UPDATE: ZenKimchi has more K-blog reaction to the verdict and you can read Marmot’s reaction in the comments section, but both are critical that he got off because he was drunk. Not only was he drunk but there was plenty of other mitigating circumstances as well, but this is a separate issue from these two GIs receiving equal treatment in Korean courts.
We all know Korean courts give jacked up sentences for sex crimes, but I’m thinking about this case setting a precedence so GIs don’t get screwed over in Korean courts like we have seen repeatedly in the past. So that is why I find the outrage that GIs received treatment in Korean courts similar to what a Korean would receive, from the anti-US groups and netizens quite ironic.
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I am quite amazed by this, but the two GIs involved in the policewoman rape case have been released:
The Seoul High Court on Monday freed two U.S. soldiers who were serving prison terms after being convicted of attempting to rape an off-duty South Korean policewoman last April.
Sgt. Anthony Basel and Pfc. Mark Feldman, both 61st Maintenance Company, were convicted July 27 of attempting to rape the woman in a public restroom in the Gangnam district of Seoul after a night of heavy drinking.
Basel, who admitted attempting to rape the woman, was sentenced to 3½ years and Feldman, who maintained his innocence, was sentenced to 3 years in prison.
On Monday, the court overturned Feldman’s conviction, citing a lack of evidence and changing witness testimony during the investigation.
“At the time of the incident, right before the incident there was misconduct and [Feldman was seen] running away with defendant Basel,†head judge Cho Hee-dae said through an interpreter. “This might create the suspicion that he is guilty. However, there is no concrete evidence.â€
Cho reduced Basel’s sentence to 18 months, minus the 113 days he had served, but suspended the sentence for two years.
Cho said he reduced and suspended Basel’s sentence because it was a “failed attempt†at rape; Basel was highly intoxicated at the time of the attack; he’d suffered trauma during a deployment to Iraq; and the 10 million won (about $10,905) settlement paid the woman after the first trial. [Stars & Stripes]
This is an amazing announcement and the first time I can personally remember a GI being found not guilty in a major case like this. After all the dubious convictions of GIs in the past maybe the Korean legal system is actually starting to mature.
Over at the Marmot’s Hole Robert has translated Korean reactions to the announcement and they are of course not pleased:
The Herald Gyeongje, meanwhile, reports that controversy has already started. Women’s groups and left-wing civic groups are “shocked†by the decision, despite it “being clear that the crime was premeditated.†Netizens, meanwhile, are ashamed.
Jeong Yong-jun, the director of the Peace Alliance of JinboCorea, called the decision a “typical political judgment.†He said, “One can only see it as a political decision made in consideration of the United States and negotiations between Korea and the United States. She might have been in plain clothes, but one cannot reduce sentences and acquit [criminals] for the serious crime of premeditatedly attempting to rape a police officer.â€
Netizens, meanwhile, are ashamed… or so says the Herald Gyeongje. Said one, “Many people call our country, ‘Small but Strong Korea,’ but to America, we must seem like nothing.†Another, meanwhile, said it appears nothing has changed since the time two middles school girls were killed after being struck by a US military vehicle in 2002.
Not surprising the netizens bringing up another dubious case like the 2002 armored vehicle accident to justify their rage at another dubious case such as this. How do these netizens explain all the GIs convicted over the years and sentence in Korean court before and after 2002? It still amazes me how Koreans still think GIs get off in Korean courts when this is the first major incident I can remember a soldier being acquitted.
Robert calls the decision to release Basel “outrageous” and commenters seem to agree, but lets look at the facts instead of emotional reactions. I have followed this case very closely from the beginning because it was dubious. I knew the evidence of this case had to be weak because of how long it took to file the charges. Usually charges against GIs in high profile crime cases are filed rather quickly.
PFC Feldman was clearly innocent when he was originally convicted. Feldman claimed he was trying to hail a taxi while SGT Basel went to use the restroom. This alibi is highly likely since the victim did not remember seeing Feldman in the restroom. Also the Korean restaurant owner who heard the woman yell in the bathroom originally wrote on a sworn statement after the incident that he saw only one man in the restroom. Then days later after the police got a hold of him he changed his statement to say he saw Feldman in the restroom. Additionally the Korean prosecutors were linked to trying to coerce Basel into writing a statement saying that Feldman was in the restroom for a lighter sentence.
