Point is taken chucksnee. I think that for those of us who are not there and have not been there in a while a lot has changed. I think that as usinkorea says there are a lot of things in the e-mail that bring up questions. 1 Why the Hell are you writing to me. 2 Is this girl working in a club and if not does she not know better than to hand around with GI's 3 If the problem is the police it may be there is a reason she cannot go . So many unanswered Questions. Is it believable probably not but maybe a little more than some one in Nigeria asking for help to get money out of the country.
Part of the problem we have in the states is the inability for us as individules to really trust Korean news and not a lot of sources to verify that.

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Just my humble opinion!

[quote]Lets talk about the late 90's. I was here in 1999, the things that happend then do not even compare to what happens now and what gets reported. Much more gets reported now. Honor or not, stuff get reported.[quote]

It was my experience in the past,(as late as 99) that there was a mistrust of the police, in general. Now, I wouldn't be so bold as to assume this was true for every Korean precinct in every town but, many Koreans do prefer to keep things out of the public eye, away from the cops, handling it within the family. I'm sure the various police outfits have improved but, I think it is hard for a society that is so strongly based within the family to change its ways. I can tell you I have personal experience of seeing how easily the local cops of SongTan were able to be bribed and more or less used to affect a wanted ending to a situation, regardless of what the written law may have been. It was not uncommon to see people who had some kind of dealings with the police bringing packages with them to the police station, packages full of goodies and some cask for the cops who had influence in their case. I'm sure that there has been change and there is on going change but I would slightly side with USin Korea on this one. I would guess that many crimes don't go reported due to the way many Korean police have operated in the past. It can be said that many would continue to extort everything they could out of someone, dragging the case through red tape for endless time until they could squeeze enough from the person and their family.

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Turk Quid Pro Quo

Chuck is also missing much of the point of the post to begin with.

The title itself was "Trolls" not --- "Help me solve this gang rape email I got"

In the end -------

I think the event shows something about the role of the nature of the US involvement in Korea ---- which is why I'm posting about it.

In both the Dave's ESL case and this email I got ----

people who have lived in Korea for years, gotten to know Korea, and who often have strong opinions about things related to Korea -----

----- took the time to deal with a very --- an extremely serious ---- charge - in a thoughtful, careful manner.

It was easy to think of people who could help ------- because there are a lot of people who would want to do the right thing.......

And both of those people took the nature of the claim seriously and acted in a serious, methodical, thoughtful way on it.

And my whole point in writing this long post is ---------

there are plenty of GIs ---- and other American expats in Korea -----

----- who get more pissed off than the Koreans when a GI disrespects the organization and his nation -- when he does something outrageous and illegal.

---- but people who can also put these crimes into the correct context.

The point of the post wasn't to rehash some spammer email sent out to millions.

It was to write about a targeted email with a story that touches on one of the main issues in the "hate USFK/US in Korea" grab bag

and to explain that, unlike the Korean hate groups -- and by extention Korean society as a whole that likes to entertain these ideas even if they don't feel the need to protest about them --

-- there are plenty of people connected to the US in Korea who take such matters seriously --- even when they think it is probably a hoax.

But - if you want --- do send me your bank account information, and I'll see about depositing that money for you.

If you give me your credit card information, I can get it in faster.....

O.K. maybe I did not get the point.....Or maybe it was all those e-mails you said you sent to everyone to try and find out if a SPAM e-mail was real.....

If you really had the guys name you could have went straight to AKO and found out if he was even in the Army. To easy.

Naw... It don't work like that, you see I have to send you the money, If I sent you my account #'s I would not know how to get the money back.....Oh well I guess that SPAM is not going to work.....

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CH-47 SI

They must find it difficult...

Those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than truth as the authority. --Gerald Massey

UsinKorea;

Although I did not read the post in great length, I could only state that it is a moral obligation to turn criminal allegations over to CID for investigation. This would also reduce the propagation of rumors that would cause unwarranted animosity. We really need to be more responsible before casting aspersions even if it was sent via unknown sources.

As I stated I did not read the entire thread. It appeared as though you may have been hoping someone in this forum could substantiate the claim?

