I was watching a movie tonight that was so terrible! It was terrible acting and special effects. Worst of all, it portrayed American GIs in Korea as evil.

It was a Korean movie about the U.S. military in Korea in the 1960s. This will be a long post as I will narrate the movie.

The story is about a girl with a deformed eye and her family being ruined because she marries a GI to get it fixed.

The girl was from a small town and she started hanging around a U.S. military soldier. Her family yelled at her for hanging around and American. He was showing her how to ride a bike and a Korean came over and yelled at her and sent her home. I think it was her father or family friend.

The GI told her "I can fix your eye if you be my sweet heart". The next scene shows her getting into a car with the GI. Her High school sweet heart begs her not to go, but she gets into the car. Suddenly, she is in a U.S. hospital and a doctor fixes her eye. The next scene shows her out of the hospital in the back seat of the GIs car (patch on her eye) and she repays the GI with sex. Her high school sweetheart is heart broken and she is disgraced for selling herself to an American.

In the next scene the GI and girl are in a bar much like the bars near the bases today. A juicy girl is dancing with a pole on stage and the GI is with the girl at a table. The GI then tells the girl to take some drugs. She is reluctant so the GI slaps her and tells here that he is "crazy because he is in Korea and wants her to know how he feels." She then takes the drugs. He then tells her "I can take you to America if you want to be my sweetheart".

The next scene has the mother of the girl receive a letter. The daughter tells her in the letter that she is going to America. The mother runs over to the base screaming. She is blocked by some American SPs who force her from the base. Her daughter is gone!



Much of the movie shows the girl's family fighting and even going at each other with a knife and even shooting another family member in the leg. Throughout the movie, the worst Korean is a guy who wears a U.S. issued military jacket and hat. He has obviously been corruptedby the Americans. He is killed in the next scene (hanged).

It is obvious by the tone of the movie that the U.S. military has ruined this family’s life. The GI in the movie is a drug head and has stolen their honor and daughter.

The man, who killed the Korean, goes to the Bus (where they live out of) and cuts the mother’s breast off! He then rides a motorcycle and kills himself. When a Korean police officer goes to the bus, they director focuses on the “U.S. Air Force” label stamped on the back of the bus. The woman goes out of the bus and watches the U.S. Air force airplanes fly over head, obviously thinking of her daughter who has been taken away.

The next scene shows the brother waking up and hearing her sister (the girl with the fixed eye) having sex. Looks like she has returned. She comes out to get some tea and the brother goes into the room and steals some money out of the GIs pocket (he is shown sleeping). She catches him and they argue. The GI wakes up and pushes the brother away and says, “You don’t need a brother like that”. Again, she has been pushed away from the family by the GI.

The next scene shows the GI kissing on the girl in the bedroom. The high school sweetheart notices and shoots an arrow at the GI! The GI asks the girl, “What does he mean to you?” He then slaps her again and asks, “Now that I fixed you eye, are you going to leave me? It is just like you people to take from me and not give in return! After all I did for you, now this!” He then cries into a ball like a baby. The girl leaves. After a few minutes of the GI crying she goes back in to the room to comfort him.

I must say this scene is symbolic of how many Koreans must feel. Personally, I think many Koreans think Americans don’t feel thanked enough for the Korean War.

The next scene shows about 12 U.S. military soldiers drilling. The main GI in the story goes crazy and starts yelling at his sergeant and officer. “Why are we in someone else’s back yard! We don’t belong here!” He then steals a gun and runs away. He shows up at the girl’s house again drunk and states, “I am not a soldier anymore.”

He then pulls out a knife and rubs it into some ink and says, “I’m going to carve my name real pretty,” and attempts to carve his name onto her breast. She fights him off and grabs the knife. She jabs it into her eye. The GI goes crazy and grabs a gun and starts shooting it off. The SPs come running in and arrest the GI for being AWOL. Of course he yells, “take me back to America, I am going crazy in this country!”

The high school sweetheart goes on a killing spree and is arrested. The girl shows up in jail and cries for 5 minutes of the movie. It's all very dramatic! The movie ends in typical Korean stle. The high school sweetheart kills a transport driver (taking him to prison?) and then kills himself.

Sorry for the fragment sentences. I wrote this fast. I was heading to bed and this movie caught my eye.

Movies like this only re-enforce the beliefs that many Koreans have. First, that American GIs are not good for Korea. In this case, a single GI has dishonord a Korean girl and ruined an entire family. The only time the Koreans speak English is to swear or say something terrible. Second, GIs are only interested in sex. He only fixed her eye for sex. Third, we only drink and do drugs.

