Here is yet another example of poor journalism in regards to GI crime in Korea :
Fewer members of the United States Forces Korea have been booked for violating local laws this year, the National Police Agency said yesterday.
A total of 158 members - including soldiers, their families and civilian employees of U.S. nationality - were booked between January and August, the agency reported.
The figure represents a 23 percent decrease from the 205 who were booked during the same period in 2007.
Most were booked on charges of violence, although violent crime has gone down. Further down the list were charges related to traffic accidents, larceny, sexual misconduct and gambling.
Police authorities in Gyeonggi Province booked the largest number of American soldiers at 61, followed by Seoul with 58 and Daegu with 19.
None of the 158 were actually detained.
The USFK and local police attributed the dwindling crime rate to the tougher disciplinary guidelines of the Korean and U.S. militaries. [Korea Herald via Marmot's Hole]
Articles like this really frustrate me because they inflate the USFK crime rate. Notice how the Korea Herald article uses the term “booked” to determine the USFK crime rate. This is what “booked” means on Dictionary.com:
booked, book·ing, books
v. tr.
- To list or register in or as if in a book.
- To record charges against (a person) on a police blotter
So they wrote the persons name down on a police blotter, but does that mean the servicemember was actually convicted of anything? When you look at the ROK criminal prosecution results it shows whatever these 158 people were “booked” for must not have been very significant considering how few of them were ever convicted of a crime.
Here is a listing per month this year of soldiers convicted in ROK criminal courts:
- January 2008 - 3 servicemembers
- February 2008 - 5 servicemembers
- March 2008 - 4 servicemembers
- April 2008 - 4 servicemembers
- May 2008 - 6 servicemembers
- June 2008 - 2 servicemembers
- July 2008 - 5 servicemembers
- August 2008 - 2 servicemembers
According to these ROK criminal prosecution statistics out of the 158 USFK servicemembers “booked” by the police only 31 of them have been convicted of a crime this year. So what happened to the other 127 people who were not convicted of a crime? This is where I suspect that these people “booked” were servicemembers ticketed for parking violations or similar minor incidents such as urinating on a building that would get them “booked” by the police but not prosecuted in a ROK court. A perfect example of being “booked” by the Korean police is the picture above of three soldiers in 2002 after they were assaulted, kidnapped from a subway, and forced to make coerced statements on television by Korean anti-US protesters. Even though they were “booked” by the police they were never prosecuted with a crime.
Unfortunately as usual with the GI crime articles in the Korean media they provide no statistics for people to look at in order to analyze the article’s conclusions. Likewise as usual the article provides no context of how extremely low the USFK crime rate is compared to the surrounding Korean population. A ratio of one out every 1,196 USFK servicemembers commits a serious crime compared to the Korean ratio of one out of every 100 Korean people committing a serious crime. Such context is important when discussing GI crimes which is something I yet to see any Korean media article provide. Thus the perception of out of control GI crime continues.
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9:33 am on September 23rd, 2008 1
10:57 am on September 23rd, 2008 2
Oh no …. this issue again.
Here we go again …
11:39 am on September 23rd, 2008 3
I’ve been meaning to write to you about this, but not until just now did I have a chance to look at the stats and confirm my hunch.
Korean media does not use the “booking rate” versus “conviction rate” in order to inflate the number of GI crimes. Korean media basically uses “booking rate” for all crimes in Korea, including the good old fashioned domestic crimes.
The better translation for “booking rate” is “arrest rate” (=”???”) While it may sound strange to count the numbers of crimes by the number of arrests rather than the number of convictions (especially so if you subscribe to the idea that people are innocent until proven guilty and convicted,) it makes sense on some level. The police doesn’t arrest just anybody; usually there was at least some suspicion of illegal activity. Also, conviction depends much on available evidence and fine points of law. Whether or not there is a conviction, the crime rate that people on the streets feel would correlate stronger to the arrest rate, not the conviction rate.
