Category: Ville Files

The Radio:

I remember one time we were in the field on an FTX, and our
mess hall was bivouaced in a semi permanent position to serve us chow,
wither when we were in the AO, or by MerMites.
Anyway, it was the late ’70s and big boom boxes were very popular. One
of the cooks had brought a boom box that was only slightly smaller than a
fully loaded duffel bag. He plugged it into their generator and had an
ample supply of his favorite tunes which could be heard across the
deserted Korean countryside.
One night he went to sleep with his box tuned to the AFKN radio station,
and when he awoke the next morning his box was gone, but there was a
small battery powered transistor radio about the size of a pack of
cigarettes (worth about $2) tuned to AFKN radio where his had been.

Apparently Slicky Boy considered it a fair trade.

The Target:

We were on tank gunnery and I was assigned as a loader
because the tankers were short a few warm bodies. It was nighttime and
we were organized with tanks to the right and left of the one firing to
provide alternate illumination. The target was a large canvas bulls eye
stretched over a two by four frame that was atop a berm a few hundred
meters out. Got the picture?
So there we were, firing away, when the gunner has a problem acquiring
the target. Turns out the target is moving!! Some slicky boys had crept out
to the berm, and were in the process of stealing the target while we were
shooting at the damn thing.
The Lt in charge calls a cease fire and we tried to go get the governments
property back. Personally I think they should have let it be, as I’ve always
preferred the challenge of a moving target………

Submitted By ; Sgt Horace Carder
`A` Troop, 4/7 Cav
This slicky boy story was from Korea, A Tour of Duty.
If you have your own slicky boy story to share e-mail me your story at gikoreaonline@yahoo.com and I will be happy to post it.

ose who have served a tour in Korea usually return home with at least one good “slicky boy” story to tell. A “slicky boy”, for those who don’t know, is the GI lingo describing the Korean thieves that look to steal just about any US military property that isn’t properly secured, especially during training exercises in the field. The level of organization, planning, and cunning of the slicky boys is truly amazing in some instances and that is why slicky boys have remained part of GI lore in Korea.

Most villes outside of US military bases in Korea have what is known as a “TA-50 Alley” where just about any item of US military property can be found for sale. This is where the slicky boys make their money from stealing US military property. These TA-50 Alleys have provided a source of revenue for petty thieves from the time of the Korean War until present day.

I bring up this subject because I recently discovered a Korean veterans site that collects and chronicles the various slicky boy stories. So I have decided to do weekly postings highlighting one of the slicky boy stories a week from the site.

As you will see in this first slicky boy story that no USFK property is safe from the clutches of the slicky boys, not even a piano.

Slicky Boy Stories: The PianoAt One of The Officers Clubs, Location Unknown, It Was
Discovered One Morning That The Club Piano Was Missing. A Check At
The Guard Shack At The Main Gate Revealed That No Vehicles Had Enter
or Left The Compound That Night.
However, Some Enlisted Men Did Remember Hearing Muffled Sounds
Coming From An Area of The Perimeter Fence. A Further Check Revealed
That The Barbed Wire Had Been Cut And Removed From The Top of The
Fence, Thus Fueling Speculation That The Piano Had Been Lifted OVER
THE FENCE And Removed From The Area……!!!!! Imagine That !!

Submitted by: 1Lt Ken Leighty
A Co 2/72 Armor
1967 – 1968

The talk of the town in 61/62 was about the Slicky Boys that
Took The Piano From The Officers Club in `C` Troop 1/9th Cav and
Hauled It Across The Imjin On An “A” Frame!
THEY WERE GOOD !!

Submitted by: Sp4 Richard Taival
`B` Troop, 1/9th Cav

I was in Korea 1958-9, with the 1st Cav. I spent most of my
tour with the 1st Recon Sqdn, 9th Cav, just north of Freedom Bridge, TDY
from 15th Medical Bn (located at Pob Won Ni).

The story of the Slicky Boys and the Piano, I was told, happened in the
winter of 1958-9. I did not see it, but the way it was related was that slicky
boys got a piano and a safe from the 1st of the 9th officers’ club,
manhandled it down the bluff and onto the Imjin River, which was iced over.
A guard spotted the group on the ice a good distance out, and shot at
them. The slicky boys took off. There were supposed to be 3-4 of them.
Story is it took about a platoon of GIs to get the piano and safe back
across the river.

Submitted by: Curtis A. Pendergraft
15th Medical Bn
1st Cav Div!!

This slicky boy story was from Korea, A Tour of Duty.

If you have your own slicky boy story to share e-mail me your story at gikoreaonline@yahoo.com and I will be happy to post it.

