Just when you thought you had seen it all in regards to taxi cab related incidents you find out you in fact haven’t. From the Stars and Stripes:
A nude U.S. soldier was struck and killed by an off-base taxi Saturday night, officials said Monday.
U.S. and South Korean officials are investigating the incident in which Spc. Vang B. Her, a 22-year-old fire control repairman with Company B, 302nd Brigade Support Battalion, was killed around 10:30 p.m. near Mount Soyo, about 3 miles north of Camp Casey.
The 46-year-old taxi driver is being held in South Korean police custody because he waited about 30 minutes before reporting the incident, Yangju police said Monday.
Police said the driver reported that a naked soldier dashed in front of his taxi and that he was unable to stop before hitting him.
Witnesses, however, gave conflicting reports that Her was lying in the roadway when hit, according to police.
This is really weird because the area around Mt. Soyo has no clubs or drinking establishments that would attract a GI. The only thing around Mt. Soyo are a few hotels and stores for tourists going to visit the mountain. Possibly he was riding on the subway and fell asleep and woke up at the last stop which is the Soyo Mountain station. He would need to cross the street from the station to get on the sidewalk that would lead south back to Camp Casey.
The only way I see the cab driver getting in trouble is if he was speeding which on that portion of Highway 3. Cab drivers and other vehicles are notorious for speeding and running red lights in that part of town because of the light traffic at night due to it not being a night life area. So you may have a case (if he was drinking) of a drunk soldier walking across the street being hit by a speeding taxi cab running a red light. How the heck he got naked though is anyone guess. Whatever happened it is definitely very weird and hopefully the toxicology results and a full investigation will uncover what happened.
In response to this USFK Commander General B.B. Bell issued this Bells Sends message in regards to this accident. General Bell emphasizes the battle buddy policy and the dangers of over alcohol consumption. However, I know the General means well, but do you have to include in the message reminders to look both ways and check for traffic before crossing the road to a bunch of grown adults? Anyway, no matter what happened the loss of life of a soldier is always tragic and I wish this deceased soldier’s family all the best.
You can read more over at Lost Nomad.
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6:33 pm on May 8th, 2007 1
[...] when you thought the never-ending saga between USFK and taxis couldn’t get any weirder [GI Korea]… Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can [...]
6:36 pm on May 8th, 2007 2
I would agree the General means well but really, before using this issue as an excuse to go off on an anti-alcohol tirade, before he has seen the toxicology results smacks of anti-alcolohol agenda driven opportunism. Good grief. With all the good advice offered in his Bell Sends message, why did he not extol the virtues of service members remaining clothed in public?
As far as the taxi driver… Perhaps his defenders will conjure (or otherwise invoke the memory of) the ghost of the little girls as justification for running down an American in the middle of a mostly deserted (that time of night) stretch of road. Perhaps his hands were actually guided by these tragic spirits. Where is the Korean outrage? Where is the SBS campaign against dangerous (and often dishonest) taxi drivers?
10:45 pm on May 8th, 2007 3
And after the schoolgirl defense is introduced, maybe USFK will court martial the dead soldier for putting the cab driver through all this stress he’s going through.
2:44 am on May 9th, 2007 4
Oh please. That taxi driver is facing jail time, at least, a minimum fine. Equating a drunk GI being stupid enough to take off all his clothes in middle of nowhere in middle of the night, with two school girls who were going home being flattened like pancakes by tanks is a little stretch.
7:00 am on May 9th, 2007 5
Tom,
It hasn’t been proven he was drunk or took his clothes off. That is why I’m saying wait for the toxicology results and a investigation.
If it was an accident by the cab driver it would be just as equally accidental as what happened in 2002. A tank driver couldn’t see the two girls then and a cab driver couldn’t see this soldier crossing the road now. That is the similarity people are pointing out.
8:59 am on May 9th, 2007 6
Tom, you are an ass. An accident is an accident. Neither tha cab driver nor the tank driver saw or attempted to kill anyone and that you cannot see that makes you either a moron or as I suspect a class A Jack-Ass.
