Lying on the SOFA

This is another story that I’ve meant to discuss in more detail, but simply could not because of time constraints:

U.S. troops stationed in Korea were reportedly involved in 780 criminal acts, three of them homicides, between 2000 and August 2005, yet not a single one of them has been brought to book here, Seoul Metropolitan Police data show. Statistics announced on Monday by Democratic Labor Party lawmaker Lee Young-soon
during an audit of the police show U.S. Forces Korea personnel implicated in three murders, 19 robberies, 149 thefts and other illegal activities, but none were in police custody.

First, the quick version. Ms. Lee’s “statistics” are lies, and I speak from first-hand knowledge. Starting in 1999, I was a JAG Defense Counsel in Korea, and between June 2001 and June 2002, I was the Army’s Senior Defense Counsel in Seoul. I personally represented clients who had been detained, prosecuted, and sentenced under the Korean judicial system. I have a particular case at the very front of my mind, a serious case in which my client was indicted in July of 2000 and subsequently convicted and sentenced, but will not risk my law license by disclosing my client’s confidences. I’m also reasonably certain that the other attorneys I worked with represented clients who had been prosecuted in the Korean system. This story is false, and I’d swear to this under oath without hesitation. I probably even have a copy of at least one Korean conviction somewhere in my basement.

Confirmation? You could do a FOIA request to the Army on its Trial Observer reports, asking to redact the names so that you wouldn’t get tangled up in the Privacy Act. That could take months, unfortunately. Maybe I can get my friend the former Trial Observer to add some off-the-record comments. Or, someone could actually check the records Ms. Lee claims to have checked. Like, say, the person who wrote this story . . . .

A note on those homicides–none were my cases, and what I’m revealing here is mostly a matter of public record. I’m aware of three murders that took place in Seoul between 1998 and 2002. One was a U.S. Navy sailor who killed his Korean wife and their son. A long and agonizing court-martial trial followed, which ended in the sailor getting a life term. Since it took place just a few rooms from my office, I observed some of the motion hearings. The other is the infamous McCarthy case, where a young soldier broke the windpipe of a prostitute on Hooker Hill in Itaewon, causing her death several hours later. I won’t tell you the whole story of the ajjashi who told McCarthy to run away, the ajjumma who let this poor woman choke to death over the next several hours, the hospital that was non-operational because of a strike that night, or exactly who wasn’t looking when McCarthy briefly escaped custody. The real point is that the Korean system sentenced McCarthy to an outrageously light term of eight years–an outrage even to me, a defense attorney at the time. The other Seoul “American” homicide of which I’m aware is the Jamie Penich murder, which remains unsolved, in part because the CID agents at the scene report told me that the Korean police completely screwed up the crime scene (had a soldier been charged, I was told by my superiors that the assigned defense attorney would have been your correspondent).

Other nuances that the Chosun Ilbo leaves out:

• The fact that the Korean system does not prosecute a soldier doesn’t mean that the soldier got away with the crime. It could mean there was no evidence, or that the U.S. military prosecuted the soldier. As suggested above, the U.S. military system generally imposes much harsher punishments than the Korean system.
• Nor does it mean that the Korean system was deprived jurisdiction. As any JAG in Korea can tell you, the Korean authories are fond of waiving it.
• The fact that an offense occurred in Korea does not mean the Korean system had jurisdiction in the first place. For example, the US has primary jurisdiction over offenses against other SOFA personnel and on-post offenses. It has exclusive jurisdiction over strictly military offenses.

Another Lee lie:

“Police do not even start questioning suspects before they are officially handed over to the U.S. because they claim there are no interpreters, while U.S. representatives are only concerned with taking custody of the suspect rather than to cooperating with the investigation,” Lee said.

This is bullshit. For every client of mine ultimately prosecuted in the Korean system, five went through Korean interrogations without being charged. Commanders routinely paraded soldiers past my office (I couldn’t do a thing for them) before having the platoon sergeants frog-march them to the local Korean police stations for questioning, where Korean-English translators were waiting. Korean cops–I realize that I’m about to say something really astonishing here–often speak excellent English. In fact, the Seoul Metropolitan Police has a special International Division.

Here’s another fact I don’t much mind revealing: the Seoul cops love to use English-speaking Pakistanis as undercover informants to try to do dope buys. Then they use them to do interrogations. One who interrogated a client of mine was a ferocious anti-American who loved to get aggressive with soldiers once they were safely handcuffed, a fact that probably doesn’t surprise anyone since we learned the name Daniel Pearl. And that right to have a SOFA observer present? The Korean police see that as subject to interpretation, meaning soldiers are sometimes questioned for hours before one arrives.

I just grow weary of repeating this. Hate-peddlers lie and newspapers accept it uncritically–in this case, apparently without even bothering to get a comment from the USFK. Deliberate lies walk hand-in-hand with journalistic laziness and malpractice. The demand this feeds is more trials of U.S. soldiers in courts where they have even less chance than ordinary Koreans of receiving fair trials–something else I can verify based on having elicited or observed sworn testimony from neutral observers, including (in 1998) the Inspector General of the Eighth U.S. Army. Kudos to him for having the courage to speak the truth under oath. He testified that some of the Korean judges were actually asleep in one trial. Do Koreans really think that American parents will tolerate this?

If this is the kind of ooze that a supposedly “conservative” paper prints as fact, I question the popular support on which our soldiers could count in the event of war.

Better not to have them there at all.