I recently got access to inter-library loans, so I have been sending off for articles from the US press archives in relation to GI Crimes. The US papers don't pay a lot of attetion to South Korea beyond the broad strokes, but the Korean news English language archives only go back to 1988 or 89.

So, I assume more crimes took place that I can't find. And I even assume some crimes took place that the US authorities moved to protect a GI from facing.

I am just still waiting for a Korean who says, as they all do, GIs "always" or "almost always" or "routinely" get away with even the worst crimes to tell me a specific example I can sink my teeth into.

Saying, "I read it somewhere" doesn't cut it for me, and it shouldn't for you, no matter how many times you hear the same statement repeated by all kinds of Koreans. (Like the a** editor for the Korea Times who wrote in Dec. 2003 that a recent DUI case would be "the first time" USFK ever allowed a Korean civilian criminal court put a GI on trial!!!)

These are the articles I've gotten this week :
1967 arson and assault
http://www.usinkorea.org/crimes/1967_arson_assault.htm

1967 death by thrown piece of wood
http://www.usinkorea.org/crimes/1967...ntal_death.htm

1968 muder and arson
http://www.usinkorea.org/crimes/1968..._and_arson.htm

The 68 review has some notes from the O'Sullivan Kunsan site that I had missed until now. It notes the 1968 case of an officer buying diamond rings in the PX and selling them off base and his arrest and conviction by Korea's justice system.

O'Sullivan doesn't provide the source info (and if you are still reading this site, could you let me know what it is, thanks) but here is an interesting paragraph

At year end, the Ministry of Justice exercised jurisdiction over 43 persons -- 16 military, 22 civilians and 5 dependents. Of this number, 4 were returned to military control; 12 are pending trial; 2 are pending appeal and 25 are completed. There were no acquittals and judgements were considered reasonable.

I have never heard of a GI getting acquitted, but in watching cases as best I could since 1995, I can only think of one soldier I thought got hosed.

That was the 1995 Subway Brawl http://usinkorea.org/issues/subway/
in which, according to the GIs and at least one wife (a Korean), a wife who testified in court, a Korean male approached the soldiers and demanded the one stop "sexually harassing/assaulting/raping" (my adult students at the time described it as if these 3 things were interchangable) the Korean woman. The woman (the wife, according to the wife and soldiers) told the man they were married and he wasn't bothering her, after which, according to their testimony, the man became enraged at the mixed couple and slap her and spit on her and the husband retaliated.

The story goes on, but to cut this short, the GI was found guilty, the wife was found guilty of a crime too!, as was a third GI --- even though the prosecutor and Korean vicitim could not produce another woman saying she was the one the brave man saved from the hoard of GIs.

Even in that case, however, the GI was sentenced to 6 months even though the case was HUGE ---- MEGA HUGE ---- in Korean society at the time, and that sentence was later reduced to a fine.

I can't tell whether the 2002 tank guys http://www.usinkorea.org/1st/TRAGEDY/index.html

or the 2000 Water Dumper
http://www.usinkorea.org/2nd/environ...0/dumping.html

would have unjustly been convicted and put in prison or not, because USFK refused to hand them over - because they were clearly on duty and had the events happen as part of their duty.

But, in all the other cases I know of, the GIs were found guilty and recieved sentences I have seen Koreans get for the same crimes.

I also note that the US military prosecution has very high conviction rates as do most in the US --- a prosecutor shouldn't bring a case to trial if he doesn't have a strong enough case to win --- which doesn't mean they are always right --- it just means it is not shocking that Korea would have a very high conviction rate for GIs.

It would be nice to find a case where one was acquitted in the last 50 years, however....

What bothers me is you only hear about GI crimes in Korea. There are quite a few incidents with English teachers here in Korea who teach in low class English schools, but you never hear about them.

The Koreans Want The English Teachers Here, They Don't Want The Military... It's Simple Politics

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DAN BURESS

There was a good bit of anti-ESL instructor news some time in the not to distant future. Mainly it was sparked, if I remember correclty, by photos on a blog about a wet t-shirt contest and racy parties at a bar hosted by ESL teachers with their adult students.

Then someone picked up on a webpage that somone later claimed the author put up as a test for censorship on the server he was using with the contents talking about how to seduce (for sex) the children being taught. The Korean media reported it as straight out advice on how to molest children by ESL teachers.

Those two news items led to a crack down on illegal teachers, and since there are a good number of them, the stories kept coming.

Of course, the increased attention led to the discovery that a good number of these ESL instructors were having pot smuggled in from home or were finding it in Korea, so a lot of drug stories came out.

All the Korean news was a rage with this.

