I have been busy with work and haven’t been following Korea related news this week, so I’m a bit late on commenting on this story of a US soldier that allegedly raped a 67 year old Korean woman:

South Korean police on Sunday investigated a U.S. soldier over raping and beating an elderly Korean woman. The police requested an arrest warrant for the 8th Army soldier identified only by the initial G. According to the police, he beat the 67-year-old woman’s face and raped her in a residential area in Mapo of western Seoul last morning.

First of all, if true which in some form it probably is though I doubt he could have raped the woman three times in forty minutes as claimed; no one in USFK is going to feel any sympathy for this guy and he will be punished accordingly just like every other time soldiers have committed crimes against Koreans.

However, after reading the comments at the Marmot’s Hole and Lost Nomad on this story I still find it amazing the misinformation out there about GI crimes. Some of the comments claim GIs commit an inordinate amount of crime in Korea which is not true. Let me break down just the rape statistics for everyone. I did some research on trying to identify the latest rapes of Korean nationals by anyone in USFK. The most recent rape case I could find was this case of a Uijongbu based military policeman who was drunk and broke into a woman’s house and attempted to rape her last year:

South Korean police said Nelson tried to rape one South Korean woman and robbed another in Dongducheon. Prosecutors did not specify whether they would pursue the robbery charges. Police have accused Nelson of breaking into an unlocked apartment at about 2 a.m. on Oct. 22, where a 21-year-old woman, identified only as Kim, was sleeping alone.

 The next case is this 2004 gay rape case in Uijongbu:

A U.S. soldier has been arrested on charges of making unwanted homosexual advances on a Korean male. Police in Uijongbu, Gyeonggi province, arrested a corporal identified only as Robert, 27, from Oklahoma, who belongs to the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division. The U.S. soldier allegedly tried to have forced sex with a Korean man identified only by his last name, Seo. According to the police, the two met by chance at a playground near a U.S. army base, had a drink together at a nearby bar and then went to the corporal’s house. When Mr. Seo refused Robert’s sexual advances, he was injured by the U.S. soldier, who turned on him and beat him with a stick. The American soldier has been transferred to the custody of U.S. military police pending further investigation.

This case is more an assault than a rape but these were the last two rape cases against Korean nationals I could find in the last three years. If anyone knows any other rape cases involving soldiers and Korean nationals please let me know and I’ll update these numbers, but these cases come out to an average of one rape case a year involving someone from USFK. USFK is composed of approximately 40,000 soldiers, family members, and civilian personnel. If you divide the one rape a year average by the number of USFK personnel you end up with a per capita rape percentage of .000025%.Â

Now let’s look at Korean rape numbers. According to the Korean National Police Agency statistics, in the last three years there has been an average of 6,536 rape cases per year in Korea. If you divide this number by the Korean population of 48 million you come out to a per capita percentage of 1.361%, which is much higher than the USFK number.

More outrageous comments I read were that GIs are rarely charged in Korean courts. This excellent research compiled by USinKorea clearly shows that US soldiers have been tried in Korean courts since the 1960′s with some even receiving the death penalty. Any time a GI is not tried in a Korean court for a crime committed off duty is because the Korean courts gave up jurisdiction on the case. In fact often the Korean police turn over soldiers who commit petty crimes to the military police because they don’t want to deal with the paper work involved with SOFA related cases. So it is easier just to hand the soldier over to the MPs to deal with. Than the accusations that USFK does not punish people who misbehave off post is also ridiculous. For example I had an E5 sergeant in my unit was caught by the Korean police urinating on a building. The Korean police arrested him and turned him over to the MPs because like I mentioned before they probably didn’t want to deal with the paper work involved in SOFA cases. Anyway this NCO received a military punishment Article 15 for urinating on the building by the command. Ask yourself, would a Korean national receive punishment for urinating on a building? This is just one example of punishment of many I have seen given to soldiers by the command for incidents that Korean nationals would probably not be punished for.

Soldiers that commit crimes are usually punished harsher under the US military system than the Korean courts. In fact the soldier involved in this recent rape case will be better off being tried in the Korean court system than by the US military. If he receives a punishment similar to what a Korean taxi driver received for raping a US soldier he should come out of this in fairly good shape considering the nature of his crime:

The Seoul High Court yesterday overturned the conviction by a lower court of a 49-year old taxi driver who had been charged with the rape of a 19-year old U.S. female soldier.
The man had received a 10-month prison term in the original trial after being convicted of luring the newly-arrived servicewoman from Incheon International Airport to a hotel near there where the woman said he raped her.

