A group of people stages a rally in front of the Foreign Ministry in downtown Seoul on May 21, 2018, calling for revision of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and denouncing U.S. forces for the environmental contamination of U.S. bases in South Korea. (Yonhap)
The sound of multiple gunshots from a supply depot of the U.S.Forces Korea resounded through part of the southeastern city of Busan every evening for three days from June 20 to 22.
Residents, petrified by the unexpected noise, made frantic calls to the police to figure out what was going on, but to no avail as the police had no idea either.
Only later did the police figure out the USFK had been firing blanks with automatic firearms during a defense drill.
At the same time, residents near a forest in Dangjin, South Chungcheong Province, had to endure the sounds of flyovers, takeoffs and landings of army helicopters for a while.
The drill, later reported to be by the USFK, continued two to three times a week for over a year from early 2016.
Faced with complaints from nearby residents, the defense ministry checked with the USFK which said it had reached a verbal agreement on helicopter drills with the local government.
South Chungcheong provincial government and Dangjin municipal government, however, denied making any such agreement.
With concerns over unannounced drills growing among citizens, Rep.Kim Jong-dae of the minor opposition Justice Party called for a revision of the rules on USFK operations.
The Korea-U.S.joint committee on the State of Forces Agreement (SOFA) came up with preventive measures to secure the safety of citizens regarding USFK operations in 2003.
The move followed the Yangju Highway Incident in which two schoolgirls were crushed to death by an American tracked vehicle in 2002.
According to the 2003 agreement, the USFK has to report its drills beforehand to the South Korean army and local governments.
However, the regulation is applied only limitedly in northern Gyeonggi Province, excluding other regions in the country from getting prior notification.
“If it had been applied to the entire country from the beginning, all parties — the defense ministry, local governments, police, and local people — would have not had to suffer,” Kim said. [Korea Times]
You can read the rest at the link, but it will interesting to see what the USFK response is because there must be a reason why the whole country was not included in the revision in 2003 and the ROK government agreed to it.
Here we go again with the Korean left pushing propaganda about the US-ROK Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA):
Rep. Park Byeong-seug (left) of the ruling Democratic Party shakes hand with Chinese State Councilor for Foreign Affairs Yang Jiechi. (Yonhap)
Nearly 7 in 10 criminal offenses committed by members of US forces stationed in South Korea end up with no one being charged by South Korean authorities, a lawmaker said Tuesday.
According to government data released Tuesday by Rep. Park Byeong-seug of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, the nonprosecution rate for crimes committed by US military personnel here stands at a whopping 70.7 percent as of July this year, up from 58.2 percent in 2014.
The figure for violent crimes, including murder, rape and robbery, is even higher at 81.3 percent, meaning 8 out of 10 offenders do not go through the Korean system. This proportion is higher than in 2014, when the number stood at 63 percent.
As for illegal drug use, which is strictly punished in South Korea, 42.9 percent of the accused members of US forces avoided indictment this year, up from 33.3 percent in 2014.
Rep. Park pointed to the Status of Forces Agreement between the US and South Korea as the main reason behind the leniency. [Korea Herald via a reader tip]
Can someone name the last Korean that was murdered or even raped by a US soldier? I can’t even remember the last murder committed by a US soldier because it has been so long. The last rape accusation was back in February and guess what the soldier was charged by Korean authorities. Since then nothing has come out about this case which people can draw their own conclusions about. Bottom line there is not a rash of rapes and murders going on in Korea as Representative Park leads people to believe. That leaves violent crimes being mostly assaults and robberies. So why weren’t these servicemembers not charged by Korean authorities like Rep. Park Byeong-seug wants? Because ROK authorities gave up jurisdiction to the US military:
He did not give details on how the US military dealt with those crimes it took under its jurisdiction, or what proportion of nonprosecutions were prosecuted by the US military.
“When such crime is committed by US soldiers, the US Army sends a request to South Korea’s Justice Ministry to give up the jurisdiction, and in most cases, we accept their request,” the five-term lawmaker explained.
“SOFA should be revised immediately to protect our jurisdiction rights and lives and property of our citizens.”
So what is Rep. Park complaining about the SOFA when it is working the way it is supposed to? If Korea wants to handle every assault and robbery case involving a USFK servicemember they can. However, they choose not to. Why is that? It could be because local authorities do not want to deal with the paperwork and the need for translators to properly handle a SOFA case. Instead of complaining about the SOFA Rep. Park should take measures to ensure local authorities are better resourced to handle SOFA cases if he wants more servicemembers tried in Korean courts.
However the real issue here is not the SOFA, but instead this is just another area where the Korean left is trying to draw a wedge between the US and the South Korean public. Remember the Korean leftists want the US military out of Korea because they feel this is what is hindering reconciliation with North Korea. However, the majority of the ROK public wants the US military to stay because of the threat from North Korea. So the leftists have to demagogue these fake issues like the SOFA to change the public’s opinion of the US military. They have for decades pushed this narrative that US troops are running around Korea committing all these crimes and getting away with it. This is of course proven by data to be untrue. This latest SOFA claim is just the continuing of this drum beat.
