ROK Justice Minister Criticized for Covering Up KATUSA Son’s Absence Without Leave
Another week and yet another corruption allegation coming from a member of the ruling government:
Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae is in the hot seat over her alleged illicit use of her prior position in the ruling party to help her son receive preferential treatment during his mandatory military service years ago.
Korea Times
She is the second justice minister to be embroiled in allegations of using influence for family members, following Cho Kuk who allegedly helped his children gain fraudulent admissions to prestigious universities, although the position is meant to require a higher morality in law abidance than other officials. There is now rising criticism that these allegations involving former and incumbent justice ministers are damaging the spirit of equality, fairness and justice ― the so-called key values that the Moon Jae-in administration has pledged to pursue since its inauguration.
The allegations concern Choo’s son surnamed Seo, who was assigned to the Korean Augmentation Troops to the United States Army (KATUSA) to carry out his mandatory service from 2016 to 2018.
Seo apparently had two consecutive sick leaves for a combined 19 days in June 2017 for knee surgery, which was rather long compared to other cases. However, there are no military record regarding this leave, although Seo’s lawyer claims he submitted all the necessary documents at that time, including medical certificates from doctors. At the time Choo was the head of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK).
In response to the allegation, Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo said at a National Assembly session Tuesday that the leave was approved according to due procedure but there were some administrative errors.
It is also alleged that after the 19-day sick leave, Seo did not return to his base and did not report this until his absence was noticed by a senior soldier two days later. He was also absent for a further two days. One of Choo’s aides allegedly called an officer at Seo’s unit and asked him to record the four-day absence as part of annual leave ― a request that was complied with ― according to the main opposition People Power Party (PPP), formerly the United Future Party.
You can read more at the link, but how pathetic her son must be to sham out of KATUSA duty? He should sent to make up the mandatory military service time he missed in a frontline ROK infantry unit.
How many Koreans would kill to be KATUSAs IN Yongsan, or, even just KATUSAs in general. What a douche. I would say send him to prison instead of frontline service that he could duck out of again.
I wonder how good his English was. When I served it was well-known if you got a KATUSA with mediocre English skills (we had 1) he got into the KATUSA Corps via daddy’s influence not on his test scores. The one we had was somewhat shunned by the others as they knew he didn’t work hard in school to get there. Not surprisingly we wasn’t very fond on the US troops either. The KATUSAs sent him home on leave after a beatdown behind the barracks as a “enjoy your leave” gift. At least anti-social KATUSA after coming back was marginally better than jerk KATUSA before.
2ID Doc – “I wonder how good his English was.”
Had a KATUSA show up at my unit in the early ’80s. All the other KATUSAs got really excited when they heard about this guy because he was a student at Seoul National Univ (#1 school in Korea). But that mofo literally couldn’t speak a single word of English. On his first field training exercise, at 0300 it was his turn to pull an hour of perimeter guard, but he wouldn’t leave the tent. His tent-mate was a US soldier who didn’t speak Korean. The platoon sergeant heard what was going on and started yelling at him to get his ass out of the tent NOW, but he wouldn’t budge. It got ugly. The PSG then made the entire platoon pull perimeter guard until 0500. We found out later that he wouldn’t leave the tent because he couldn’t find his flashlight.