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Chill

I'm not one hundred percent certain but I believe the main point in the end was this: USINKOREA is attempting to show that it is the U.S. citizen in the ROK or one who has connections with the ROK that most often shows the most commitment to getting to the real truth of these kinds of things. This is because we do not like it when one of our own plays the ugly American and cast aspersions upon all of us. The case in point, if it were real, causes questions to be asked like (1) Why didn't the GI friend of the Korean victim turn the case into the CID for investigation? (Hikers point) (2) Why didn't the Korean victim go to the Korean police? (I made a possible point as to why many Koreans do not like to involve the police in some of their matters) . In the end, no one that USINKOREA contacted seemed to be able to verify the incident. USINKOREA showed good judgement in not automatically buying into the emailers claims. Correct me if I am missing something here, USINKOREA.

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Turk Quid Pro Quo

The post was a little lengthy to begin to attempt to sort out the characters from the main plot. If you are familiar with L&H "Who's On First".

An alternate approach may have been to quickly preface the article with a brief statement on the facts of the case. An example:

1. SUSPICIOUS EMAIL RECIEVED!
2. Facts not verified.
3. Allegations sent to CID.

This would immediately inform the reader unverifed allegations.

Attempting to read 3 screens of He said/She said it a little difficult unless one wishes to invest the time to read the FA.

This is writing 101. You can either place the summary of the article in the first couple paragraphs, or at the end.

I believe we should have a responsibilty when posting to prevent the potential for false allegations until the case is at least investigated or at least officially documented by an reliable source.

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Chill

I get your point, hiker, on being more brief and to the point but, we all have different writing and communication techniques. I'm not sure I understand your thoughts about how there could possibly be anything remotely in the nature of false allegations connected to this particular thread?

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Turk Quid Pro Quo

Turk;

I believe the average time a human spends reading through a resume is app 15 seconds. They are scanned for keywords that an organization is searching for. This was probably close to the amount of time I spent reading the individuals posting. There were more than 3 comments concerning;

1. gang rape victim was a Korean woman, and perps were US soldiers.

My response is as I stated. When confronted with this allegation we really have two choices:

If there is a possibility it is true the local investigative agency should be contacted.

Dismiss it.

I would not post it in a thread where it could be misconstrued.

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Chill

I get wordy in posts, but as far as misconstrued goes, I honestly don't feel the need to tighten up my own writing for readers who hardly skim the texts.

I put a great example of this in the post -- as a matter of fact --

the people who send me an email every 6 months or so highly angry I could be such an anti-American --- after they fail to read my stuff at www.usinkorea.org

Anyone who spent less than 5 minutes reading the stuff I do there would know I am bashing Korea for its anti-Americanism not promoting it.

But, some people are just going to look at the images and videos and misconstrue the purpose of the site and send me emails and get replies that hopefully make them feel foolish.

Turk,

The Korean female was said to have told the Korean police but they would not touch the case because it involved in a GI. But you got the heart of what I was trying to explain.

There are asses in the US military and in other parts of the expat community in Korea.

Things are going to happen. In any organization of that size, you are even going to have the worst of crimes take place.

However, when the do take place, there are plenty of people connected to USFK and the US in Korea who take the matter just as seriously as the Koreans.

But - if the Koreans would handle these things in a serious, thoughtful manner, rather than letting blind nationalism take over, they would put them in their proper context and do a much better job of dealing with them.

Next,

I only sent out two emails. One to someone I knew could help and the other one as an after-thought.

The 1st person did confirm that there was a GI by name X and rank Y at Camp Z.

He also made contact with that person via military email, and by nature of his job in the military, he was in a much better position to take things forward if it turned out to be a real event.

To date, the soldier with name X has not returned the email.

Those are all the facts as I know them.

I give it a 60/40% chance or worse that it was a made up story for whatever reason.

But, I have done what I thought was prudent in checking it out.

And I gave what I consider good enough advice which, if the Korean female (if she exists) follows through on, should lead to an adequate investigation being done.

As of a couple of days ago --- the whole thing is pretty much over for me.
I'll file it away in my ? box.