(Of course, like you pointed out, there is always a chance that Korean police, hostile to USFK, would simply arrest GIs who have done nothing wrong.)
I think this confusion about statistics really undermines your GI crime rate post as well. There, you compared two things: GIs who were convicted at ROK criminal court, and the crime rate acquired from Korean National Police Agency.
Specifically, it was this statement that raised my antennae: The KNPA has convicted 489,575 Koreans for serious crimes out of a population of 49 million Koreans. I thought that sentence was odd because KNPA does not convict anybody. KNPA is the police, not the court. So I went to the KNPA website (in Korean) to check out that number.
That 489,575 number you cited is not the conviction rate for 2006. In fact, it was not even the “arrest rate”. It was an “occurrence rate”, compiled by the number of police reports filed. The arrest rate corresponding to that number is 354,131. (In fact, even the English site of KNPA clearly marked the stats as “occurred” and “arrested”, and I see nothing about “convicted”.)
In essence, you were comparing apples and oranges.
So let’s try and compare apples to apples, although I admit this is pretty rudimentary.
First, Korea’s crime rate in general. For 2007, there were 354,131 arrests in Korea. Korea has 49 million people. So Korea’s crime rate, deduced from the arrest rate is: 354131/49mil = 0.72%
Now, the GI crime rate. The number of arrests from Jan. through Aug. of 2007, according to the article, was 205. That’s 205 arrests for 2/3 of the year. So we can fairly guess that for the year 2007, there were around 300 arrests of USFK, give or take. Your GI crimes post said there were about 27,500 GIs in Korea. So the GI crime rate, deduced from the arrest rate is: 300/27500 = 1.09%
I’m not going to say that .37% difference signifies that GI crime is rampant in Korea, because that would be an incorrect exaggeration. But I would dare say that it does puncture a hole in your overarching thesis that GIs are less likely to commit crimes than average Koreans.
12:19 pm on September 23rd, 2008 4
The Korean, thanks for the new perspective.
I don’t know who is right (GI or The Korean), but his tread is just ridiculous.
2:59 pm on September 23rd, 2008 5
Fair or not, from the Korean people’s point of view, even the conviction rate would not accurately reflect the amount of “crimes committed” by GIs. Except for the most extreme offenses, GIs are turned over to the military justice system under SOFA. So, any convictions or punishment through Article 15 or Court Martial would not show up in ROK statistics.
Then there are the cases like the one cited with the picture in the example above. As I recall what was reported then, you had greatly varying accounts of an incident that was never really resolved due to lack of evidence, jurisdictional conflict, or politics.
From the GI’s account, we were told that they were minding their own business on the metro when they were accosted by a group of demonstrators. An altercation ensued, the GIs escaped, but were later captured/kidnapped by a larger group of demonstrators.
The differing reports can’t reveal how the incident started, but the physical evidence was that the initial altecation left a bloodied old Korean man with a broken nose. However, even after the GIs were captured and held by a mob of over 200 for some time, no physical harm was done to them. I think if the national roles were reversed, most Americans would say that a crime may have been committed.
3:25 pm on September 23rd, 2008 6
JoeC,
That’s not correct. GIs are tried before the Korean civilian court under the current SOFA. See this link for the full text of US-ROK SOFA: Text of SOFA
Under Art. XXIII, Sec. 3(a)-(b) describe the criminal jurisdiction of the two countries when they have concurrent jurisdiction (which is 99% of the time, the 1% of the time being crime against the security of U.S. bases or ROK gov’t.) Sec. 3(a) says U.S. has primary jurisdiction over crimes committed against USFK property or personnel, or crimes arising out of official duty. 3(b) says ROK has primary jurisdiction for all other crimes.
So if we can assume that crimes arising out of official duty is relatively rare, the conviction rate does give a decent picture of GI crime rate in Korea. I would still say that arrest rate is a better picture, for the reasons I stated above. Ideally, occurrence rate would be the best because it is the best measure of the crime rate felt by an average person. But it is impossible to get occurrence rate for GIs, because the person filing the police report has to positively identify the suspect as a GI, which is highly unlikely. So the arrest rate would be the best measure that we have.