9:48 am on May 9th, 2007 7
The victim’s name sounds H’Mong. If so, he would definitely not have been taken for an “American” while nude. The investigation should be interesting.
1:01 pm on May 9th, 2007 8
“A tank driver couldn’t see the two girls then and a cab driver couldn’t see this soldier crossing the road now. That is the similarity people are pointing o”
The difference is this. And it’s a big one which you ignore.
The Korean taxi driver is arrested and facing charges for causing the accident of a schmuck who got drunk and who wandered off to nowhere.
Koreans protested in 02 not because GI’s were involved in an accident (which is a lie that’s constantly spread thru deliberate misinformation), but because there was an impression by the public that Koreans weren’t getting justice in their own damn country.
3:35 pm on May 9th, 2007 9
So Tom, how many public demonstrations were there in 2002 by Koreans irate over the deaths of minors killed in traffic accidents by non-GIs? Surely the deaths of the 350 minors run down or otherwise killed by vehicles that year sparked similar demonstrations against Korean drivers. The misinformation agency must be hiding that from us. And of course the public’s impression that Koreans were getting justice in their “own damn country” was a reasonable belief based upon an unbiased assessment of the SOFA, and was not influenced in any way by wild stories spread over the internet by “concerned netizens. My personal favourite was the laughing GI drivers, called to account by a KATUSA sickened by their bragging about the incident, who, of course, was immediately turned over to the Korean military, who “disppeared” him. No way that could have been deliberately planted misinformation, right?
5:06 pm on May 9th, 2007 10
Just to continue with lirelou’s point, the Korean media was the biggest propagators of misinformation. The media would not report USFK apologies, candlelight vigil, or the fact the girls’ families had accepted the apologies and compensation money until the anti-US groups got a hold of them.
Additionally the Korean media than went on and not only spread the KATUSA story but also had the ROK Army tank driver showing everyone how the US soldiers must have intentionally ran over the girls and then backed up over them again with the aid of someone outside the tank directing them.
This is just some of the misinformation surrounding the 2002 incident you can read more here:
http://www.usinkorea.org/1st/TRAGEDY/index.html
In regards to trying the soldiers in Korean courts the SOFA Agreement means on duty incidents are handled by the US military. People who protest this, some how forget that the ROK Army handles both on duty and off duty incidents with their soldiers in Korea.
The hypocrisy is even greater when you consider that the ROK Army has identical SOFA Agreements for their soldiers stationed abroad. Take for example the killing of Peshmerga soldier in Iraq by a Korean soldier or the killing of another Iraqi when a Korean military vehicle struck him. None of these soldiers were tried in Iraqi courts and all were handled by the ROK Army.
In regards to the incident with the GI in question the reason the taxi driver is facing charges is because he waited 30 minutes to report what happened to the police. What was going on during those 30 minutes?
9:09 pm on May 9th, 2007 11
I’m going to have to go up there and straighten shit out.
10:21 pm on May 9th, 2007 12
11:40 pm on May 9th, 2007 13
Word on the street is that the dead soldier in question had semen deposits in his anal cavity. Add another “twist” if you like. I hope this is not true. This story obviously has a lot more to it. The Generals’ ill-informed moral grandstanding is however tasteless in the extreme. Using this soldiers death, whatever the circumstances, to further his political aims and rampage against a legal substance is inexcusable opportunism.
Who is to say that had a “battle buddy†been present that there might have been two deaths rather than one? Who is to say that this soldier did not latch on to an undesirable character for a “battle buddy†just so he could escape post? There’s more to be discovered in this case…
6:37 am on May 10th, 2007 14
That is why I have been saying lets wait for toxicology results and a full investigation because many things like I have pointed out about this incident do not make sense. I’m fairly certain there is more to the story.
9:04 am on May 10th, 2007 15
Still an Ass Tom, The soldiers were punished under the SOFA, and the chain of command repeatedly appologized for the incident. The US-Korea SOFA is much less stringent than say the Korea-any country SOFA by the way. For accidents, Korea does not get jursidiction and to be fair they don’t want it, the US does a very good job of punishing wrong doers. The Koreans wanted a murder trial and in my opinion that is the best reason we ever had to have the SOFA, protecting US soldiers from wrongful prosecution.
