GI’s Help Out With Rice Harvest

Over at the Marmot’s Hole he has a great post about the 2ID soldiers that went and helped harvest rice for one of the fathers of the two girls that were accidentally killed three years ago in the tracked vehicle accident. Marmot has got an English translation of the Donga Ilbo post on his site and the JoongAng Ilbo has an English language article on it’s site which I have posted below:

A group of American and Korean soldiers helped bring in the harvest here. In the course of the work, they seem to have gone a long way toward assuaging some of the anguish that followed the deaths of two young girls three years ago.
The U.S. 2nd Infantry Division learned that farmers in this area would have a difficult time bringing in this year’s crop, and some of the division’s soldiers volunteered to help. Among the areas where they worked were fields belonging to Shin Hyeon-su, the father of Shin Hyo-sun, one of the two teenage girls struck and killed by an American military vehicle in June 2002.

“After the heavy rainfall early last month, the rice plants were all severely bent, making it impossible to harvest them with machines,” Mr. Shin said. “We really needed helping hands to harvest with sickles. I appreciate the U.S. and South Korean soldiers’ help very much.”
A group of 17 Korean and 23 U.S. soldiers was working in the rice paddies in this northern farming area Tuesday morning. Some American soldiers, who had never used sickles to cut rice, were learning the Korean way of harvesting.
They finished the job in Mr. Shin’s paddies late in the day, fueled by food prepared by the Shins and other village residents. Mr. Shin said the help was unexpected.

The village head, Shim Su-bo, also said he welcomed the help. He is the father of Shim Mi-seon, the other girl who lost here life in the accident, which occurred during a U.S. training exercise.
“We feel thankful to the American soldiers, who did not forget about the victims’ families,” Mr. Shim said.

The road deaths provoked a firestorm of anti-American demonstrations around the nation, which was rekindled when two soldiers involved in the incident were acquitted at courts-martial.
That outrage, however, was nowhere to be seen this week in the Yangju paddies.

I think it is great that 2ID was able to help with the rice harvest and hopefully this will be something that we can continue to help with in the future to go along with all the other volunteer work that 2ID and the rest of USFK does on the peninsula. However, on Marmot’s site there has been a debate about whether these soldiers were forced to work in the fields or if they truly volunteered. I can assure everyone that these soldiers were in fact volunteers. Soldiers love doing things like this that are positive and make a difference. Whenever there is a community activity that needs assistance, whether it be the orphanage or English teaching, there is never a shortage of volunteers. Believe it or not many soldiers, airmen, Marines, etc. want to do positive activities such as this when given the opportunity.

Not everyone in USFK jumps on taxi cabs, but that is unfortunately what makes the newspapers and not all the other positive things USFK does in Korea. Fortunately this one positive event did get published which I think is a step in the right direction. Hopefully more like it get published.