Anyone else see this movie? I am sure GIs have done some terrible things over the years, but this movie is terrible. This is also not the first Korean movie I have seen like this!

Mike

__________________
YesAsia.com Ebay Store!

Visit USFK Classifieds, the FREE classifieds in Korea!

Interesting Plot Line!!! How Old Is This Movie?

__________________
DAN BURESS

Yeah, I've seen a lot of those kind of movies. Can't blame them for making such movies because they are somewhat true. I believe back in the 60's & 70's the GI's were much worse than they are now and got away with more crimes. Unfortunately the movie industry in Korea then were...poor (sort of still is in my opinion...but I'm just being mean ), so it was difficult to portray 'the picture' and accurately send the message.

As far as being 'thankful' toward the Americans for 'saving them from communism' and 'protecting them'... I have a lot of mixed feelings on this issue (this should be another discussion). I mean it wasn't like America helped Korea out of the kindness of their hearts, first of all. ....eh! I'll start a new thread on this later. :)

It's good to see you guys made Conscript status and got rid of the FNG tag!

Mike

I would have probably agreed pretty much with the statement about getting away with crimes and being worse without much question....

until I did some basic research this summer and found that the first 2 soldiers convicted of a crime by a Korean court were 2 found guilty of rape in 1967. I found over a dozen or so cases just in the New York Times and Washington Post archives between the first SOFA agreement giving Korea partial jurisdiction in 1967 and 1979.

And since I know from too many first hand experiences, basically almost every month teaching Korean adults (not university student adults), the basic idea in Korean society today is that GIs are "never" brought to justice in Korea, but just fly away to America, even though these very same adults DO KNOW in fact of examples of GI crimes that were held by Korean court, ------- I take any general statement of GI crimes with a good bit of skepticism.

I mean.......what you hear in Korea does NOT match reality -whatever that reality is or was.

I never could understand this no matter how many years I lived in Korea teaching Koreans....

How intelligent, nice people could tell me, often more than once over a series of months, that "no" GIs are tried in Korean court ---

---when all I had to do was ask for examples to help me understand the problem ---

and they would give me at least one or two famous murders --- which they did in fact know somewhere in their brain WAS handled by a Korean court and resulted in a conviction.

I lived in Korea staring in about 1995 and have paid extensive attention to it since then, and I've never heard of a GI being found not guilty in a Korean court or of a GI arrested for murder or such not standing trial in a Korean court.

(The 2002 tank accident does not count)

So if I can see Koreans of today who are so stone-headed about the reality of GI crimes today, I don't have a lot of confidence about broad statements about GIs in the past either.

Well, usinkorea, I'm not going to argue with your post because you are not wrong at all. But I think Koreans have a good reason to be "stone-headed" toward their view of GI's and their alleged crimes. The fact is GI's & other Americans have committed crimes and gotten away with them...from traffic tickets to murder. It seems Korean people educate each other to this. Along the way, the stories are told over and over being twisted along the way until it gets to the very simple message of "GI's always get away with crimes; never tried".

To me it's just basic human nature. We do it, too. I think humans tend to remember the bad impressions more than the good ones. It's kind of like restaurant comment cards. You barely hear much of how great the service was, but more of how bad it was, so without ever even trying the restaurant people spread the word that the service sucks there. Word spreads and twists until the restaurant is finally labeled: "just sucks!" Then you confront someone and ask why...that someone can maybe name a few things here and there but not able to track every single detail.

It's almost like...religion!

What murders did GIs get away with?

I am willing to be educated, but I need to know some specifics.

You speak of it with utter confidence, so I would assume you know.

I don't mean to be confrontational in tone at all. If we were speaking instead of typing it wouldn't be such. But, I do want to know what you know that makes you so dead certain.

This is about the same way a good number of my classes went over the years.

There is a big difference between getting things twisted from a foundation of fact, and twisting things based on something else.

And besides that, when a person knowns of the Markle murder case of the 1990s, and the two other murders that happened while I was still teaching adults, and the 1995 subway fight, and can find out without too much trouble how GIs have been routinely tried and convicted in Korean court for a long time....

...maybe there is something more behind the common statements of what fact is than simple twisting....

When a person knows of cases where GIs were in fact put on trial, found guilty, and put in Korean prison by Koreans, but still insists on saying "no GIs" face Korean justice, there is much more going on than an exaggeration based on fact.

I don't care how much you want to extend understanding to them. It is wrong. And it isn't based primarily on a sound understand of historical fact.

People have to do more than just tell me, as so many students did in the past, that they "read it somewhere" when they talk about all the murders GIs have done and got away with.