Via a reader tip comes news that ROK government held a meeting with USFK to address changes they want made to the US-ROK Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA):
Yeo Seung-bae (R), director-general for North American affairs at the South Korean foreign ministry, shakes hands with Deputy Commander of U.S. Forces Korea Thomas Bergeson in Seoul on Nov. 22, 2016, before a joint committee meeting on a bilateral agreement governing the legal status of American forces here, known as the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), to discuss a range of pending issues. (Yonhap)
South Korea and the United States on Tuesday had a joint committee meeting to discuss various issues on their agreement governing the legal status of American forces stationed in South Korea, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Tuesday.
The 197th joint committee meeting of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which defines areas of legal responsibility of the 28,000-strong U.S. soldiers here, was held at the foreign ministry in Seoul. The SOFA meeting is held once or twice a year, and this was the first time since last December that South Korea and the U.S. officials convened.
The foreign ministry said Yeo Seung-bae, the foreign ministry’s director-general for North America and his counterpart Thomas Bergeson, deputy commander of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK), touched on issues such as education of American forces on local law and customs, the USFK’s stable employment of South Korean workers and environmental problems near the U.S. bases here.
The ministry added that the two sides also talked about implementation measures taken after a live anthrax sample from a U.S. military laboratory was shipped to a local military base by mistake and caused alarm bells to go off in the country last year.
The meeting took place before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump — one of whose campaign pledges was to have allies, including South Korea, pay more for American troops stationed in those countries — took over the White House. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but the ROKs are still complaining about the oil leak issue in the Seoul subway system they have been blaming on Yongsan Garrison for years now. You would think if the oil leak was coming from Yongsan they would have found it by now. The other thing in the article that caught my attention was that they are still complaining about GI crimes. The article even states that the US military crime rate has steadily dropped since 2010 from an already extremely low crime rate compared to the surrounding Korean population.
You can read more about the US-ROK SOFA at the below link:
Just another example of how Okinawa has turned into South Korea during the Roh Moo-hyun administration years of the early 2000’s:
The United States and Japan announced new procedures Tuesday aimed at ending status of forces agreement protection for some civilian base workers, two months after an alleged homicide by a contractor touched off massive protests targeted at the American military on Okinawa.
The new procedures would place civilians into four categories and exclude workers from SOFA who already have Japanese residency visas, according to a joint statement issued Tuesday evening.
It remained unclear after a news conference Tuesday whether the new procedures under negotiation would mean fewer SOFA-sponsored jobs; however, the statement calls on the U.S. and Japanese governments to clarify SOFA’s scope by “evaluating categories of positions eligible for status as members of the civilian component.” [Stars & Stripes]
It looks like contractors are going to have to sit in on mandatory Powerpoint briefs now as well just like servicemembers.
Defense Department civilians and contractors in Japan are now expected to attend the same training events as their active-duty counterparts, Dolan said.
“For contractors and civilians under SOFA, I have added contract specifications that all workers will sign an acknowledgement of SOFA responsibilities, which can later be used, if needed, in any adjudication or incident review,” Dolan said in a prepared statement Tuesday.
Here is another example of the Japanese government putting unreasonable expectations on the US military in Japan:
Defense Minister Gen. Nakatani praised the U.S.-Japan security alliance but also called on the U.S. military Tuesday to “eradicate driving under the influence” of alcohol. Nakatani noted that an Air Force staff sergeant was arrested by Japanese police on DUI suspicion during curfew hours on Monday, despite recent restrictions on Okinawa.
Has Japan ended DUIs in their military? Of course not because when it comes to large populations there is always going to be crime committed. What is important is what is the trends of the number of crimes committed? For US Forces on Okinawa statistics have shown that per capita they commit crime at a much lower rate than the surrounding population.
It figures the SOFA would come up in response to the anthrax scare at Osan AB:
South Korea is considering revising its military agreement with the U.S. to prevent another accidental shipment of live anthrax to the South, a ruling party lawmaker said Monday.
Safety jitters over biological weapons flared up after the U.S. military said last month a U.S. Defense Department laboratory had mistakenly sent a live anthrax sample to the U.S. Forces Korea’s Osan Air Base, south of Seoul.
Public concerns did not subside despite the USFK announcement that the sample was destroyed before inflicting any damage.
“(The government and the ruling party) decided to review necessary enhancement and supplement measures after determining whether there is a problem in the management and process of the Status of Forces Agreement,” Saenuri Party Rep. Won Yoo-chul said after a policy coordination meeting with Vice Defense Minister Baek Seung-joo. Seoul will discuss any revisions at a joint SOFA committee meeting with the U.S., planned for July, the lawmaker said. [Korea Herald]
This is pretty much just something to appease the masses in Korea who believe all the lies put out by the media and anti-US activists that claim that the Korean police are unable to investigate crimes due to the big, bad SOFA:
South Korea and the U.S. will discuss introducing new guidelines on investigating American soldiers suspected of crimes in a meeting of the South Korea-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement Joint Committee.
In the meeting slated for Wednesday, Seoul will ask Washington to “positively consider” South Korean investigative authorities’ request to transfer American suspects accused of crimes into the custody of the South before indictment.
