1967 is when the first US-South Korea Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) was signed which handed over legal jurisdiction of crimes committed by US troops while off duty to the Korean authorities. The most serious case that was first tried in a Korean court involving a US servicemember was the 1967 murder of Chun-ja Kim by Private Eugene D. Taylor. Taylor was a cook assigned to Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry DIvision. Taylor was just days away from completing his tour of duty in Korea when he arrested for the murder of his Korean girlfriend on November 5, 1967.
From the November 27, 1967 edition of the Stars & Stripes.
Before redeploying to the US, Pvt. Taylor decided to go on a drunken bender at his girlfriend’s residence. For some reason during his drunken bender he decided to strangle and kill his Korean girlfriend, Chun-ja Kim that he supposedly had plans to return to Korea to marry. He committed this murder two days before redeploying to the US. This just shows that even back in the 1960’s soldiers at high risk of getting in trouble are those within 30 days of going home. It also shows that the old Korean complaint of GIs committing crimes in Korea and then getting away with them by flying back to the US was also not true back then.
From the February 8, 1968 edition of the Stars & Stripes.
The landlord of the home that Ms. Kim lived at discovered the body in the morning along with Taylor bleeding with a neck wound. He claims that when he woke up and discovered Kim’s dead body that he tried to commit suicide by slashing his neck with a piece of broken glass. It appears he was drunk enough to kill someone else, but not drunk enough to kill himself.
From the March 7, 1968 edition of the Stars & Stripes.
Ultimately Pvt Taylor was convicted of the murder of Ms. Kim and sentenced to 8 years in a Korean prison. It seems like a pretty lenient sentence, but the Korean court took into consideration the mitigating circumstances of him being a soldier deployed to defend Korea and the fact he was drunk. So being drunk back in the 60’s was considered a mitigating circumstance just like it is today in Korean courts.
From the April 11, 1968 edition of the Stars & Stripes.
Taylor’s crime is now long forgotten in the dustbins of USFK history, but he does have the dubious distinction of being the first American servicemember convicted and sentenced for murder in a South Korean court. This case shows that US servicemembers were held accountable for the crimes in Korean courts back then and continue to be held accountable today.
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