I suspected that something was up with this case when it took so long to file charges and now I know why:

A South Korean policewoman told court officials Tuesday that she remembers being attacked by one American soldier, but she doesn’t know whether the second soldier on trial for attempted rape was in the room during the incident.

Pfc. Mark Feldmann has testified he was outside trying to catch a taxi when his friend, Sgt. Anthony Q. Basel, tried to rape the off-duty policewoman in April.

Here is what I also found interesting in the article:

Restaurant owner Cho Sung-Hwan, who found Basel trying to rape the woman, said he knows two men were in the bathroom but he couldn’t remember where the second man was standing because he was stunned and embarrassed by the incident.

Cho said he heard the woman’s screams from his first-floor restaurant and he tried to open the locked bathroom door, which was normally unlocked. He ran down five or six stairs to his restaurant, grabbed the key, then ran back to the restroom and unlocked the door. He saw Basel on top of the woman, then ran back and asked one of his customers for help.

As they went back to the bathroom, Cho said, two foreign men passed them on the stairway.

He called police and reported that two men had left. The next day, Cho told investigators that there was one man in the bathroom. A day or two later, he told them he saw a second man in the bathroom.

The police must have knew they had a weak case against Feldmann and needed the extra time before arresting the two soldiers in order to gather evidence against him and conveniently enough the restaurant owner changes his story and says there was two GIs in the restroom.  It is times like this where it is useful to recall the words of Korea based American lawyer Brendon Carr:

Beyond language difficulties is the prospect that South Koreans who give testimony might feel it culturally acceptable to lie, especially if it will increase their chances of winning bigger damages, Carr said.

"This culture," Carr said, "does not place the same value on truth or view the truth through the same prism that Americans do. There is very little social disapproval of making false official statements in order to achieve an objective for your friend or relative or for a tribemate."

"Once it breaks down to those Americans" versus us Koreans, many, many Koreans will perceive it as their duty to make sure that the Korean is the winner of the dispute. So there a lot of lying when witnesses come forward, Carr said.

This SGT Basel is a real dirt bag and will hopefully serve a long time in a Korean prison and PFC Feldmann is probably no saint himself, but I think he definitely has a legitimate case that he was not in the restroom.  It really doesn’t matter because he will be convicted of something because GIs always get convicted.  Korean courts aren’t about determining the truth and rendering justice, they are about validating perceptions and appeasing public sentiment.  The public sentiment says that Feldman is a GI bastard that needs to go to jail, thus he doesn’t stand a chance.  Just ask PFC Acosta.

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