife, the Korean men allegedly spat at her and slapped her — leading the woman’s husband to punch the man who slapped her.
In any case, the result that evening in May was a huge brawl in the subway. It has reverberated through the country and underscored the delicacy of the mission of the 37,000 American military personnel in bases in South Korea. [New York Times]
The soldier in question, his wife, and his friends that were with them initially received jail time, but after appealing, their sentences were reduced to fines while the Korean who started the brawl got away totally free. This was 1995 and you would think the Koreans and the Korean legal system in general would have evolved since then. Guess what, things haven’t changed that much. If anything it can be argued that things have only gotten worse with soldiers being attacked & kidnapped on the subway, beaten, and then forced to make coerced statements on national television among a host of other highly dubious incidents that the Koreans involved were not punished for. In fact these attackers of GIs are often considered heroes!
It is that time of the month again, USFK has released their monthly court martial results. It was actually a very slow month with only five court martial and four off post incidents handled in the Korean courts and none of them very serious. Just a lot of typical stupid stuff, but the two DUIs in the ROK court are bit of a concern because that makes six DUIs in four months for USFK. That is not a good trend.
Now these two servicemembers convicted in Korean court I just have to wonder what the heck they did:
In Incheon District Court on 10 July 2007, Major Brenda J. Suggars, HHC, EUSA, was
convicted of Trademark Law violations. Her adjudged sentence was a 1,000,000 Won
fine.
In Incheon District Court on 10 July 2007, Sergeant First Class Malanie N. English,
524th MI, was convicted of Trademark Law violations. Her adjudged sentence was a
500,000 Won fine.
Trademark violations? Korea even enforces trademark laws? I wonder if they were selling off pirated DVDs and games? This is the first time I seen USFK servicemembers convicted for trademark violations so this is a new one on me. I have to wonder how often Koreans get arrested for trademark violations because all you have to do is take a stroll down to the Yongsan Electronics Market to see all the counterfeit goods being pedaled out in the open.
Anyway you can view the rest of the results below the fold:
Prominent K-blog commenter and lawyer Brendon Carr offers some outstanding advice in today’s Stars and Stripes newspaper. Brendon hits on a number of potential issues with soldiers who get in trouble in Korea. Here is probably the most telling statement from the article:
Beyond language difficulties is the prospect that South Koreans who give testimony might feel it culturally acceptable to lie, especially if it will increase their chances of winning bigger damages, Carr said.
This culture, Carr said, does not place the same value on truth or view the truth through the same prism that Americans do. There is very little social disapproval of making false official statements in order to achieve an objective for your friend or relative or for a tribemate.
Once it breaks down to ˜those Americans versus us Koreans, many, many Koreans will perceive it as their duty to make sure that the Korean is the winner of the dispute. So there’s a lot of lying when witnesses come forward, Carr said.
A South Korean judge sentenced three U.S. soldiers Friday for their participation in a Nov. 11 bar brawl in the Itaewon entertainment district.
Two soldiers — Pvt. Sylvester Antely Clark, 19, and Spc. Tydes Whiten, 27, — were sentenced to 18 months in prison for punching and striking a U.N. Club bouncer with beer bottles during the fight.
But judge Han Yang-seok suspended both sentences for two years, saying he took into account that both soldiers paid compensation to the bouncer, had no prior convictions and “had worked diligently to defend the country†as soldiers here.
Pfc. Mario Duprey, convicted of assaulting a police officer, was fined the equivalent of about $3,000.
The two soldiers involved in the brawl have been maintaining their innocence that they were not the ones who hit the bouncer with a beer bottle. Judging by past altercations involving Koreans falsely accusing GIs of assault, this claim may quite possibly be true. However, there is not enough information available compared to the Acosta case, to really make a determination on this and the fact that PVT Clark was led into the courtroom in shackles I found quite interesting:
Clark, who was escorted in and out of the courtroom by Army criminal investigators and restrained with his hands shackled to a belt around his waist, declined to comment.