And by the way, the ROK military runs over 20-30 children every year, I have never seen a prosecution in the past 5 years.
10:51 am on May 10th, 2007 16
I had a conversation with a friend, and for what he told me this GI was hicking in Soyo Mountain with his two buddys, and they wanted to higher but he did not, so he decided to go home. The accident happened and the taxi driver stripped him naked so that he could not be identified. I thought that alcohol was involved, and I judged him for that but if what my friend told me is true, we shoul not be judging that soldier or the taxi driver until further information. Anyways I just wanted to share this with you. PLS dont judge me because I dont know what happened… Have a nice day.
2:23 pm on May 10th, 2007 17
When the fact surrounding this come to light, you people will regret what you have said here. I am the partner of the victim, and we were engaged in consensual sex on a quiet section of road when the taxi drove up at speed out of nowhere, fortunately I was the one giving the sword at the time and managed to spot the cars headlights and spring back onto the curb, but Vang got clipped.
Please don’t write about that which you do not know, and show a little sympathy for Vang’s family
6:31 pm on May 10th, 2007 18
Anonymous, you can go by your usual tag “Tom”, no shame in that, you’re an ass, don’t hide from it.
6:50 pm on May 10th, 2007 19
Anonymous is not Tom. I just checked the IP addresses of each and they don’t match. Anonymous is posting from the Netherlands and is not even in Korea. Just another troll.
10:18 pm on May 10th, 2007 20
Damn, GI, I thought I had him. However, in light of previous behavior I still stand by my previous comment, Tom is a complete ass, or asshat, assclown etc…the important word being ass.
10:50 pm on May 10th, 2007 21
Gi, ol Tom might be slicker than you give him credit for. There are many anonymizer/proxy browsers ran out of the netherlands.
11:12 pm on May 10th, 2007 22
The girls were not walking home - they were walking to a friend’s birthday party with their fingers in their ears and heads down after 2 or 3 tanks had already passed them. They were walking right on the whiteline at the side of the road.
It is my understanding (from news reports and I think from K-blog house lawyer Carr) that just about all Koreans involved in an accident are “arrested” - but not jailed - and once they come to agreement on compensation with the victim or victim’s family, that is that, unless some real criminal negligance is involved that requires a trial for higher charges.
The idea that Korean society went batshit because they thought justice was not going to be done is a mammoth load of crap.
North Korean gun boats shot up several South Korean military gun boats and killed and wounded over a dozen ROK sailors, and these same justice-seeking South Koreans didn’t say boo.
They got angry — they got angry at their own government intel for not having predicted the event would happen and putting SK boats out of harm’s way — when those boats were not only south of the sea’s DMZ but a couple of kms further south just below an artificial demarcation line South Korea’s government set up in order to prevent clashes like this.
South Korea’s hosting of the World Cup and how well the South Korea’s good showing in it has more to do with the level of hate thrown into the streets over the tank accident than anything to do with justice.
11:16 pm on May 10th, 2007 23
Another non-shout out for justice I fondly remember is when the North Korean reporter at (I beleive it was) the Pusan-hosted university games rushed out of the NK press box to attack a small group of South Koreans who were holding and anti-Kim Jong Il rally.
Who do you thing South Korean society rose to condemn for such a blatant public assault and demand justice from?
Why, the South Koreans who illegally burned North Korea’s flag and who should have been hushed up and taken from the scene from the start by the South Korean police. It was their fault this assault took place, don’t ya know….
5:25 pm on May 11th, 2007 24
For the record, the vehicle involved in the 13 Jun 02 accident was an AVLM, which is essentially a tank chassis modified to carry a self-lunching bridge (in this case, further modified for mine clearing). The AVLM was in a convoy of 5 vehicles travelling down the road while being passed by a convoy of Bradley armored vehicles on the other side of the road coming from the opposite direction. It was not a tank, which in a convoy has better conditions of visibility than an AVLM.
