Tag: Itaewon

Does everyone remember the Itaewon Burger King murder case?  Well it is back for round two of two decade long effort to convict the then dependent of USFK contractor of murdering a Hongik University student back in 1997:

The two original suspects in a high-profile 1997 Itaewon murder case could potentially be brought back together today in a preparatory session before the start of legal proceedings in the trial against 36-year-old American Arthur Patterson.

Patterson and his friend, Edward Lee, were accused of killing Hongik University student Cho Jung-pil at a fast food restaurant on April 3, 1997, in Itaewon, a popular foreigner-friendly district in central Seoul.

Cho was found dead in the bathroom of a Burger King, stabbed nine times in his neck and chest. The two men, then 18, were both in the restaurant at the time of the murder and both pinpointed the other in the killing.

Lee, a Korean-American, was later convicted for the murder but was acquitted of those charges in 1998 by the Supreme Court, which ruled that there was insufficient evidence to conclude that the murder had been carried out by one man.

He will attend as a witness in the trial against Patterson, who was originally charged and convicted for weapons possession and destruction of evidence before fleeing to the United States in 1999.

“We have confirmed that Lee … is currently staying in Korea,” a prosecutor from the Seoul Central Prosecutors’ Office said on Wednesday, adding that it was planning to request Lee as a witness in the preparatory session to be held at the Seoul Central District Court.

The same day, Lee’s father appeared on a radio program to reiterate that his son would testify in the case.

“My son came to Korea about a month ago and he will attend [the preparatory session] as a witness,” he said. “We want the case closed this time so that we can finally be free from it.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link and you can read more about this case at this prior posting.  Basically this whole case comes down to incompetence in the Korean judicial system to let these two go free in the first place.  This was a brutal murder that the family deserves justice for.

For those going out to clubs in Itaewon over the long 4th of July weekend, here is one club you will not get into:

An upscale nightclub in Itaewon, Seoul, has stopped accepting foreign customers over the past two weeks in fears of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), a virus that has taken lives of 33 people in South Korea, the owner of the club said Wednesday.

Kim Jong-hyun, owner of Lounge & Club Move contacted The Korea Observer and requested that we remove an article that we published a day earlier as he believes it implies the club has a racist policy in place.

“We absolutely don’t accept foreigners because of MERS,” said Kim. “Above all, Korean people don’t want them. This is Korea, isn’t it?”  [Korea Observer]

Here is what he had to say about US military servicemembers:

“Most of the time when a customer loses a cellphone, the CCTV reveals that the thieves are Middle Eastern people or foreigners.”

Kim agreed with his manager Lee’s statement that the club has been hesitant to have foreign customers because it is hard to make them liable when they cause property damages, sexually harass customers or start a brawl.

He also stressed that foreign customers frequently start a fight with U.S. servicemen.

“U.S. servicemen don’t behave badly. The problem is other foreign customers who constantly provoke them into a fight,” Kim said.

“It is better not to have them because we lose too much for trying to make a small amount of money from them.”

You can read the rest at the link, but US servicemembers have been accused for so long for being the ones to start fights in Korea that I don’t know how to react.

The Best Hostels in Seoul (Itaewon) http://t.co/E1xOKtp181 via @Drewbinsky7

— Christine Kaaloa (@grrrltraveler) November 26, 2014

The soldiers involved in a brawl in Itaewon last November have been sentenced:

A South Korean judge sentenced three U.S. soldiers Friday for their participation in a Nov. 11 bar brawl in the Itaewon entertainment district.

Two soldiers — Pvt. Sylvester Antely Clark, 19, and Spc. Tydes Whiten, 27, — were sentenced to 18 months in prison for punching and striking a U.N. Club bouncer with beer bottles during the fight.

But judge Han Yang-seok suspended both sentences for two years, saying he took into account that both soldiers paid compensation to the bouncer, had no prior convictions and “had worked diligently to defend the country” as soldiers here.

Pfc. Mario Duprey, convicted of assaulting a police officer, was fined the equivalent of about $3,000.

The two soldiers involved in the brawl have been maintaining their innocence that they were not the ones who hit the bouncer with a beer bottle.  Judging by past altercations involving Koreans falsely accusing GIs of assault, this claim may quite possibly be true.  However, there is not enough information available compared to the Acosta case, to really make a determination on this and the fact that PVT Clark was led into the courtroom in shackles I found quite interesting:

Clark, who was escorted in and out of the courtroom by Army criminal investigators and restrained with his hands shackled to a belt around his waist, declined to comment.

The fact he was led into the courtroom into shackles leads me to wonder what other trouble he has gotten into to be the only one shackled in the courtroom.  No one is going to jail, but they are definitely lighter in the pocketbook and hopefully other soldiers can take some good lessons learned from this incident, especially like when you are drunk don’t go to the police station and start crap there.Â

If you need a t-shirt to display your anti-Americanism, than a Canadian in Itaewon has one for you:

Alleyway T-shirt vendors in the Itaewon district have a new competitor. The new must-have shirts read I’m not migook on the front, and on the back in Korean, “I am not an American.” Since the shirts first turned up at a shop in front of the neighborhood Starbucks in the middle of last month, more than 100 of the shirts have been sold every five days. The man who brought the thoughtful product into the world is a 31-year-old named Michael Kenny who would like to make it clear that he is Canadian.