The woman reported the incident to U.S. military authorities, who asked for assistance from Korean prosecutors. The appeals court ruled that the woman had shown no evidence of having refused the man’s advances, and that he used “not enough violence to constitute rape.”

Fortunately a higher court later over turned this ridiculous ruling and gave the guy a sentence of two and half years in prison. But still two and half years for a predator that raped a 19 year old soldier? Isn’t this rape case just as disgusting as the rape of a 67 year old woman? At least this rape had some one arrested for it unlike when a US Army officer was raped by a Korean man in Taegu. How about this rape of an English teacher in Seoul that is particularly unsettling. Here is my personal favorite of a Korean man whose only punishment for attempting to rape a woman in his car was to lose his license. So if the soldier in this recent rape case receives punishment in line with Korean punishment for similar cases than he is set to receive little if any jail time and he didn’t use a car to rape anyone so he will be able to keep his license.

Other commenters were saying USFK leadership is out of touch with what is going on in the ville and don’t check on soldiers. This is also an absurd claim because I have pulled more Courtesy Patrols (CP) than I care to remember in 2ID which all my unit’s leadership was included on the CP roster. Our battalion commander was even on the CP roster. Go to the villes and you will see plenty of leadership pulling CP duty. The 2ID Command Sergeant Major was infamous for requiring all the division’s first sergeants to pull CP after major field exercises. There was times I was pulling CP where there was more CPs than there was soldiers out in the ville. The ultimate example of leadership in the ville I ever saw was when then 2ID commander General Honore’, of Hurricane Katrina fame, would walk through the villes with his ROK Army body guards. It is quite humorous to see the reactions of soldiers inside of a club watching a strip show when the division commander walks in with the toughest looking Korean entourage you have ever seen. If anything there is an overkill of leadership in the villes which in turn causes soldiers to want to get away from the ville. How many soldiers want to blow off steam in the ville with their battalion commander standing in the club watching them?

The other comments that kind of struck a nerve with me is that the military is full of “white trash” and “gangbangers” and that they should not be allowed to serve. Yes the military has plenty of “white trash” and “gangbangers” just like the rest of American society, but as long as the people meet the enlistment requirements they should be allowed to serve. Here are the general enlistment requirements:

• U.S. citizen or permanent resident alien
  • 17-41 years old
  • Healthy and in good physical condition
  • In good moral standing
  • High School or Equivalent Education

Some positions may have additional qualifications

I’m of the opinion if you want to serve your country you should be given every opportunity to reasonably do so. If the US military discriminated against people who look like a “gangbanger” than I would have been deprived of serving with the best first sergeant I have ever worked with. He was a former gang member from East LA who joined the US military in order to get away from the gang life. He still has the gang tattoos on his body that are testament to his former life, but the military was the one place that gave him a chance to turn his life around which he did. Likewise I have served with plenty of people that could be defined as “white trash” who also turned out to be quality soldiers. Contrary to urban legend judges don’t give criminals the option of joining the military or going to jail. All these people voluntarily want to join the military. The vast majority of these people the military has been able to successfully integrate and those that don’t eventually are either discharged or do not reenlist.

I’m all for holding the military to a higher standard then the general population and the facts clearly show that the US military is behaving at a much higher standard then the general population. However, the US military cannot be expected to meet a standard of zero incidents. Once an American or a Korean city of 40,000 people meets a standard of no crime than I will change my opinion; until that time unless we fill USFK with nothing but Jehovahs Witnesses and Mormons crime will continue to happen. The important thing is to continue to keep the crime rate at a level much lower than the surrounding population and severely punish those who do break the law. This USFK has consistently done much to the detriment of soldier quality of life in Korea where USFK personnel have to live with restrictions that are unheard of anywhere else, outside of Iraq where this many US soldiers are stationed.

So if the anti-US groups want to pick up this recent rape as their latest anti-US rallying cry, I say bring it on because the issue of sexual assaults in Korea has long been swept under the rug. However, I doubt this issue will turn into a big anti-US issue just because of Korea’s poor track record of prosecuting sexual assaults involving their own citizens. Than again Korea’s poor track record of traffic fatalities didn’t stop the 2002 anti-US hatefest from materializing after the armored vehicle accident, so anything is possible.