The evidence against Feldmann was so dubious that when he was convicted the chief judge encouraged Feldmann to appeal the sentence which is what he did. Finally, on appeal Feldmann was found not guilty and when look at the evidence he should have never had any charges brought against him in the first place.
Now let’s look at Basel’s case. The restroom was a unisex restroom and Basel had 20 beers that day and was highly intoxicated. He goes into the restroom and walks in on the woman there. Basel says he only remembers going into the restroom and after some confrontation with the woman pushing her on the ground while his pants were down. Remember she was not raped by Basel and he was in a restroom he had every right to go into since it was unisex. He could argue his pants were down because he taking a piss before the confrontation for all we know. From the media reports we don’t know if he attempted to take clothes off of her. It would be hard to rape somebody if you don’t take their clothes off.
The only thing we know is that he was highly intoxicated, went to take a piss, got into a confrontation, pushed the woman to the ground while having his pants down. He definitely committed a crime but if he made no attempt to take the victim’s clothes off I would consider this more a drunken sexual assault than a rape. However, the evidence itself shows there is no way this incident was premeditated as the Korean feminist and left wing groups claim.
To complicate things further is the changing witness statements and the fact that the prosecutors were linked to trying to coerce Basel into implicating Feldman. It is times like this it is important to remember these important words of every expat’s favorite lawyer in Korea.
So the appeal judges when looking at Basel’s case had to take into consideration the police and prosecutors incompetence in the case, the courtroom was originally not providing accurate translation services for the trial, the fact that the incident was what the Korean judges call a “failed attempt at rape”, as well as the fact Basel according to Korean custom paid over $10,000 in compensation money to the victim. Additionally you have to take into consideration Korea’s own lack of stiff penalties with rape cases. When you combine all these things that is how you get Basel receiving a suspended sentence after serving 113 days in jail.
If you don’t agree with this sentence ask yourself what would a Korean in similar circumstances have received? I can tell you very well what they would have received:
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.â€
This taxi cab driver committed what was obviously a premeditated rape of a 19 year old soldier who had just arrived in country and originally received a 10 month sentence for it before the case was overturned. This guy wasn’t even drunk, premeditated the attack, and actually raped her and received no jail time. You want outrageous this case is outrageous. I can also point to the case of the ROK Army soldier who sexually assaulted a female US soldier on Camp Casey while she was sleeping and he to received no jail time. If you look at past precedents SGT Basel has already been punished more harshly than other Korean rapists and sexual assaulters.
SGT Basel is only going to be further punished because his career is over and will probably face an other than honorable discharge of some sort that will follow him around the rest of his life. I’m not sure if being convicted of a sex crime in a Korean court would cause him to have to register as a sex offender in the US, but if he did, that would be something else that would follow him around the rest of his life. He probably deserved more jail time which if he was tried in a US military court he would have assuredly received, but the mitigating circumstances in the Korean court were overwhelming and I overall look at this case as a step forward for the Korean legal system and maybe one day justice for GIs in Korea will not be so hard to find.
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7:15 am on January 16th, 2008 1
I haven’t read the stuff at Marmot’s, but I agree with you.
I am not one to take lightly sex crimes, especially when someone pleads guilty to one, but this is a sex crime in Korean court.
Where in fact pleading guilty and throwing yourself on the mercy of court does lead to significant reductions in sentence and the same is also true of coming to a monetary settlement with the victim.
Add them all up —- guilty pleading, payment of money, and sex crime in Korea, I would not be surprised to have read the exact same thing about a Korean who was arrested for attempted rape of another Korean…
I’ll be glad when Korea starts handing out much stiffer sentences on sex crimes, but I don’t think GIs should get a special stiffer penalty just because they are GIs.
I am not, however, too greatly surprised to see how this worked out — that the GIs were released.