The fact he was led into the courtroom into shackles leads me to wonder what other trouble he has gotten into to be the only one shackled in the courtroom. No one is going to jail, but they are definitely lighter in the pocketbook and hopefully other soldiers can take some good lessons learned from this incident, especially like when you are drunk don’t go to the police station and start crap there.Â
This article from the Asia Sentinel is a must read for anyone remotely interested in the North Korean counterfeiting of US currency. The reporters travel to China to see if they find North Korean supernotes. This is what they found:
These days there is also a reasonable facsimile of another famous American crossing the river in the opposite direction Benjamin Franklin. If you’ve got the connections here, and they aren’t hard to find, you can easily encounter Franklin’s enigmatic face for about US$50 on a reasonable copy of a US $100 bill. These presumably Pyongyang-printed Big-Head Benjamins are known worldwide as “supernotes.
We know. We bought one.
So where did these reporters buy these supernotes, right in the open of course:
Our supernote purchase $100, US Series 2003, serial number DI03120777A (acquired strictly for purposes of this story) took place literally within the shadow of the China Bank of Communications. The bank is directly across the street from the Dandong office of China Customs, which in turn is next to a People’s Liberation Army facility as is the Dandong Police headquarters. Coincidentally, the transaction also took place on the afternoon of Kim’s 65th birthday, February 16.
So where did the supernotes come from you may ask?:
At first he said he got them accidentally from various foreign tourists who were changing them for yuan. Were the tourists from North Korea? He shrugged and smiled and said perhaps some had relatives or friends over there across the mighty Yalu. But after asking if he could sell one or two more, he quickly left on his bicycle after taking a brief mobile phone call.
Make sure you read the whole article, very interesting read about this illegal activity happening quite openly in China with little effort by Chinese authorities to stop it. Maybe it is time someone starts printing Chinese yuan to start spreading around and see how the Chinese government likes that.
The Marmot is reporting that the soldier involved in the despicable grandma rape case has been sentenced to 4 years in prison. The Marmot thinks that the soldier got off light. In a US court system and especially a military court it appears he did get off easy. Take the 2003 Camp Jackson sexual assault case for example, the NCO involved in the rape of a KATUSA soldier was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
However, if you compare the soldier’s sentence to Korean rape cases he was actually punished quite heavily. Take this case of a Korean national raping a US Army private just arriving in country and missed the bus to Yongsan and instead decided to take a taxi. Instead of a ride to Yongsan she was raped by the cab driver. What happened to the cab driver you may ask? Not much:
The Seoul High Court yesterday overturned the conviction by a lower court of a 49-year old taxi driver who had been charged with the rape of a 19-year old U.S. female soldier.
The man had received a 10-month prison term in the original trial after being convicted of luring the newly-arrived servicewoman from Incheon International Airport to a hotel near there where the woman said he raped her.
The woman reported the incident to U.S. military authorities, who asked for assistance from Korean prosecutors. The appeals court ruled that the woman had shown no evidence of having refused the man’s advances, and that he used not enough violence to constitute rape.
Fortunately a higher court later over turned this ridiculous ruling and gave the guy a sentence of two and half years in prison. But still two and half years for a predator that raped a 19 year old soldier? Isn’t this rape case just as disgusting as the rape of a 67 year old woman? At least this rape had some one arrested for it unlike when a US Army officer was raped by a Korean man in Taegu. How about this rape of an English teacher in Seoul that is particularly unsettling. Here is my personal favorite of a Korean man whose only punishment for attempting to rape a woman in his car was to lose his license. Most recently the ROK Army soldier who sexually assaulted a US female soldier on Camp Casey only received a sentence of 4 years probation.
Going by the Korean standard of recent sentencing of sexual assaults against foreigners, the convicted USFK soldier in this rape case should have received up to two and half years in jail to a minimum of four years probation and possibly lose his driver’s license.
For all the talk about the unfair SOFA Agreement, this is just one case in many I have seen where if the military tried the case the criminal would have probably spent more time in jail. Perfect example is the Camp Jackson case I mentioned earlier. Either way the criminal is in jail and justice was served, but it would be nice to see justice served against the criminals committing sexual assaults against foreigners as well.