I would hope more people wouldn't simply take it for granted they are speaking from fact as well.

But even if there was a time in which US soldiers committed murder and just went free in Korea, how many decades of GIs routinely getting arrested and tried for crimes ranging from murder to rape to theft do we have to see before you would start saying perhaps Koreans still saying GIs are "never" brought to justice for even murders and rapes are not justified in their opinion?

Like any average person, I don't keep news article clippings or document every case on my journals, so I cannot tell you exactly every detail of what I've heard or witnessed. It's like asking a person, "Why do you believe in God?...Okay, prove it! I need proof!"

The reason I sound so dead certain about "Americans getting away with crimes" because I have witnessed things first hand as well as been part it myself (when I was really young; not something I'm proud of). And in my combined 15+ years here, I've never seen anyone I know going to a Korean trial of all the havoc we've caused. Now just imagine the opposite peoples' (Koreans') view.

But...I'm not going to tell everyone my life story and experiences here...it's tiresome and boring. In fact, I'm not going to get into this...this is one of those never-ending debates where no one is right or wrong at the end.

But, I'm not going to damn the entire Korean race for what a majority of them think of Americans. It's what they hear, learn, and experience and they are entitled to their own opinions. It's not wrong for them to think that way.

To me it's almost like racism in the American sense...you ask a non-caucasian person why he hates "the white man" and he'll just tell you stories of his experiences and old news, but he won't have them all documented and you can't damn his entire race for thinking that in general.

You didn't just say some crimes. You used murder as a specific and rather major crime GIs have just gotten away with that justifies Korea's opinion about GI criminals.

At first, your saying you've been here 15+ years and never seen anyone you know going to trial in a Korean court suprised me, but I guess if you mean of all the GIs you have personally been in contact with who have done crimes, none were put on trial, it works fine.

But your experience doesn't speak for it all, because I've been paying attention to Korea since I first went there in 1995, and I don't need press clipping handy to remember a good number of cases where GIs were brought to trial in Korea for crimes way below murder.

So, it doesn't seem too unreasonable to me to expect people who can have a strong claim, like GIs have often gotten away with murder in Korea, to have some general understanding of one or two examples handy. I'm not asking you or Koreans to give me the soldier's SSN, rank, and boot size. Something like, "A GI killed a girl in 1985 or 86 and just got away with it. It was in all the papers" would at least be a specific case.

So why is it the examples anybody parading out your line of argument has been able to give me are well known cases where the GIs were in fact found guilty in Korean court?

Basically, I respectfully disagree fundmentally with your whole point of view. No. It isn't a case where no one is right and no one is wrong.

"But, I'm not going to damn the entire Korean race for what a majority of them think of Americans. It's what they hear, learn, and experience and they are entitled to their own opinions. It's not wrong for them to think that way."

This is all just multiculturalism gone awry.

Who said you have to damn the whole Korean race? Who said Koreans aren't entitled to their own opinions?

But, yes, as a matter of fact ------ a matter of real fact, not opinion ---- their commonly held opinion is dead wrong.

And all you have given to back up a defense of it is generalized supposition.

And the line about blacks and racism in the US doesn't work either. There are plenty of concrete examples of lynchings and beatings and institutional racism in modern American history.

You don't need to do a research paper to use them to back up a claim about racism in the US.

There is no way GIs getting away with murder and major crimes in Korea is remotely close to the history of racism in the US. If it were, Koreans wouldn't have such a hard time picking examples to justify their claims.

It seems to me in your time in Korea you've fallen back on a "So many people say it, it must be true" line of thinking in an effort to "understand" Korean people and society.

A "hey, who are we to criticize them" attitude that always seems quick to jump as well into claims that someone like me questioning something clearly wrongheaded but common in Korean society is trying to destroy the whole of the Korean race --- condemning them all for just being Korean.

It's all smoke and mirrors avoiding discussion of a real and important topic - GIs and getting away with crime.

But it will end again as it almost always does....with nothing accomplished --- because nobody ever gives me anything solid to back up the Korean claim, and I can never seem to budge the other person into seeing just because the vast majority of Koreans say its true doesn't mean it is so.....

OKAY,... I knew this would happen. I should have just stopped at "I'm not going to get into this..."

I just read the first few lines of your posting and stopped. I got tired.

I'm just here on the forum to have a little fun.

Every now and then I'd like to express my opinion and have people respect that instead of being questioned for everything I say. I'm not here to get into any contraversial debates...they're tiresome and boring to me. And in the end, "Who gives a crap what we think?"

Why waste time? I got better things to do and think about. So...you win! Be proud! I take back all I said. No more No more