By This latest announcement actually makes sense considering that all the USFK soldiers convicted in ROK courts are held at the Choenan jail:
In a global society, many services are offered to suit the needs of the local foreign population. In Korea, that will soon extend to prisons.
The Justice Ministry will open a prison exclusively for foreigners in consideration of the increasing number of foreign convicts, officials said yesterday.
The prison will be available as early as next month and the Cheonan Juvenile Correctional Service is presently being refurbished to serve that purpose, said officials.
Though some local prisons, such as the Daejeon Correctional Service and the Cheongju Women’s Correctional Service, have so far accommodated foreign inmates, a prison exclusively for foreigners is to be the first of its kind in Korea.
The ministry will allocate a maximum of 400 well-behaved convicts to this new prison, which will be equipped with some 24 professional staff members who are fluent in foreign languages including English, Chinese and Russian, said officials.
Over the 10 years since 1999, the number of foreign criminal convicts has risen more than five-fold – from 350 to 1,800, according to the ministry data. [Korea Herald]
You can read more about foreigners in Korean prisons here.
I have to wonder since foreign prisoners are being consolidated with USFK prisoners if the foreign prisoners will receive the same kind of treatment as the imprisoned soldiers? For those that don’t know imprisoned soldiers in Korea get special treatment under the Status of Forces Agreement. I actually had the opportunity to tour the Choenan Prison five years ago. You can read about my thoughts about the prison here and the special perks the imprisoned soldiers receive.
2:18 am on June 30th, 2009 1
I can't remember hearing anything in recent times about other nations or groups complaining about the quality of Korean prisons, so I guess this change is guided mostly by the desire to separate out the foreign from the Korean prisoners.
In the past, I've read that the reason Korea put foreign prisoners (including GIs) in separate wings or in this juvenile facility was complaints lodged by other governments about the overly-spartan/harsh conditions in Korean prisons.
4:06 am on June 30th, 2009 2
I know a soldier who had the misfortune of spending several months at the Seoul Detention Facility in Iwang City (just south of Seoul).
He said SOFA members got treated the best, Koreans are second, and foreigners (other than SOFA) are a very distant third.
10:51 pm on June 30th, 2009 3
The SOFA says that a prison in Korea must meet US prison standards. US prisons have heat and serve American food thus these guys are given that. The SOFA doesn’t say they get their own rooms, kitchens, and other stuff that the Korean authorities decided to give them.
I remember asking the warden at Cheonan why they were given all these extra freedoms compared to Korean prisoners and he just said it was because the Korean government didn't want to be accused of human rights abuses. Considering those clowns from Amnesty International are willing to jump on the police and other authorities in the ROK for even teh smallest transgression while ignoring North Korea, I could understand the warden's concerns.
4:38 am on August 6th, 2010 4
I did time in Cheonan and no the regular prisoners do not get the same treatment. In fact they are kept separate from SOFA status inmates.