In several of the pre-2002 cases I was able to track follow up rulings by higher courts, on appeals, sentences of GIs were often reduced - even for things like murder. That seemed to be the norm with Korean-on-Korean crime too, though I could track only a handful of those in the press in looking at the archives.
If these two guys had been found not guilty first off — I’d have had a heart attack and framed the news article.
That, I’ve never seen before —- except in the one case you mentioned this past week from last month.
But, reducing 30 year sentences to 15 and then to 8 on murder or letting a soldier go on assault or rape with time served in a two year trial or so are types of things I’ve seen in the media articles I’ve dug up over the years.
I generally got the feeling that once 100% the GIs were convicted, their cases were handled seemingly much like Korean convicts in the courts of appeal.
7:21 am on January 16th, 2008 2
—-and on the anti-US front….
It might be interesting to see how the usual groups take up this case —- now that Lee has been elected president and came out with such bold statements from his team about things like axing the (anti) Unification Ministry….
…..it could very well be a time in which the anti-US groups seek to go hog wild since they took such a beating in the election, their political groups are demoralized, and the conservatives feel like steamrolling ahead.
The radical labor union has already made some noise….
…..it could join in on this as well.
I have seen zero signs of this….
…..but I would not be surprised if we did not see some item used to try to drum up a spike in anti-US/USFK activity in the next few months.
8:18 am on January 16th, 2008 3
Is a 10 month prison term the usual sentence for rape in general in Korea, or did the driver get off easy for raping a foreigner?
Either way, spending 10 months in jail for rape is a travesty.
8:23 am on January 16th, 2008 4
Speaking of Lee, am I the only one who thinks that he has a passing resemblance to (Shudder) Park Chung Hee?
8:37 am on January 16th, 2008 5
I seriously doubt the anti-US groups will be able to do much with this issue because the soldiers were tried in a Korean court and received justice similar to what a Korean would get. Actually as I have shown they received more punishment than what a Korean would get raping a US GI and one of them was innocent.
If the anti-US groups want to make this an issue bring it on.
As far as Lee is concerned I think he doesn’t look like Park but he does have autocratic tendencies like him I think because of his chaebol background.
8:41 am on January 16th, 2008 6
What is going to happen to Feldman & Sgt Basel when they return to their barrack ? Does the Army send them back to the USA or do they have to serve the remaining of their tour in Korea ? What about their career in the Army ?
8:43 am on January 16th, 2008 7
Same question; what are the consequences for Feldman?
8:48 am on January 16th, 2008 8
9:47 am on January 16th, 2008 9
Since Feldman wasn’t convicted of anything he won’t face any punishment in regards to the assault. What he may get in trouble for is underage drinking because I believe he was 20 when the incident occurred. Underage drinking is handled by non-judicial punishment called an article 15 which either his company commander or battalion commander could render judgment on.
If Feldman has a history of trouble which I don’t know, then the unit could chapter him from the military for pattern of misconduct. One underage drinking Article 15 is not enough to separate him from the military. I would assume the army would move Feldman out of Korea as soon as possible in order to prevent him from becoming a target for the anti-US groups like they did with the two NCOs from the 2002 accident.
Basel will probably be chaptered out of the military with an other than honorable or general discharge since he was convicted of a crime. The big thing for him is if he will have to register as a sex offender or not in the states. That is something the lawyers will have to work out since it was a ROK conviction. If the unit is squared away they would have Basel’s paperwork already to go and ready for signature so he would be separated quickly.
I inherited a soldier that was imprisoned in ROK prison when I came to Korea and when his time was up I had all his paperwork squared away so he didn’t even have to come back to the unit. The USFK jailers took him straight to the airport. It may or may not be the same case with Basel.
10:11 am on January 16th, 2008 10
Indeed, let’s look at the facts — a judge just lightened the sentence of a man convicted of attempting to rape a cop because he was drunk at the time.
Sure, you can call that a maturation of the Korean legal process, although somehow, I doubt that’s what we’d be calling it if a court handed out a reduced sentence with a 2-year stay of execution to an ajeossi convicted of rape because he was drunk. Dare I say, we’d be bitching about the institutional sexism of Korean society.