5:32 pm on September 23rd, 2008 7
The Korean
I accept your correction. According to a US Embassy Seoul Martial Fact sheet, in 2001, 82% crimes came under Korean jurisdiction. But, I still think there will be a lot of error in comparing conviction rates.
Even though the current SOFA was updated around 2001~2002, in 2000, then Ambassador Bosworth wrote in a newsletter:
This is probably still true today. So even though what the Korean government reports as crime rates include serious and minor offense, because they don’t usually exercise their right to jurisdiction for minor offenses, these offenses don’t show up in conviction rates.
I believe a larger percentage of “crimes”, even for Koreans, are minor offenses. Since more of the Korean minor offenses will go to the Korea justice system than for GI minor offenses, the conviction rates for Koreans will skew higher than for GIs.
6:37 pm on September 23rd, 2008 8
JoeC, that’s a valid point. Wonder what GI in Korea would say about that.
6:39 pm on September 23rd, 2008 9
It seems to me that two different baselines are being used to compare crime rates. The Korean rate is based on the general population (i.e., 49 million) while the GI rate (i.e., 27,500) is based on US servicemembers only. Shouldn’t the USFK figure include US dependents, civil service personnel and possibly contractors?
6:50 pm on September 23rd, 2008 10
Good point. I admit my figure is rudimentary. I would also like to know the correct arrest rate for the whole year, because there is a chance that crimes increase toward the end of the year.
7:53 pm on September 23rd, 2008 11
Gents I just got back from work and found this to be a very interesting thread. First of all, I used the 2006 stats because at the time of the posting that was all that was available. Now the 2007 stats are posted.
Also good point about the arrest statistic. However, arrests compared to convictions for Koreans will essentially be the same number because Korea has a 99% conviction rate for those arrested:
I will up date the stats for Korea on the posting to show what the number would be with a 99% conviction rate.
I think the best way to look at the crime rate is by what the KNPA considers major crime: rape, burglary, assault, theft, & murder. This eliminates all the fudging that goes on with the parking tickets to the stats.
Of major crime in 2007 Korea had 385,704 people arrested. Using my new equation:
385,704 * 99% conviction rate = 381,847 convictions
49,000,000 / 385,704 = 1 in 128 Koreans committing a serious crime.
For USFK crime I use the 27,500 because I cannot find a hard number online of what the USFK number plus dependents is. I have heard that it is around 40,000 but could find nothing solid so I stay with the 27,500 number. Of the 27,500 servicemembers 23 were convicted of major crimes which comes out to a conviction rate of 1 in 1196.
Also in regards to how Koreans feel about GI crime keep in mind that most Koreans have no interaction with GIs and most GI crime happens in the ville where very few Koreans even see GI crime happen. GI crime is not felt by the general Korean population and is instead the perception of GI crime is manufactured by the media and NGOs.
A perfect example is the subway incident above. Those soldiers were attacked first by the protesters before being kidnapped. I highly recommending reading this link:
In regards to the SOFA questions, yes the Korean police on occasion hand over GIs. The reason I bring up the urinating on a building example from time to time is because one of my soldiers got arrested by the Korean police for urinating on a building. He called me I went to the station and the police gave him to me to bring back to post. For major crimes I have never seen the Korean police hand a GI back to USFK to be tried. That is why I think the major crime statistic is the most reliable one to judge GI crime rates with.
Anyway very good discussion which just continues to make me wonder why journalists and USFK public affairs types who are paid to do their jobs don’t crunch these numbers instead of people like us with some free time on the Internet?
8:11 pm on September 23rd, 2008 12
Jon, just one question — if conviction rate = 99% of arrest rate, then how could it be that among 158 GIs who were arrested, only 31 of them are convicted? That makes the GI conviction rate = about 20% of GI arrest rate. There has to be some confusion in the numbers here.