Add another story to the ville files. This story just goes to show that even officers are not immune to the charms of juicy girl:

An Air Force captain who didn’t tell officials two women asked him for classified information was sentenced Monday to 10 months in prison and dismissal from the service.

But under a pre-trial agreement, Capt. James L. Shank will serve just six months in prison. Shank, 43, married and a father, was a mission planner with the 5th Reconnaissance Squadron, which flies classified reconnaissance missions in northeast Asia.

His court-martial began Monday before Air Force Lt. Col. Eric Dillow, judge for the Pacific Circuit, of Yokota Air Base, Japan. Shank opted to be tried by judge, not jury.

Shank pleaded guilty to disobeying an order, making a false official statement, three counts of violating a lawful general regulation and two counts of conduct unbecoming an officer.

Events that brought to an end his more than 18-year Air Force career began in December 2003 when he met Larisa Sergeevna Whittington, a dancer at the off-base Golden Gate club.

Whittington, from the former Soviet Union, was married to an Army soldier who’d been stationed at Camp Humphreys and later at Fort Drum, N.Y. Shank admitted in court he knew the woman was married to an enlisted servicemember.

Basically the article goes on to explain that not only was the Russian a juicy girl married to a GI but she also had a part time job with the KGB. How can this idiot pass on classified information to someone claiming to be KGB and on top of that put 18 years in the Air Force at risk?

Is it just me or do Air Force officers at Osan get in more trouble compared to officers in other areas of Korea?

This editorial in the Korea Times claims that the Hollywood Bar in Itaewon is racists towards black people:

It was my girlfriend’s birthday, and I was throwing her a surprise party. I had invited all of our close friends, including her cousin. Among our friends, there were three guys from Nigeria. Shortly after we arrived, an argument erupted between our Nigerian friends and the bartender. I asked why, and they explained to me that the bar security was asking for their IDs and that the bartender wouldn’t sell them any drinks because they are from Nigeria and they are black.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, so I asked to speak to the manager. I met up with him and I told him that the three Nigerian gentlemen were my friends, and we _ a group of about 25 people _ were celebrating my girlfriend’s birthday. “I invited them to the party, so please do not mess up our party,’’ I pleaded.

He said that they would have to leave the bar, because Hollywood bar does not serve Nigerians or black people in general. I told him not to be such a racist. He said, “We do not serve black people in this bar.” I honestly couldn’t believe this was happening, and so I said that if they had to leave, we would all leave.

I have never been to the Hollywood Bar before and after reading this I probably won’t ever go there, but I did a little checking on Google about the Hollywood Bar and found this from the Korea Herald:

Upstairs, separate owner of Hollywood Bar and Grill, American Barry Dorscher banned GIs three years ago. “If you let GIs in, every week you’re fixing you’re bathroom, because they bust it up,” he said, suggesting the bans were less driven by racism than by the old adage about oil and water.

So I guess GI’s aren’t welcome there as well. This same article had a few other interesting quotes in it as well:

“So many GIs have drugs. Now that’s gone,” said another club owner, preferring not to be named. “SOFA is a big problem. Whenever a fight broke out the military police would come but they couldn’t touch the GIs because of the law.” He also mentioned that the ban wasn’t entirely a Korean initiative. USFK personnel came and met the two heads of the Hongdae club conglomerate before the ban was implemented.

This whole SOFA thing is so frustrating because the Korean police have the right to arrest any GI that gets in a fight off duty at the club. Why people keep saying in the media GIs cannot be arrested due to the SOFA is complete disinformation. Here is some more interesting stuff:

In Geckos, a group of U.S. soldiers are drinking beer. One of them says he loves Hodge Podge (in Hongdae), but he can’t go there.

“We were told to watch out for a group of Koreans who would pick a fight with a GI while his friend’s in the background with a camcorder, for propaganda,” he said, on condition of anonymity.

His friend K.P. said everything got worse after two Korean girls were killed by a U.S. military vehicle last June. He lifted his shirt to show a scar on his chest where a 17-year-old girl cut him with a razor blade at an established hotel nightclub, “yelling something about killing babies.” Seven months ago, a young Korean pulled a knife on him in a subway saying Americans were tearing North and South Korea apart.

This article was before the Shinchon stabbing incident. It is too bad the soldiers involved in that incident didn’t listen to the command message being put out to avoid Hongdae because of the groups looking to provoke fights with US soldiers for propaganda purposes. Pvt. Humphrey wouldn’t be sitting in jail right now if he would have obeyed the off limits order.