12:08 pm on January 16th, 2008 11
Marmot,
You can read the links I provided a US soldier was really premeditatedly raped by a taxi driver, not a “failed rape attempt” like Basel and was let off. These two GIs received justice that is equivalent of what ajeossi would get in Korean court. That is maturation of the Korean courts when GIs are finally getting equal treatment as ajeossi.
However, I did clearly state that Basel deserved more jail time and would have received more in a US court martial which is what makes the whole criticism from the Korean netizens and anti-US groups quite ironic.
9:22 pm on January 16th, 2008 12
[...] find it a bit ironic that on the day it is announced that two GIs would be released from Korean custody by a ROK court, over at Brendon Carr’s Korea Law Blog he has a posting up [...]
3:09 am on January 17th, 2008 13
[...] Korean netizens and anti-US groups will assuredly keep talking about these two soldiers, but I can guarantee you won’t hear them talking about these [...]
10:10 pm on January 26th, 2008 14
1:21 pm on February 4th, 2008 15
Has anyone considered the fact that Basel may not be guilty. That the fact that he does not remember anything beyond entering the bathroom played greatly on the decision of the court. Upon appeal, the courts had a chance to look at all evidence in this case. We know how Koreans feel about American GI’s and the judges could not release both parties charged in this case as not guilty. The best that they could do was discharge the one and suspend the other sentence. Because those of us who have served a tour in Korea knows that GI’s never receive a fair deal. Lets not forget that this was not a rape and that her clothes were not off of her body. This bathroom was a unisex bathroom and Basel probably became startled and reacted. By the Korean courts own psych evaluation of severe PTSD, he could have become alarmed and flashbacked to a time when he was in Iraq and felt that his life was in danger. This does not make him a guilty man. This only reiterates the need to better evaluate the soldiers who are returning from Iraq. As I have stated in a previous posting, I knew Basel prior to Iraq and the situations that we have been through were and are frightening. Does this excuse the fact of a physical confrontation, no. However, what if the situation was reversed and a man was using the stall and came out and startled Basel, would it have been called a sexual assault. Does this become a sexual assault because she was a woman. The facts as we know them are, she was in the bathroom, she came out of the stall and Basel had his pants down, for all we knew he was using the facility, she startled him and he reacted, no where have I read that her clothes were off and he came close to raping her. What was stated is that his pants were down and he grabbed her arms. If this had been held in an America military court, this amount of evidence would not have convicted Basel. What is sad is that a man’s career will probably end because of a mishandled case. It took the prosecutors office almost five weeks to bring formal charges against the two involved, not to mention the fact that their own eyewitness changed his story to fit what they wanted the outcome to be. Also, the fact that Basel was feeling coerced into changing his plea after being told that the courts would be more lenient on them if one would plead guilty. And how convenient for the prosecution that Basel could not remember anything because of how much he had to drink and the PTSD. This in the states would never have made it into a courtroom, it is considered to be circumstantial evidence. Eyewitness testimony changed and the force put on by the prosecution to change the pleas. There is so much reasonable doubt that before ruining a man’s life and career the military should take a step back and really exam the possiblities of what could have actually occured that day in the bathroom. And the fact that Koreans do not give GI’s a fair shake. Not all GI’s are terrible and not all are guilty all the time. As I have stated in the past, Basel is a good soldier and a superb man and I would feel honored to serve alongside of him again.
6:21 am on April 22nd, 2008 16
[...] The impolite accusation is especially humorous considering many people consider Koreans to be extremely rude and this prior posting of mine on, Why are Koreans Rude?, continues to be a highly commented on posting here at the ROK Drop. The “masters of this nation” claim is even funnier because she doesn’t even provide any examples to back it up other then GIs are rude. If GIs are "masters of this nation" then why the heck are so many GIs getting screwed over by shady ajummas as well as getting screwed over in Korean court rooms? [...]
6:57 am on July 10th, 2008 17
[...] uncommon for the authorities to encourage witnesses to lie just to convict a US soldier of crime. After one such conviction one of the judges that presided over the trial encouraged the soldier to appeal because of how [...]
5:50 am on September 18th, 2008 18