By I’m not surprised that the Dongducheon city government has no plans to ask the 2nd Infantry Division to help them promote this video that essentially bashes the presence of US soldiers in the city:
Dongducheon as seen from Soyo Mountain.
Now, city officials are highlighting the painful and complex history of their home in a 10-minute video whose title loosely translates as “After the Clearing of the Rain.”
The city wants to use it as a campaign tool to persuade the South Korean government to provide more support to Dongducheon as it transforms from a military town into a commuter suburb for Seoul workers, according to Yeo Un-sung, a spokesman for the city government.
Under the current agreement between the U.S. and South Korea, most of the U.S. troops on the peninsula will move to Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul, by 2012. Current negotiations may push that back to 2016, officials have told Stars and Stripes.
A proposal now in the National Assembly would provide 30 percent of the future sale of the U.S.-controlled land in Dongducheon to the city, according to Ahn Ki-young, a top aide to the Assembly member representing the city. South Korea’s Ministry of Defense, however, would like to use the sales money to pay the country’s portion of relocating the U.S. troops, according to Ahn.
The Dongducheon city spokesman described the effort as “too menial for the severe sacrifices the city has endured.”
“We want the government to have more concern and more support for us,” he said in a phone interview last week.
Yeo says that in the 1960s and 1970s, the presence of U.S. soldiers — primarily with the 2nd Infantry Division — strengthened the city’s economy. But more recently the soldiers’ spending power off base has not kept up with the city’s costs of building its police force and improving its transportation system, Yeo said.
With the news in recent years that much of the 2nd Infantry Division will move south to Pyeongtaek, city officials began clamoring within their own government for help with the change. Yeo said the city is eager for the soldiers to move on, yet city officials feel they need more money from the central government for the transition.
To this point, the video highlights some of the struggles the city has felt over the years. It talks of major incidents involving the U.S. soldiers, including a horrific rape and murder of a bar worker in 1992 and the accidental death of two teenage girls in 2002 involving a military convoy. It also quotes current residents who often say their hometown is Uijeongbu, a bigger suburb of Seoul that also has military bases, rather than admit they are from Dongducheon.
The city made 350 copies of the video for government officials. Yeo also said the city has no plans to ask U.S. Forces Korea for help in their argument for more federal support. [Stars & Stripes]
Dongducheon would not be the size city it is today without the US troop presence. All you have to do is drive up Highway 1 to Cheongok or Yeonchon to see what Dongducheon would look like if no US troops were ever stationed there. Both of those towns are just small regional farming communities and not a large urban population center as Dongducheon has become.
It is unfortunate that the government has to highlight a crime that happened in 1992 and the soldiers was sent to ROK prison and a tragic traffic accident that didn’t even happen near Dongducheon to promote their city.
12:35 pm on January 22nd, 2009 1
Hope everything's all right with the blog – I visited this morning and found, "Hacked!…." Is there a problem with my computer or were you hacked and then were able to fix the problem?
Anyway, good to see you back.
1:04 pm on January 22nd, 2009 2
More like Yongju-Gol.
1:54 pm on January 22nd, 2009 3
Brian, yes I was hacked by new webhost provider quickly took care of it and I have now installed the latest version of WordPress which will hopefully prevent any more hacking.
Let's keep our fingers crossed.
7:41 am on January 23rd, 2009 4
The barbarian protector army helped influenced our city to grow from mere outhouse ratings, to a two star hotel rating. We implore the central government to help us immediately revert back to outhouse standards at once!Kthnxbai.
8:19 am on January 25th, 2009 5
Just found this website; it's terrific!
I was stationed at Cp Casey in '92 and remember the rape/murder case mentioned in this post. The soldier was 18 and this was his duty station (I believe he was a medic assigned to 5/20 infantry). The victim was a juicy girl/prostitute in one of the local clubs (I don't remember which one) and apparently they knew each other. The rape portion reportedly included object rape and may have occurred post mortem. Of course this crime set off a wave of protests/riots, both in TDC and in Seoul. I remember that the Chief (the statue in front of Cp Casey) was splashed with blue paint and had it's arm broken off.
The soldier was handed over to the Koreans for prosecution and was convicted. When he was being moved around for trial he was heavily guarded (to protect him) and had to be moved by helicopter instead of by truck/van for his safety. Interestingly, the Korean courts ended up sentencing him to (if I remember correctly) 15 years, citing his relative youth at the time of the crime. We GI's thought that this was incredibly lenient for such a horrific murder.
A couple of interesting background facts. The convicted GI's father was a foreign service officer in the State Dept. Apparently, he was considered a head case (technical term) a something of a ticking time bomb by some of the NCO's who supervised him, and his NCOIC was pushing to get him out of Korea and chaptered out of the Army, both for the good of the service and the soldier. HHC 5/20 had a rapid turnover of company commanders (something on the order of 3-4 commanders in a 4 month period) and each new commander, when presented with the paperwork decided to give the soldier a chance. At the time of the murder, the soldier's chapter was approved at the company level and he was probably a few weeks from being shipped out. I do not remember if he was restricted to post at this time.
I am going off memory for the above comments, so I may have gotten some parts wrong. Perhaps GI Korea can do his usual excellent job of researching the incident and posting a complete accounting of this case.
9:24 am on January 25th, 2009 6
The GI's name was Kenneth Markle and I had a short posting about the incident here:
http://rokdrop.com/2006/11/20/convicted-usfk-murd…
I haven't done an in depth posting on what happened that day but probably should. I have actually met Markle before when he was in jail and found him to be quite odd but he didn't seem dangerous. He has since been released from prison:
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_…
Thanks for commenting and providing more background information about Markle.
11:35 am on January 25th, 2009 7
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2:10 am on January 26th, 2009 8
2:14 am on January 26th, 2009 9
Mark, this is very, very important for you to know. I didn't want to risk saying anything but it is better for you to know this.
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2:37 am on January 26th, 2009 10
{Charlie Brown's teacher speaking} ??? ??????????? ?? ????????? ?? ????? ???.
No, ma'am. I was drinking Coke from that bottle and I had the umbrella because there was rain in the forecast.
{Charlie Brown's teacher again} ?????????, ?????? ?? ???????? ? ???????.
Yes, ma'am. I won't drink Coke in the rain anymore.
3:23 pm on April 15th, 2009 11
Yes I too remember the incident. I was stationd at Camp castle just up the road from Casey from 92 to 94.Every thing that you said is how I remembered it also except that I herd that he was suppose to fly out the next morning back state side and was out partiing down in the ville. That one incident started the famous kill American day that goes on every year on the anniversery of the rape.
3:48 pm on April 16th, 2009 12
Is there anyone that knows the detailed history of the ex-AF Airman who killed his two children outside Osan back in 1993. His Korean wife was working at Tiger club I think. Kalani references it but no details. From what I remember there wasn’t an outrage like there was against Markle. Maybe because they weren’t 100% Korean?
10:25 am on September 2nd, 2009 13
Would like to know when Camp nimble originated. I was stationed at that location in 1963. At that time it was the 538th Engineers.