The altercation that the soldier talks about is interesting because during the 2003 time period there were other attempted stabbings of soldiers. The stabbings of course got very little if any press, but it just makes me wonder if the same people were committing the stabbings?

Anyway if you have any insights or stories about the Hollywood Bar please feel free to leave a comment.

USFK Command Sergeant Major Barry Wheeler has a message for all NCOs in Korea:

Noncommissioned officers commit the majority of sexual assaults in the military, and that is “not OK,” said the senior enlisted service member in South Korea. Worse, the NCOs are assaulting the people they’re supposed to lead, U.S. Forces Korea Command Sgt. Maj. Barry Wheeler said during an hour long radio program Friday.

“My message to NCOs: I don’t care what service you’re in, knock it off,” he said. “You better be protecting that person’s integrity and taking care of them and making sure they have a safe place to live and not taking advantage of them.”

It is a sad but true fact that NCOs are committing the majority of sexual assaults. Here is the main reason:

Wheeler said sexual assaults are “usually associated … I’m sad to say, with an overconsumption of alcohol, where one of the two, if not both, have made a poor decision to continue to drink.”

The alcohol culture here in Korea definitely is a major contributor to the sexual assaults. However, there are a few other dynamics at play also. Here in Korea everybody lives together in close quarters in the barracks. Thus fraternizing between NCOs and soldiers is much more common here than compared to being stationed in the US. Back in the states the NCOs usually live off post and are married.

Plus you have soldiers being promoted to the sergeant rank to quickly now. Many times soldiers are getting promoted to E5 with 3 years of service. Young NCOs are not likely to hang out with NCOs that are much older than him/her and decides to hang out with old E4 and E3 buddies who are in their same age group instead. This causes them mentally to not make that transition from a soldier to a leader which an NCO is expected to be.

The over consumption of alcohol, close quarters in the barracks, and immature NCOs is what is causing this problem. How to stop it? Well ruthlessly stopping fraternizing between soldiers and NCOs and giving soldiers other options besides going to the “ville” and getting smashed is a place to start to end the overconsumption of alcohol culture here.

I have always felt that the “villes” around the camps here in 2ID are treated like a babysitting service for the Army here. Go to the ville, do what you want, don’t bother the Koreans outside the ville, what happens in the ville stays in the ville, and be back to work on Monday. The ville promotes alcohol abuse and sex, so why are people surprised this is carried over to the barracks?

If I had my way I would put the ville off limits at night to underage drinkers and any club that had foreign national women working in it would be put off limits because we all know they aren’t there to be cheap labor to sweep the floors. By getting the high risk and impressionable younger soldiers out of the ville this prevents alcohol and sex from being thrown in their face and will in turn cause them to seek other forms of entertainment. Plus getting the foreign nationals out of the ville would greatly curb human trafficking and prostitution.

These changes would cause the villes to have to change their business models to be more like US style clubs than relying on cheap beer and scantly clad foreign national “juicy girls” to make money. I think this change in culture in the ville will directly change the culture in the barracks that leads to sexual assaults.

Why doesn’t the Army do the things I recommend? Well then the Army would have to find real alternative activities for the younger soldiers to do besides going to the ville. It is much easier to let the ville babysit them during the weekend instead.

Anyone got any better ideas because just telling them to “knock it off” isn’t going to stop this problem?

Here is a only in 2ID story for you. Last night a drunk Korean man made threats to some soldiers about a suicide bombing in the ville. The MP’s then proceeded to clear out the ville of all GI’s. Ajushi may be on to something here. If you want to clear a club of GI’s just announce a suicide bombing is going to happen and instantly you got all the girls in the club to yourself. Not a bad move.

Possibly the MPs are being a little to jumpy about this. What are the odds of ajushi going “mujahadeen” on American soldiers? It must be some what credible because the MP’s took action. If it was at least someone of middle eastern dissent that made the threat, I would give it more credence.

The Army is to jumpy about force protection issues here in Korea. Korea is an extremely safe country and I feel much more safe here then I ever did at lets say Ft. Hood for example. Yet we did not have warnings about Killeen “mujahadeen” trying to kill us, midnight curfews, and a expansive list of off limits areas.

All these force protection announcements portray to soldiers a negative image of Korea as being an unsafe country and indirectly causes possible stereotyping and suspicion of Koreans and other foreign nationals that live in Korea. Korea is a safe place to serve and interact with the people. You can travel any where in Korea safely and as long as you treat Korean nationals with respect the vast majority of them will treat you with the same respect. This is the image of Korea we should promote, not suspicion. I just think Army officials should use more prudence before going overboard with all the force protection advisories.

However, if you are out in the “ville” tonight beware of the TDC “mujahadeen.”