8:40 pm on September 23rd, 2008 13
That is why I bring up the urinating on the building example. These stupid incidents happen a lot in the ville. The soldier is “booked” in the police station but not convicted because the unit would pick him up.
By only looking at the major crime category that weeds out all these little incidents when looking at the statistics. A police station would catch all hell if he handed over jurisdiction of a major crime case back to USFK. It is of course possible but I have never personally seen or heard of it happen.
However there was one case where the victims parents demanded that the police hand jurisdiction over to USFK for the rape of their KATUSA son because they felt the US military would properly punish the criminal compared to the notoriously light sentences in Korean courts for rape. USFK would go on to sentence the soldier to 30 years in jail.
10:07 pm on September 23rd, 2008 14
I still have a problem with why 354,131 was the count of what was defined to be serious crime. That sounds very high for what I would consider to be serious crimes in Korea.
We know that there are gradations of crime, especially those like assault and theft. Many of them would be considered to be minor offenses when the victim wouldn’t always press charges. What we might call petty theft or two guys in a fist fight.
Since there was an arrest, we can presume that the victim pressed charges. But, that still doesn’t mean 99% conviction because it is very common in Korea and those other 99% countries (Japan and China) to avoid prosecution when the accused reaches a financial settlement with the victim.
I believe many of those 354,131 “serious crime” arrests were not really serious crimes but were done to start the process of reaching a financial settlement. And, the assault and theft cases that do make it to court are those where a settlement is not reached.
That is true for Korean on Korean crime, but I also know of several cases where that was true for some crimes that GIs were arrested for. The willingness to reach an out of court settlement plays a part in avoiding Korean prosecutors pressing for jurisdiction.
7:07 am on September 24th, 2008 15
In the GI theft and assault cases the GI still gets tried in Korean court. If they pay the compensation money then usually they avoid jail time and instead receive a suspended jail sentence. If they don’t pay the compensation money that is when they are given a jail sentence. That is why I have always advocated on this site, that even if you are not at fault for the assault just pay the compensation money because you cannot win in the court:
http://rokdrop.com/2008/09/14/usfk-soldier-appeals-one-year-sentence-for-taxi-cab-incident/
Now for smaller crimes I have seen servicemembers be able to reach a financial settlement such as when this sailor broke a car window:
http://rokdrop.com/2008/07/20/us-sailor-damages-windows-in-busan/
This goes back to why I believe the major crime stat is the best statistic available because for major crimes the GIs are brought to trial and weeds out all the traffic tickets and people reaching settlements to avoid trials.
The same would be true for Koreans that pay compensation money as well. They receive a suspended sentence or a small fine for a major crime instead of going to jail for something like theft or assault. Nevertheless they still have to appear in court to settle major crimes. For smaller crimes such as a broken window they can reach a financial settlement and walk away from the incident just like a GI can. This also shows why the major crime stat is the best stat available.
Also something else to keep in mind is that the Korean stat is actually a deflated number, it should actually be higher. That is because all ROK Army incidents to include even civilians that commit crimes against ROK Army personnel are handled in ROK Army courts which no one has any statistics on.
I still remain convinced that the USFK crime rate is significantly lower then the surrounding Korean population which it should be considering the discipline we expect of soldiers and the amount of restrictions USFK puts on their lives in Korea.
5:00 pm on September 24th, 2008 16
“The police doesn’t arrest just anybody; usually there was at least some suspicion of illegal activity.”
From what I’ve been able to gather, they do arrest GIs (and foreigners) at a MUCH higher rate when reporting to the scene than they do when it is just Koreans-vs-Koreans. It isn’t just a GI thing either. The Metropolitian this year, I believe it was, called the police on a guy who assaulted him - and he was the one arrested……not an old or unusual story…
I believe that also touches on the later discussion of “minor” crimes. From my experience seeing a small number of times where Korean police responded to street altercations I witnessed - with just Koreans involved - nobody was charged. My impression, from that and other news items and things I’ve heard, is that Korean police stress the conflicting parties work things out and only if the two sides refuse to let it go at the scene is an arrest is made - unless there is some significant injury or property damage.