Former USFK soldier and convicted murderer Kenneth Markle who was just recently released from ROK prison, has apparently spoken out over at Lost Nomad proclaiming his innocence in the 1992 murder of Korean prostitute Kum E. Yoon. This murder is the most brutal as well as the most publicly known murder by a US servicemember in Korea and has long been used by anti-US groups to influence public opinion against USFK in Korea.
I can remember a few years back being in charge of a force protection detail at Camp Red Cloud when my soldiers working the front gate called me to come to the gate. I went to the gate and the typical anti-US loons were out there with signs with the murdered body of Ms. Yoon on it as well as the crushed bodies of the two girls killed in the 2002 armored vehicle accident. That was the first time I had ever seen pictures of the brutal murder, that even years after it happened are still sickenly used for political reasons.
Markle says he didn’t do it and we would be surprised if we read the court transcripts. Well then he should scan post them on a webpage and let us with interest in the case read them. He is the one convicted for the murder and thus the burden of proof is on him to prove he is innocent.
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Note: An updated posting about this case can be read at the below link:
Police on Saturday booked a man in his 50s over a scuffle with a woman on Line 2 of the Seoul subway.The man identified as Park got on the train at Seoul National
University Station at around 7 p.m. when he saw the woman identified as Ju sitting in a seat reserved for the elderly. You’re young, what do you think you’re doing sitting here? Get out of the way, he was quoted as shouting. When Ju refused to budge, Park pulled her out of the seat by her arm and slapped her in the face. However, police investigation revealed that Park, a carpenter by trade, was in fact the younger of the two at the age of 55, while his hapless victim was 56. Police quoted Park as saying Ju’s face looked so fresh he was convinced she was younger. He has been booked for assault.
After a U.S. soldier in trouble for his relationships with two Korean women offered a $21,500 payment to his wife, a South Korean judge dropped one of two charges against him.
Sgt. Jin-hong Han, an American, pleaded guilty in December to adultery and breaching a promise of marriage.
He was in Uijeongbu District Court on Friday to be sentenced on an appeal decision from Chief Judge Bae Jun-hyun. Han had appealed his sentence, saying he felt remorse for his actions and didn’t realize he was breaking local laws.
The judge dropped the adultery charge after hearing of Han’s settlement offer to his wife.
But Han told the judge that he has yet to find his ex-girlfriend to offer her a similar settlement, a common action common in South Korean criminal cases that can lessen a defendant’s final jail sentence.
What does the mistress think of this?:
Have you ever made any contacts with Kim Hyo-jin? the judge asked Han of his former girlfriend.
Ues, I have, Han said. But I wasn’t able to get through to her. I think that she is not in Korea.
So before issuing a final decision on Han’s current 10-month sentence, the judge gave Han two more weeks, postponing his sentencing until May 26.
Stripes, however, was able to contact Kim on Friday at a telephone number she said she’s used for years. She said she has not heard from Han.
He never intended to make any settlement with him; I never will, Kim told Stripes. Even if he would offer me billions and billions [of] won. I cannot forgive him because he completely destroyed my life and my future.
It looks like SGT Han better get used to jail for a little while longer.
Five soldiers were found guilty and sentenced to prison in Uijeongbu court on Tuesday for the Christmas-night assault and robbery of a taxi driver.
Pvt. Kidrem Cortez Porter, 21, received four years in prison, minus 67 days of time served at a Seoul detention center.
Four others received sentences of three and a half years in prison: Spc. Nicholas John Durkin, 21; Pfc. John D. McCall Jr., 21; Pvt. Javon Joshua Reid, 20; and Spc. Ivey Nathaniel Westbrook, 21, who received credit for two days of time served in detention.
You are all military personnel of the U.S. Army and therefore must respect Korean law,lead judge Cho Yun-shin said through an interpreter.
Pretty stiff sentences because I have seen plenty of people do far worse and receive less punishment through the Korean courts, but I really don’t feel sorry for them. Hopefully this will send a message and end these taxi cab related incidents.
