By I have totaled up by unit the USFK servicemembers convicted of a crime in the Korean court system in 2008 by using the USFK court martial results published every month on the USFK webpage.
Comparing ROK Convictions
It was interesting to find out that although court martial convictions may have dropped in 2008 for USFK units, the off post Korean criminal convictions has increased significantly compared to last year:
- 2007: 48 servicemembers convicted
- 2008: 66 servicemembers convicted
Notice that my 2007 statistics runs from April 2007 to March 2008 because that is when I started to publish the monthly court martial results on my site. So there is a bit of an over lap with this year, but still think it is accurate to say that ROK criminal convictions have increased from just a year ago.
Why the Increase in GI Crime?
To determine why this increase happened, it is important to take a look at the incidents in question. Here are the ROK criminal convictions broken down by incident type:
- Destruction of Private Property: 2
- Trespassing: 4
- Robbery: 1
- Quasi Robbery: 1
- Bodily Injury: 12
- Traffic Violation: 4
- Larceny: 3
- Driving w/o License: 1
- DUI: 13
- Violent Act: 6
- Fraud: 2
- Assault: 8
- Drugs: 3
- Obstruction: 2
- Indecent Act: 1
- Hit & Run: 4
- Attempted Arson: 1
More often then not bodily injury convictions are from when a servicemember gets into an accident of some kind that causes an injury to the person they hit. Often times these bodily injuries are fraudulent but they still count on the official statistics. So if I add the incidents of bodily injury, traffic violations, DUI, driving w/o a license, and hit run together I can get a total number of driving related incidents. Here is how driving related incidents from 2007 compare to 2008:
- 2007: 21
- 2008: 34
The increase of driving related incidents makes up over half the increase in incidents from the prior year. Other increases in minor crimes such as trespassing, obstruction of police officers, and destruction of private property accounts for the rest of the increases.
So clearly the decision by USFK to allow more people to drive cars has unsurprisingly increased the off post crime rate. Additionally USFK would be wise to look at why there is an increase in minor criminal incidents. This year there was definitely more stupid minor incidents then usual.
Determining the Rate of Major Crimes
The overall rate of off post crime may be up in USFK, the most important stat of major crime is down from 2007. The Korean National Policy Agency considers Murder, Burgulary, Rape, Larceny, & Assault as major crimes when compiling Korean crime statistics. Here is how USFK servicemembers totaled up in this important statistic:
- Crime Number
- Murder – 0
- Burgulary – 2
- Rape – 0
- Theft – 5
- Assault – 8
- Total – 15
Last year there was a total of 23 major crimes to include two rapes with one of them being the infamous grandma rape case. In 2008 there was only a total of 15 major crimes to include no rapes. For major crimes, 2008 was a great year for USFK.
Comparing USFK & Korean Crime Rates
So how does the USFK crime rate compare to the general Korean population? Unfortunately the Korean National Police Agency has not updated their website yet with statistics from 2008. They just have stats from 2007 currently posted on their site. Here is the total number arrest for these major crimes committed by Koreans in 2007:
- Crime Number
- Murder – 1,062
- Burglary – 3,731
- Rape – 7,795
- Theft – 102,688
- Assault – 270,428
- Total – 385,704
Korea has a conviction rate of 99% which means that of the 385,704 people arrested it is estimated that 381,847 people were convicted in 2007.
(Note that I will update these stats as soon as the KNPA updates their site.)
The best way to compare the Korean major crime rate to USFK is by using a ratio. A ratio can be determined by taking the total population and dividing it by the number of major crimes. Korea currently has a population of 49 million people while USFK reportedly has a population of 28,500 servicemembers. Using these population numbers this what the ratios come out to be:
- Korea: 1 major crime out of every 128 people
- USFK: 1 major crime out of every 1900 people
The efforts by USFK to decrease major crimes committed by servicemembers in Korea has been without a doubt very successful. Unfortunately this fact is not being relayed to the general Korean population which continues to hold on to a stereotype of out of control GI crime.
This stereotype is mainly perpetuated for political reasons, as well as by poor journalism, and elements of the anti-US media in Korea. However, USFK has its self to blame as well for not launching a vigorous public relations campaign to let Koreans know how low the USFK crime rate really is. It is because of all of these factors that the Korean public continues to believe that USFK is responsible for an inordinate amount of crime in Korea
Comparing USFK to USFJ
Something else that is interesting to compare is the major crime rate between USFK and US military servicemembers on the Japanese island of Okinawa. In 2008 63 USFJ servicemembers were arrested on Okinawa for major crimes. I found a number of 25,000 US servicemembers on Okinawa which I’m not sure is correct or not, but it should be a good ball park figure to work with. Here is how the ratios between USFK and US servicemembers on Okinawa works out:
- USFJ (Okinawa): 1 major crime out of every 397 people
- USFK: 1 major crime out of every 1900 people
So clearly for whatever reason servicemembers in Korea are much better behaved then their counterparts in Okinawa. In recent years the servicemembers on Okinawa have been able to keep their crime rate below the general population’s crime level, but it looks like this year the people of Okinawa have a legimate gripe.