However, Mr. Kenny claims this is all in good fun and he is not anti-American:

Worry no. 2 is that people tend to associate the shirts with anti-Americanism. He says quite a few people have challenged him about the message. But his response is: Oh, there’s nothing to it. It’s all just good fun. American whites are Caucasians, but that doesn’t mean all Caucasians are Americans. Now, wouldn’t it be nice if Koreans knew that too?

Now would he sell t-shirts to people of black skin color saying that they are not Nigerians?  Or better yet maybe he should start selling t-shirts that say “I’m not a Low Quality English Teacher”.  What’s the difference between this hate speech and bashing Americans?

Here is another reason why criminals shouldn’t fear the South Korean justice system:

A Seoul court has ordered that the South Korean government pay about $34,000 to the family of a murdered university student because local prosecutors mistakenly allowed an American suspect to return home, according to court officials.

The decision from early this week ends a seven-year fight from the victim’s family, who was outraged that South Korean officials failed to stop Arthur Patterson, one of the two suspects in the case, from leaving South Korea, according to a family spokesman.

(…)

In April 1997, Cho Chong-pil was stabbed to death in a Burger King restroom in Itaewon. Investigators and experts at the time said the stabbing appeared to be random and similar to an American gang-style killing. Two American teens, Patterson and Eddie Lee, were charged in the case.

Patterson, the dependent of a contract worker for U.S. Forces Korea, was charged with possessing a deadly weapon and destroying evidence. He was convicted and sentenced to 18 months. Lee, who had no direct connection to USFK, was charged with murder and sentenced to life in prison. A higher court, however, reduced that sentence to 20 years and ultimately acquitted Lee for lack of evidence after he had served 18 months.

Patterson also was released early from prison in 1998, in the annual Aug. 15 liberation day amnesty granted by the South Korean government to some 2,000 convicts. Prosecutors promised to pursue the case and perhaps file a harsher charge against Patterson. Yet after his release from prison, he was allowed to leave South Korea, the court’s ruling this week admitted.

Amazing someone originally convicted of a brutal murder and sentenced for 20 years is later released while his accomplice is later released as well by a special pardon.

For those not familiar with Burger King murder case here is a quick recap of the murder:

On April 3, 1997, Joong Pil and his steady girlfriend Jung Eun were on their way to her home in Itaewon after studying at the Kook Ki Won Library. They stopped to use the restroom at the fast food restaurant. Jung Eun went to order soft drinks and Joong Pil went into the restroom.

The motive for the murder was that Lee killed the victim just for fun. After killing Cho, Lee went back to the table and hung out again with Patterson like nothing had happened while Cho slowly bled to death in the restroom. Similar to the Penich murder case another cold blooded murderer was allowed to go free. Now both these punks are running around free in America instead of rotting in jail where they can’t kill anyone else just for fun.

I can remember the 2001 St. Patrick’s Day night that the American student Jamie Penich was murdered in Itaewon very clearly because I was out on the town that night and actually visited the bar that Penich was last at, though not at the same time so I never saw her. The murder definitely sent waves through the USFK community because it was suspected that a USFK servicemember was the person responsible for the murder. Many servicemembers were questioned about what they saw in Itaewon that night but no arrests were ever made.

This case took so many twists and turns that it could be made into a movie, but ultimately Penich’s friend was the only person charged with the murder which included allegations of lesbianism and a confession from the suspected killer to US authorities. However, the case continued to take more twists and turns as the suspected murderer withdrew her confession during the Korean court trial and was found innocent and now that not guilty verdict has been upheld:

The Supreme Court upheld yesterday a lower court ruling acquitting an American student on charges of murdering another U.S. student in Korea in 2001. The court said there was insufficient evidence to convict Kenzi Snider, 24, of killing Jamie Lynn Penich. Ms. Snider had been accused of beating Ms. Penich to death in a motel in Itaewon in March 2001.

The court said it did not accept Ms. Snider’s confession to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation because it was later retracted. After questioning in Korea, Ms. Snider was questioned by the F.B.I. in the United States and confessed to the murder. Extradited to Korea in 2002, Ms. Snider disavowed her confession at her trial here. The court said evidence from another country’s authorities is only admissible if the suspect confirms it to a court here.

I highly recommend that everyone read this Court TV report on the murder because the twists and turns this case takes is truly amazing, while the murderer is still at large. I wonder if the authorities could have solved this murder if they didn’t just focus on the GI murderer stereotype from the beginning of this case like they did? There will probably never be any justice for Jamie Penich’s family, but read the report to draw your own conclusions.

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.