However, if you check the archives, I believe you will only find one Korean news outlet (the Joongang Daily) that covered the ESL instructor (American) who died while in custody a few years ago.

He had complained about the anti-US attitude of 2002, and he said he had been attacked once. He was going to return to the US, but a day or so before he was to leave, he ran to a taxi barefoot telling the guy to take him to the police but the taxi driver wouldn't at first, then he took him to the police to report the guy wouldn't get out of his cab. The police said later the guy was acting crazy and appeared homeless, so they turned him to some kind of treatment center where they later sedated him and then later noticed he was having health problems so they transfered him to a hospital and he died in route.

The only reason the JAD covered it was because of a firestorm in the ESL expat community. I never heard anything about the cause of death, and I looked.

And you will find zero articles about the 30 something Irish expats who were in a huge brawl with club security in Itaewon a few Chusoks ago when I believe it is clear the Korean-American owner wanted to close early and didn't like the attitude of the Irish or whatever and ordered his club guys to push them out. In that, gas canister guns were used as well as mace and clubs, all on the Irish......Not one story in the Korean press.

I finished this round of digging in the Washington Post Archives for articles on GI Crimes in South Korea.

Besides the ones I've already noted, I found about 1 article per year up to about 1975. Then, there were none for the years searched (to 1987).

Until about 1980, I went by year using one search term (Korea) which pulled up between 600-700 hits most of the time. Around 1980, that started grabbing daily stock market updates, so if made that search too time consuming. So from 1980-1987, I used a variety of combinations for South, Korea, soldier, soldiers, US, gi, gis, murder, rape, charged, arrested, prosector, court, and similar. Still, nothing.

There could be any number of reasons why 1967-1975 had at least 1 per year but the others none. One reason could be what Korean society claims --- GIs were not arrested and tried by Koreans between those years. I give that about a 1% chance of being true.

For one thing, I would expect to find an article about it, because the signing of the SOFA of 1967 (or 66?) giving SK jurisdiction over crimes committed while off-duty (and not against other soldiers) led to several stories being written those years as well as making the convictions more newsworthy. If signing the SOFA giving Korea jurisdiction in such crimes was big news in 1967-1969, then I would expect repealing that agreement would have won at least one article I would have found.

Right now, my main guess why the articles dry up has to do with who was reporting.

Many of the articles in the late 60s to early 70s are by Richard Hollarand. I recognized his name as the guy based in Hawaii now who writes what I think are some good analytical news pieces on Korea-US relations. He shows he has good contacts in the US military community high up the chain too, which is why his pieces are worth the time reading.

So, my guess is that we get the better coverage of Korea in the late 60s and early 70s because he was working for the Post and had a special interest in Korea, but I am guessing he moved on to another news org in the early 70s (???) and that is why the articles dried up....... Just a guess.....

I did what you could loosely call a controlled test by typing in the same combinations of search terms for the years 1995-2000, because I knew there were at least 2 murders and the infamous subway brawl as well as a series assaults and petty thefts you read about in the Korean news a couple of times a year.

I also used the board search term (Korea, soldier) and it turned up 445 articles whose headlines I scanned.

Only 1 article came out about the Subway Incident ---- and that was mega news in Korea including dragging in the US Amb to complain about the Korean press coverage which was like adding rocket fuel to the fire.

It also pulled up 1 article on the 1996 murder, but I found nothing on the other murder I know about, and there was nothing on the assaults or other crimes.

Like I said in the beginning, the US press is not a good guage for how many crimes GIs commit, because the US press hardly pays attention to South Korea beyond economics and broad geopolitical issues.

If I had the Korean language skills, and if the Korean archives online went back that far (which they don't as far as I can tell), I'd search there....

I didn't need to do this search to convince me any more than I was before that GIs were tried and convicted in Korean courts before 2004 (contrary to what the Korean Times editor thinks).

I had already suprised myself a good bit, even though I was highly doubtful of what my Korean students had to say about GI Crimes, this summer when I found articles showing the first GIs tried and convicted by Koreans occured in 1967....!!....

If I had had to bet beforehand, I would have felt the Koreans were probably right on the issue until about 1975 or 1981 or there abouts.

1967 was a shocker.

What was suprising this time searching, though only mildly so, was how many of the articles I found related to crimes that were bad but not as big as murder - which you would expect to catch the US media attention and be the kind South Korea would fight hard to get to try themselves, but many of the articles in this search were on smaller crimes like --- arson, theft, assault (street fight), and so on.

Anyway........I will add the articles on the crimes from 1970-1975 as I get them from the library......

Excellent research! You have outdone yourself on this one. Your site is becoming a wealth of information.

Mike

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