By Below is an article from the TIME magazine archived that I saw a link for from this Marmot’s Hole posting. This article shows that in some ways things have definitely changed in Korea over the decades and in other ways it has not:
Image is from the book "Slicky Boys" which is set in Korea.
For many of South Korea’s poor, stealing from the U.S. Army is a trade and a livelihood. They steal from PXs and officers’ homes, raid railroad yards, pilfer from trucks on the move, and diligently bleed oil pipelines (last year’s losses were 1,500,000 gallons, enough to carry one tank company 22,400 miles). But after U.S. soldiers on guard duty, potshotting at intruders, killed several innocent bystanders, General George H. Decker ordered: “No more shooting.” The thieving went on, the 40,000 men of South Korea’s police force seemed unable or unwilling to catch a single thief, and the U.S. Army chafed with frustrated exasperation.
Early one morning last week, a 14-year-old Korean boy named Kim Choon II was nabbed by a guard inside the Eighth Army’s aircraft maintenance center at Ascom City, 15 miles west of Seoul. He had broken into noncommissioned officers’ quarters, pocketed a traveling clock, cigarette lighter, flashlight, two PX ration books, $6 worth of scrip. He was frog-marched to the guardroom, where a group of U.S. officers and enlisted men, irked by 20 burglaries in six weeks, decided to teach Kim a lesson.
According to a report released later by the U.S. Army, Kim claimed that he was first struck by a soldier. A captain came along, beat him some more, jabbed his legs and arm with a knife point, Kim said. They shaved his hair off with electric clippers, daubed coal tar on his head and face. Then they packed 4-ft. Kim into a 3-ft. crate used to carry plane parts, put holes in it to give him air and loaded their cargo aboard a helicopter. The camp commander, Major Thomas G. James of Plymouth, Pa., flew the copter himself. James planned to leave the boy at a disused field and make him walk back to Ascom City. But he found he could not get the box open, and flew on to Uijongbu, twelve miles north of Seoul. ‘T have a box of spare parts on board,” he radioed the field. When the box was unloaded, a Korean soldier heard “whimpering,” found Kim inside. “That’s a slicky boy [slang for thief],” observed James. Freed, Kim made his way back to Ascom City, told his story to Korean police, who took him to a U.S. Army hospital. Doctors washed off the tar, found Kim otherwise in “good condition.”
Bursting with fury, Korean newspapers labeled the incident a “vicious lynching,” demanded a status-of-forces agreement that would allow Korean courts to try U.S. servicemen. General Decker hastily expressed regret at the treatment given the boy, “even though he was caught in the act of stealing” (a fact most of the Korean newspapers failed to mention), and promised “appropriate action.” [TIME Magazine]
Slicky boys can still happen out in the field but it is a rare occurrence, however the scams to steal from USFK have not stopped. Alcohol theft, gambling rings, stealing ammunition brass, weapon smuggling, contracting fraud, blackmarketing, Internet fraud, housing scams, etc. etc. It’s not called the USFK gravy train for nothing.
3:56 am on June 8th, 2011 1
Q: What do you call a slicky boy in a suit?
A: Good Neighbor
4:19 am on June 8th, 2011 2
The black market is alive and well. When was the last time Korean police arrested anyone for that?
4:23 am on June 8th, 2011 3
- In 1958, he was just a 14 year old slicky boy.
- In 1968, he was stocking shelves in AAFES.
- In 1978, he became a AAFES shoppete manager.
- In 1988, he became a base exchange inventory manager.
- In 1998, was an AAFES Area inventory and deliveries manager.
- In 2005, he was finally busted again in heist operation that diverted over 8 million dollars of goods over 3 years. He pays a 3 million won fine, has a 6 months suspended sentence and decides to retire off his proceeds and leasing out all the real estate he was able to acquire during his prosperous years.
5:02 am on June 8th, 2011 4
So we see that JoeC is not just a misogynist, he’s a racist…
5:43 am on June 8th, 2011 5
To the commenter on number two. When did Korean cops do any work in favor of Service members?
5:44 am on June 8th, 2011 6
Read this like 10 years ago. He has another one… The Golden Buddah or somthin like that. Not the greatest but very intresting if you have been around Korea for awhile.
5:53 am on June 8th, 2011 7
That’s what happens when you swam, and continue to swim in, a pond full of leeches.
6:02 am on June 8th, 2011 8
#4
It had nothing to do with race (nature). It was about the path from delinquency (nurture).
6:54 am on June 8th, 2011 9
I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as it was back in the 1980s.
3:02 pm on June 8th, 2011 10
“(a fact most of the Korean newspapers failed to mention)”
I guess things will never change.
3:02 pm on June 8th, 2011 11
Or rather, some things will never change.
3:05 pm on June 8th, 2011 12
…not to say that they shouldn’t have been sent in the stockade and demoted for they way they treated that kid, though.
5:30 pm on June 8th, 2011 13
You tell ‘em, Teadrinker!
Americans, don’t ever let anyone tell you our gentle little brothers to the great white north don’t know how to deal effectively with slicky boys.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia_Affair
3:40 am on June 9th, 2011 14
#13,
That’s not funny. I’m still bitter about the way the whole thing was handled by HQ (I served during the inquiry). They put a gag order on the troops. One guy, who had served in the Belgian armed forces before becoming Canadian, was so insulted by this that he practically went on publicity tour. HQ even had us looking everywhere for the supposedly lost documents, and where did they turn up? Behind a damned filling cabinet at HQ. The @#$#@$!
6:36 am on June 9th, 2011 15
I don’t think it was meant to be “funny”.
12:47 pm on June 10th, 2011 16
Whoa, so this kid (very likely an orphan) gets caught stealing, and the result is he gets beaten, stabbed, forcibly shaved, tarred, and then shoved in a box he can’t be removed from and packed off to some other place from which he likely has no means to “get home.”
I mean, shouldn’t this kind of assault, kidnapping, illegal detainment, etc., be the real focus of this story, instead of your ending “ment” where this kid is just a long line of untrustworthy Koreans?
There was another such incident, where an American in authority back in the day decided to “teach a lesson” to a Korean kid by maiming him, that also got a lot of negative notice in the local media.
Would these sadists have thought they could get away with this if they’d done the same thing with a thieving child back in the US?
2:16 pm on June 10th, 2011 17
Q: How is your diick like a slicky boy?
A: They are both shaved, beaten, and shoved in a box.
Q: How are they different?
A: The camp commander doesn’t stick your diick in the rear and take it for a ride… presumably.
4:58 am on June 11th, 2011 18
@16 – I in no way condone the behavior of these soldiers and clearly said in the posting that somethings have definitely change. It was a different time back then and I am not surprised by what these soldiers did. The punishment this slicky boy got was pretty bad but I have read and heard other slicky boy stories where worse punishment was given such as the Turks bayonetting a slicky boy.