I recently ordered a subscription to the NY Times archives where I can get pdf versions of up to 100 articles a month. I think it will come in handy as a teacher of high school students.

Anyway, I went to get an article from the 1995 subway brawl to share. I did a review of the 2002 and 1995 subway cases at this page.

You can read the entire article here.

Here are my notes:

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.

While cases like the subway incident are seen by Koreans as evidence of the need for protection from rampaging Americans, to Americans they show that they need protection from a skewed local judicial system. After the subway brawl, no Koreans were indicted, but four Americans were.

(2 soldiers were convicted. The husband was given a 6 month sentence which was reduced to a fine on appeal. The other GI was given a fine from the start.

…Oh yeah…..The Korean wife was also found guilty and given a fine. The accuser said he was protecting a different woman, but the prosecution didn’t have any other woman come forward.)

I didn’t learn about this until 4 or 5 months in country. There used to be an older Korean guy who wrote editorials for the Korea Herald. He used to get a lot of hate mail, according to articles he wrote about once or twice a year, from Koreans accusing him of being anti-Korean - for things like — writing an editorial criticizing the Korean press for failing to report AT ALL that the Korean wife of the GI said she was the one the Korean man “tried to save.”

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.

Mr. Laney says the problem is not that American soldiers are committing more crimes, but that an irresponsible Korean press is portraying them in a particularly lurid way to an inflamed public.

The US ambassador expressing such views only created another shit storm.

“The problem is not in the crime itself, but in the criminal process,” said Kwon Suk Hun, a 23-year-old student council officer at Yonsei University, traditionally a hotbed of social protest. “This process reflects the imperialist characteristics of the U.S. Government.”

“The Korean public’s perception is that the SOFA is not meeting with a sense of justice,” said Yim Sung Joon, director general of the American affairs bureau in the Foreign Ministry. Mr. Yim said the most important issue is to revise the agreement so arrested American soldiers may be held in Korean custody while awaiting trial.

Having never found a case where a US GI was not found guilty in a Korean civilian court, I find this hard to believe.

The SOFA was eventually changed to what Mr. Yim talked about.
The next part was a bit disconcerting to me:

If convicted of crimes, American soldiers are jailed in a special wing of a Korean prison, where eight are now serving sentences.

Because, I had been told repeatedly by many, many classes of Korean adults, and they were the ones who brought up GI Crimes from time to time, I did not pick “free talk” discussion topics for them, that NO GIs are “ever” brought to justice in a Korean court. They meant “no” GIs.

What was disconcerting was that - about the same time I was finding this article in the NY Times online - I was learning about the infamous early-1990s Markle murder case.

That had been H-U-G-E news in Korea. It was a horrible murder.

A measure of the public sensitivity in South Korea is that one of the best-known Americans in the country is Kenneth Markle 3d, an Army private convicted of murdering a Korean prostitute in 1992. The case led to huge demonstrations and anti-American protests, as well as calls for the death penalty for Private Markle, but in the end he was sentenced to a 15-year term, which he is serving.

It was also a case where a US soldier WAS convicted in a Korean court. So, how could my students fail to remember it???

Since then, I have found cases of GIs going to prison all the way back in 1967 when the first trial of a GI in a Korean court resulted in 2 of them being found guilty of rape.

I have gone to your website before. I like it. THe video you have on the main page has a news story I did when I was with AFN. It was cool to see it there.

Thanks.

I saw recently where AFNK (which is not a great use of whatever it is called when you just use initials ---- having "NK" in it looks rather funny - like "Armed Forces North Korea....)...

....anyway....I saw where AFKN has started using You Tube with some of its reporting. I think that is an excellent idea, and I wish they would get into doing more spots like the one you did and the many other small things different bases and different groups on the bases do to help out in Korea - like visiting orphanages and old folks homes and raising money for them or helping harvest crops and inviting Koreans on base for tours and so on.

If You Tube isn't shut down over a lawsuit -----

it will be better at getting these short broadcasts out to Koreans than it will putting it on AFKN tv....

If they add both English and Korean script key words, Koreans will surf to them much more than they will turn on AFKN...

Thanks for the comments about the site.

That video is probably my favorite I've done over the years. It is the one I rewatch more often.

For me, it mixes in most of overlapping elements in the US-SK alliance and anti-US/USFK environment.

For me, it jumps back and forth between the big pictures and the isolated issues and puts in the focus on isolated GI issues that never get a voice in Korean society....

The anti-US groups, along with the Korean media much of the time (though not much since 2004), are very good about masking their true intentions (support for North Korea) ------- by focusing on isolated incidents or issues:

like Maehyang-ri's bombing range or the Camp Humnphreys expansion....

and each of these issues is another brick in the wall of the foundation for anti-US sentiment ----

and the anti-US groups have been very sucessful in building that foundation across the society (with the help of university and lower education)....

......whereas........... the isolated good things the US military and individual groups of GIs ---- or even the times when something happens like a GI helping people after a traffic accident and so on.....

have no play in Korean society.

GIs and other expats hear about it via the Stars & Stripes - or on AFKN....

but the Korean media ignores it....

You Tube can help if AFKN and or the GI groups or GIs will use it.

Korean society is highly internet focused. You know this if you set foot in South Korea.

We should use it....

RE: "....The case led to huge demonstrations and anti-American protests, as well as calls for the death penalty for Private Markle, but in the end he was sentenced to a 15-year term, which he is serving...."

I may have my facts wrong but I believe Kenneth Markle has been released from confinement at Chonan Prison and returned to the US.

That's a fact. Last summer I asked the person in charge of keeping track of USFK personnel incarcerated in Korean prisons specifically about Markle. He said he'd been released.

I thought I had an "update" note on all the pages that mention Markle telling that he was released in late 2006? I'll check again....

I happened to hear about that when someone emailed me who had just met him and did some internet surfing and ran across my site....

I thought it might be a prank at first....but it didn't seem to be...

the internet is making for a small world..