I guess one example of this would be the video cam scenes most of us have seen that take place at police stations and police boxes where drunk, infuriated Koreans come and push around policemen on duty when one of their friends is taken into custody - and nobody gets arrested.
But, when a GI/foreign is involved, it is a safe bet an arrest is going to be made and who that will be.
“The willingness to reach an out of court settlement plays a part in avoiding Korean prosecutors pressing for jurisdiction.”
From what I’ve picked up with GI crimes over the years, the compensation agreement for them comes in the sentencing face - not pre-trail. I’ve never heard of a GI getting charges dropped by reaching an agreement with a Korean. I have heard of them getting their sentence reduced after paying or getting a higher-than-normal sentence because they refused to admit guilt and pay compensation.
“The differing reports can’t reveal how the incident started, but the physical evidence was that the initial altecation left a bloodied old Korean man with a broken nose.”
I just saw where GI Korea linked to my review of both infamous subway brawls above - so I won’t do it here….
From reading what I could on the Voice of People site in Korean and in reports in English in the press and NGO sites, you could have confidence in what took place that day on the subway.
I did not keep a copy of the extended video where the poor old Korean man told what happened right after the attack, because it was a long interview in Korean, and the quotes from the Korean press, NGO websites, and Stars and Stripes accurately captured it, but it was laugh out loud funny when he described how his hand just happened to brush across the GI’s face and then he was attacked viciously. My Korean wife did the laughing out loud and said any Korean listening to that would know the guy was admitting he had struck the GI first. Which is likely why the NGO site yanked the video never to be seen again.
The Korean police also announced later to the press that they had concluded through interviews and the poor old man’s various and varying statements that he had struck the GI — but oddly enough - the poor old man wasn’t charged - nor were the charges dropped against the 3 GIs — the time limit on pursuing the initial arrest was simply let passed…
I did upload the section of the video showing the good citizen Koreans (mob) chasing after two of the GIs as the riot police tried to get them to the safety of the hospital where a larger group of them were stationed.
http://usinkorea.org/videos/mob_attack_confession.rm
(Sorry for the poor quality of the video - this was before blogs and such and when bandwidth and server space was not as cheap and plentiful as today and I had to sacrifice quality. Also, the NGOs took the original video down quickly and over time I lost my copy and couldn’t edit it when internet site goodies improved)
The poor old Pyongyang apologist and active North Korean agent in the South did give conflicting accounts of what happened — and as I said — once you read through them all and a couple of interviews with young activists on the scene and the GIs’ version, it was pretty clear what happened on the train.
The poor old man was with 8 to 12 university activists promoting a huge anti-US rally and spotted a lone GI who wasn’t with his two friends at that moment, and they decided to harass the guy and worked themselves up until the typical Korean semi-violence went into a brawl. The poor old man was in the thick of it and it was his “push” on the GI’s face that led the activists to step it up and the GI to defend himself.
Even though the police determined the poor old man and his youthful friends were the main instigators, nobody was ever charged with a crime on the Korean side.
As for the holding of the one GI and forcing him to attend an anti-US/USFK rally and forcing him to make statements against himself and USFK — well golly - they didn’t beat the hell out of him - they made him fear for his life — but they didn’t lay a finger on him - besides holding him against his will and making him perform for an anti-US mob numbering in the thousands…..no crime there…
….why should we expect any Koreans to be charged with that crime?
So, why even look at the pictures taken at the rally showing Korean minders guarding the guy or videos that were shot at the time? Why seek to collect evidence that was uploaded to the NGO sites promoting the guilt of bastard GI that were just as quickly yanked from it when the NGO leadership realized the shit was about to hit the fan?
No crime there. Just look at the GI’s face — not a mark on him…..(his nose had stopped bleeding by that point)….