Not that it would matter to the victims, but it does put the traffic conditions of the moment in sharper relief.
7:31 pm on May 11th, 2007 25
lirelou,
Most people refer to it as the “2002 Tank Accident” or the “2002 Armored Vehicle Accident” simply because it is easier than saying an explaining what an AVLM is, especially to a civilian.
6:30 am on June 9th, 2007 26
this is a fake story…vang died because someone had killed him..and it wasn’t because of the taxi driver…they fraud the taxi driver to think he killed vang but really vang’s own friends killed him!!!!who would be stupid enough to run in the middle of the street….RIP VANG HER…YOU WILL BE MISS!!
9:19 am on June 9th, 2007 27
A month later and still no word on the out come of any investigation or toxicology results which leads me to believe that there is definitely more to this story.
1:15 am on June 18th, 2007 28
It seems Spc. Vang Her had a high blood alcohol level. It also seems General Bell wants this (and the Colonel Edwards investigation) to go FAR away as quietly as possible…
…making me wonder if it will ever be heard from again if nobody asks.
These two bits of info now come from a couple of sources… so I pass them on. I believe them enough to repeat but have no actual confirmation. Take it for what it’s worth.
Very, very shady stuff, though.
J!
6:37 pm on June 18th, 2007 29
OK…I’ll bite. Who and what is the COL Edwards investigation?
8:38 pm on June 18th, 2007 30
Rommel,
Look here:
http://www.lostnomad.org/2007/04/14/that-was-fast/#comments
There is a LOT of rumor and speculation going on right now… mostly because there are so many dirty, long-term players involved in trying to get their hands on as much gub’ment money as possible that the focus of this investigation could be any number of people.
I am starting to get a good picture of what is going on… but not sure enough on a number of points to run my mouth yet.
Even more interesting, I am getting a better idea of how the whole system works… and, in typical USFK style, certain connected people seem to be going intentionally unnoticed despite their close proximity to repeated scandals.
Of course, if anybody wants to feed me little pieces of the larger puzzle, I’m always at chickenheadla@yahoo.com
J!
8:00 am on June 20th, 2007 31
6:18 am on September 18th, 2007 32
[...] Stripes are not reporting on developments in some of the USFK corruption cases or the killing of SPC Vang by a Korean taxi driver. I would like to know more as well, but just because the Stars & Stripes hasn’t [...]
11:47 pm on December 8th, 2007 33
i think that U.S. Forces should leave Korea as a whole, we have other more important REAL WORLD missions going on else where. I mean dam we are only here to help them defend against Communism and we are treated like infidels living among them. I think the SOFA agreement just says “U.S. GIs are always wrong no matter what.” and I’m sorry, i dont think that is ok. WE are the reason the WON is worth more than the dollar, so lets leave and change that, no more rip off taxi cab drivers, and no more fake merchandise.
12:12 pm on December 9th, 2007 34
By the way…
Word has it that Colonel Edwards got an Article 15 and a $10,000 fine… all very hush, hush and swept quickly under the rug. All the usual suspects went back to business as usual in ripping off the American taxpayer.
Stars & Stripes has yet to do a follow-up on Spc. Vang Her… in collusion with USFK which wants this to be deathly quiet.
WTF,
In exchange for a few hurt feelings of low-ranking GIs, an American military presence helps to contain a China preparing to project its power and increase its sphere of influence… a pretty good deal, really.
2:57 pm on January 2nd, 2008 35
12:05 pm on February 24th, 2008 36
Ok I have read what everyone has had to say about spc her and some of you are complete assholes and have no respect vang was a friend of mine and I was in the same company as him none of you know what ur talking about and never should have opened ur mouths in the first place you guys don’t know all the details or the toxicology findings like I do please in the respect of all his family and friends stop assuming and saying things u don’t even know about because it has been a hard couple of months since he has passed and even harder on his family please have respect thank you for those of you who do…. r.I.p her we miss you
2:36 pm on February 24th, 2008 37
army gal,
Thanks for commenting.
Here is the situation.