Conclusion
Something else that is interesting is that of the 2008 ROK convictions 30 of them came from the 2nd Infantry Division while 36 of them came from other USFK units. It is not much of a difference in convictions, but the reason non-2ID units have a higher rate of off post crime is because of assaults. 2ID soldiers were convicted for only 1 assault in 2008 while non-2ID units were convicted of 7 assaults.
Here is another interesting stat that shows which units are causing the most off post crime in Korea;
- 602nd ASB: 5 convictions
- HQ/ 8th Army: 4 convictions
- 1-15 FA: 4 convictions
- 121 Hospital: 4 convictions
Much like with the court martial results, only one combat arms unit is in the top four of ROK convictions. Something else that should be noted from these stats is that the Air Force only had two people convicted in ROK courts all year. That is incredible.
It is pretty clear the USFK not only has a low crime rate compared to the general Korean population, but as well as when compared to their peers in Okinawa. This is something the leadership of USFK should be commended for. However, keeping crime rates low is something that must be continuously worked on because of the constant change over of personnel in Korea.
Anyway below are the complete unit by unit statistics of ROK criminal convictions so you can judge for yourself what these statistics mean. So please take the time and look from through them and share your own conclusions about these statistics in the comments section.
2008 ROK Criminal Convictions Statistics:
2nd Infantry Division Units
HHC/ 1st Heavy Brigade Combat Team
Destruction of Property – October 2008
2/9th Infantry
Trespassing – Jan. 2008
Robbery – March 2008
1/72d Armor Regiment
Bodily Injury – November 2008
Bodily Injury – November 2008
1/15th Field Artillery Battalion
Bodily Injury – September 2008
Traffic Violation – November 2008
Bodily Injury – November 2008
Larceny – December 2008
302d Base Support Battalion
Driving Without A License – September 2008
1st Brigade Special Troops Battalion
DUI/Larceny – September 2008
2ID Special Troops Battalion
Violent Act – December 2008
Violent Act – December 2008
US Army Garrison-Red Cloud
DUI – October 2008
Fraud – December 2008
4th Chemical Company
Destruction of Property – November 2008
HHB, 210th Fires Brigade
Assault – June 2008
1/38th Field Artillery Battalion
Drugs – October 2008
6/37th Field Artillery Battalion
DUI – October 2008
70th BSB
DUI – May 2008
Bodily Injury – October 2008
3/2d General Support Aviation Battalion
Obstruction – September 2008
2/2d Aviation Battalion
Traffic Violation – October 2008
4/2d Aviation Battalion
DUI – March 2008
DUI – July 2008
602d Aviation Support Battalion
Obstruction – Feb. 2008
Bodily Injury – Feb. 2008
Quasi Robbery – May 2008
Bodily Injury – October 2008
Fraud – October 2008
Other USFK Units
Eighth US Army
Assault – Feb. 2008
Assault – Feb. 2008
Trespassing – September 2008
Trespassing – December 2008
US Naval Forces, Korea
DUI – Jan. 2008
Hit & Run – July 2008
US Marine Corps Forces Korea
Assault – April 2008
Assault – April 2008
Noncommissioned Officers Academy
DUI/Larceny – September 2008
Special Operations Command, Korea
DUI/Hit & Run – Feb. 2008
Combat Support Coordination Team #3
DUI – November 2008
3rd Battlefield Coordination Detachment
DUI – June 2008
498th Corps Support Battalion
Larceny – May 2008
595th Maintenance Company
Violent Act – August 2008
25th Transportation Battalion
Hit & Run – July 2008
501st Sustainment Brigade
Traffic Violation – May 2008
HHB/ 35th ADA Brigade
Attempted Arson – August 2008
Drugs – November 2008
1-7th ADA
Assault – May 2008
Assault – May 2008
55th Military Police Company
Bodily Injury – October 2008
249th MP Detachment
Bodily Injury – Jan. 2008
188th Military Police Company
Violent Act – September 2008
Violent Act – September 2008
142d Military Police Company
Indecent Act – September 2008
3d Military Intelligence Battalion
Hit & Run – March 2008
532d Military Intelligence Battalion
Violent Act – October 2008
DUI – December 2008
41st Signal Battalion
Bodily Injury – April 2008
Bodily Injury – April 2008
121 Combat Support Hospital
Drugs – July 2008
DUI – September 2008
Assault – December 2008
Traffic Violation – December 2008
51st MOS
Bodily Injury – March 2008
8th Security Forces Squadron
Trespassing – July 2008
...
10:33 pm on February 24th, 2009 1
GI, great work!
curious about the 532 MI December 2008 DUI conviction. There is no link. Wondering if that was the battalion commander LTC Rassmuessan?
5:03 am on February 25th, 2009 2
Lemmy I added the link and it was actually a SFC that received the DUI.
2:21 pm on February 25th, 2009 3
GI, for some reason the 532d Commander was relieved, do you know why?
2:26 pm on February 25th, 2009 4
No I do not know why he was relieved and do not remember seeing anything in the media about him being relieved.