NiteShift said:
Also,it is a myth that GI's have not been subject to local law in S. Korea. Here are a few examples of crimes by US troops that were prosecuted by S. Korean courts over the years:
(Compiled by USinKorea.org)
Trusting such statistics report all the crimes is very much naive.
I have the information which explains only the fraction of the real crimes by US army, in Korean and the following is my translation of the excerpts.
In 1990, for the crimes of US forces, the local authority exercised the judicial rights for only 0.8%, 1% in 1991, 7% in 2001, 26 cases among 372 cases.
The reason why the statistics shows the drastic increase since is because small traffic accidents were deleted from the statistics.
http://usacrime.or.kr/frame-white.htm ( it is in Korean)
However, your statistics prove that there is an enormous difference between the record of US or Korean authority and the actual/real figures.
Let me show you some glympse of them.
In 1998, Hur, Jooyeon was killed by Hendrics
In August Soon-Nyo Park was killed at America town in Kunsan
Joong-Pil Cho was killed in April 3, 1997
Where are these cases? These were not all the murder cases in that year.
In 1992, the prostitute, Yoon, Kumee was killed by a GI who stuck the peak of an umbrella into her vagina. Where is such record? How was the criminal punished ?
In June 2002, the famous killing of Hyosoon and Misun by US armor tank occurred. Of course this was recorded as a simple traffic accident, by US. However, the most Koreans knew that the accident could be easily avoided only if the operator paid the due vigilance at that time. Two girls at the age of 13, in the middle school walked along the roadside to attend a birthday party, then the US armor tank ran over them both were killed right there. This trigerred enormous anger among the Koreans, but the operator was not punished at all. If they valued the lives of the local civilians as important as the US civilians, such accident would not have happened.
One of the main problem with this is that Korean Prosecutors give up the judicial rights voluntarily and hand over to USFK. Do you know why?
Otherwise, they will be severely condemned by US and US used to pressure Korean government to protect their soldiers. So, even though there was an article that the crimes during the official activities are subject to US jurisdiction and the crimes in the private activities are subject to the local authorities, mostly Korean authorities gave up the right and handed over to US. Disobeying such tacit rule is impossible in reality. Do you know that Korean government cannot move or relocate a division or battalion of Korean army to another place, without the approval of US ? Korean government has no authority to command the Korean army in major operation, without the approval of US. This situation angers Koreans very much as well and cause the Korean prosecutors to hand over the US criminals voluntarily to US in most cases.
Moreover, even though only a small portion of criminal cases were handled by Korean court, most of them had to be released due to the pressure from US government.
In 1967, in my hometown, a man was riding on a bike with his fellow, a USFK truck was passing by, some US soldiers were on the truck and threw a lumber to him and hit his head, he died soon. Later his family reported Korean police and tried to find out the justice, but the Korean police said, "he was unluky, when you pass by US trucks, you must be careful and avoid any collision with them as there is no way to accuse US army personnel" Where is such case in the record?
In 1982, my former boss at a US company in Korea accused a 2 star general of USFK, as he drowned a Korean girl in the lake, but the general was protected by USFK very much, but my boss was very much persistant in accusing him. There general was called to Washington and had to retire, while my boss who was the CID (Criminal Investigation Dept) commander of US army then was called to Washington and had to retire as well.
Where is such case in your record ?
During the period which you show, there were hundreds of murder/killing cases but only a few of them recorded as muders.
Steve Green case in Iraq shows the true aspects of how USF handles the crimes.
In the beginning after the discovery of the crimes, they used to discuss how to conceal the cases, how to cover-up, how to whitewash, then discharge them honorably or dishonorably, that is it!
Then if the crimes are known to the public, then they are to be tried at the civilian court. Often they are unpunished due to the lack of evidence, wrong jurisdiction, personal disorder, mental illness, etc.
In Green's case, the Military court or prosecutors must have known the case in detail, but never accused him or his fellows with murder charge. Now the case is known to the public, then they say " we are now investigating," and the civil court and prosecutors accuse him. If they are not revealed to the public, they succeed in the whitewash.
If you were not naive to present the data to show them as all the criminals by USF, you may have shown them to prove that ROK authorities are exercising the judicial rights over USFK. However, those are the cases where ROK authorities had to exercise it because the cases are known too much to the public as the Steve Green cases. Those are a very small fraction of the real number of cases.
We must face the judgment by God who knows all the crimes of ours. We should view the world from the view how God sees and remembers the world and its history. Some people and some countries may have succeeded in cheating the people, but God will find their crimes.