A naked GI was in the middle of the road where he was hit by a taxi. This is a rather silly way to be found dead.
In an unusual incident such as this, rumor and speculation naturally occur. Considering the lack of publicly-released information in such a high-profile incident, most scenarios blame Spc Her for his own stupidity.
Not just for months, but for almost a YEAR, USFK and Stars & Stripes have insured a complete information blackout on this which further shades Spc Her as being responsible for his own foolish death.
For their own reasons, this is how USFK has chosen Spc Her to be publicly remembered.
If you wish to do a real service to the memory of Spc Her, explain what happened to him. Tell everyone what USFK and Stars & Stripes will not. Place the blame for his death where it belongs.
If you fail to do this, he will always be remembered as that stupid, drunk GI who took off his clothes and played in traffic while disgracing your company, the Army, the United States and the Hmong people.
3:07 pm on May 12th, 2008 38
Well…
A year has passed and the death of Spc. Vang Her has been successfully swept under the rug.
A naked, and dead, GI is found on a road in the middle of nowhere and nobody is even a little bit curious about what happened?
Amazing, folks.
Considering the current scandal, gossip and manufactured drama-obsessed American public, it is a bit surprising that nobody is looking for the dramatic conclusion here.
(This whole thing reflects the larger American mindset, though… the government/corporate/media conspiracy of shared values to keep the sheep from asking too many questions while force feeding them entertainment and channeling their “outrage” in ways that result in supporting the power structure and spending more money. But… I digress.)
So, who is to blame?
USFK “leadership”? Sure. They are secretive and scandal-avoidance-obsessed… for reasons that don’t benefit America, its military or you (except by coincidence). And when they are allowed to get by with this kind of cover-up, it gives them confidence to cover up even more… including things that are specifically targeted against you.
The Public? Sure. Instead of focusing on the latest TV and the availability of pr0n, some attention should be given to insure there would be questions and a public resolution if you were found dead. This attention insures the next step is never taken… for you to be MADE dead if you become inconvenient to those running the show.
The Media? Sure. With no follow-up, Stars & Stripes allowed this story to die… perhaps in difference to USFK’s wishes? That will always be a faith-in-media-destroying suspicion.
Spc. Her’s family should be given the opportunity to make a public statement. If they are unhappy with USFK’s treatment of Spc. Her, USFK should be asked direct questions with the expectation of direct answers… and even “no comment” should be duly reported.
If Spc. Her’s family feels the situation has been resolved to their satisfaction yet does not wish to speak of the details, this, too, should be respectfully reported… balancing the family’s privacy with public closure which reinforces trust in USFK leadership and the media.
So… is this going anywere? Or will I be posting a lone follow-up here next year around this time?
Interestingly, it seems USFK celebrated the anniversary of Spc. Her’s odd death with ANOTHER odd death. The body of Lea Gray, the Filipina wife of a USFK officer, was found in the forest after being missing for a month… icky. Let’s see if this gets any coverage.
6:30 pm on May 12th, 2008 39
My understanind was that it was ruled a suicide.
I say we just move along. There is really nothing to report.
9:50 am on May 13th, 2008 40
I have not seen any reports it was ruled a suicide and jumping naked in front of a taxi cab is not how people normally commit suicide in the first place. This incident is still very strange with many unanswered questions around it.
7:53 pm on May 13th, 2008 41
Ah, yes…
Suicide. Nothing to report. Move along. These aren’t the droids we’re looking for.
Your Jedi mind tricks don’t work on me, Obi TheFirstOne Kanobi.
Naw, GI… I think TheFirstOne was making a joke…
…or he is the worst and most transparent USFK mole ever.
7:44 am on May 14th, 2008 42
sounds like something my brother would do.
oh dear, i was too late. DARN! %^&*!…
12:37 pm on May 17th, 2008 43
chue her,
Uh-huh… and wasn’t a scantily-dressed Ben Her hit by a chariot?
1:13 pm on June 8th, 2008 44
8:13 am on July 11th, 2008 45
9:28 am on July 11th, 2008 46