The new guidelines will be similar to those that the U.S. and Japan agreed to after a rape case involving a U.S. soldier in Okinawa in 1995. After the rape case, the U.S. agreed to “favorably consider” handing over suspects accused of heinous crimes to Japan before they have been indicted. [KBS Global]
I long ago showed the problems with the anti-US activists complaints about the US-ROK SOFA and I am still awaiting for one person to point out an example of a crime committed by a GI off duty and the USFK refused to hand him over? The anti-US activists keep complaining about GI’s getting away with crimes and can’t point out a specific example of when this happened.
A myth in Korea that is persistently held by many in Korean society no matter how discredited it is, is the belief that Korea has signed an unfair Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the United States. A SOFA is a document signed between the US and the host country of US military personnel in order to clarify each side’s rights and responsibilities in regards to a variety of issues that arise with the stationing of US troops in a foreign country.
A SOFA between different nations is never the same because each nation has different legal and political systems that influence the way in which a SOFA is written. For example in the United States people expect that someone accused of a crime should have the right to remain silent and have access to lawyer. It is important to realize with Status of Forces Agreements, that unlike civilians, troops are ordered to go overseas. Since troops are under orders they are owed the legal protections they would find in the United States. Ambassador Thomas Hubbard summarizes this best, “we sent them under our system, and we owe them those protections.”[i]
Not all countries the United States has troops in respect these rights. For example the SOFA between the US and Japan allows the military to hold servicemembers accused of crimes until they are indicted by a Japanese court, to which then they are handed over to Japanese authorities[ii]. The holding of a servicemember prior to indictment is to protect their rights to remain silent, not to have coercive interrogation tactics used against them[iii], and have access to a proper lawyer, which is not something readily available to them if held by local Japanese authorities[iv]. It is legal differences such as this that make detailed status of forces agreements necessary.
The US-ROK SOFA
Like all other nations that hosts US troops, Korea has its own SOFA in regards to the stationing of United States Force Korea (USFK) personnel in the country[v]. Here is how USFK summarizes it responsibilities under the US-ROK Status of Forces Agreement:
The SOFA sets forth each nation’s responsibilities with respect to many subjects, including facilities and areas used by U.S. forces, entry and exit of U.S. personnel, customs, taxation, criminal jurisdiction, claims procedures, health and sanitation, use of utilities and USFK’s employment of Korean citizens.
The SOFA applies to members of the U.S. armed forces, civilian employees, invited contractors, technical representatives and their dependents. Civilian and military personnel of the U.S. Embassy and JUSMAG-K enjoy privileges under the SOFA, but are covered by separate agreements with the ROK government.
SOFA-status personnel are obliged to respect the laws of the ROK and abstain from any activity inconsistent with the spirit of the agreement and, in particular, from any political activity. In some cases the SOFA supersedes or abridges Korean law. For example, active-duty military personnel are exempt from passport and visa requirements and SOFA-status personnel are exempt from Korean taxes on wages and salaries paid by the U.S. government. […]
The SOFA also fully acknowledges the ROK government’s right to exercise criminal jurisdiction over USFK personnel accused of violating Korean laws. Accused military personnel may be placed in ROK custody upon indictment in serious cases, and the ROK may retain custody upon arrest in some of the most serious murder or rape cases. Civilians may be placed into ROK custody if the charges are serious and their presence for trial cannot be guaranteed.[vi]
The original SOFA was established in 1966 and has numerous revisions over the years with the most recent revision coming in 2001 that take into account the maturation of the Korean legal and political systems, which leads to the transfer of more rights and responsibilities to the Korean government.
However in Korea the SOFA has become a very convenient issue for the anti-US movement in the country to demagogue in order to create anti-US sentiment within the general Korean population. Like many of their other misinformation operations in Korea, the anti-US groups have succeeded in creating a widely held belief in the country that US servicembers can literally get away with murder and there is nothing the Korean government can do to stop them.
The 2000 Yongsan Water Dumping Scandal
One of the more recent and well known attempts to pass off this disinformation to the general Korea public was with the 2000 Yongsan Water Dumping Scandal where a USFK mortician ordered 20 gallons of formaldehyde to be disposed of down a sink in the mortuary. The formaldehyde was of no threat to the public because it was diluted with water and passed through two different water treatment plants before the wastewater was discharged into the Han River[vii]. Despite these facts the anti-US groups in coordination with their media allies were able to launch ferocious anti-US protests over this issue claiming that USFK was intentionally poisoning the Seoul city water supply and exposing everyone in the city to cancer. These groups distorted the amount of chemicals poured as well as the fact that they could not cause any cancer because they passed through two different water treatment plants.
Korean activists protest the dumping of formaldehyde by a USFK mortician.
These were inconvenient facts that were simply ignored. The anti-US groups also demanded that the USFK mortician be tried in a Korean court even though under the SOFA he was legally not eligible to fall under Korean jurisdiction since his alleged crime happened on duty. According to the US-ROK SOFA, all crimes committed on post or while on duty anywhere in the peninsula fall under USFK jurisdiction. Any crimes committed off a US military facility while the servicemember was off duty falls under Korean jurisdiction. The case of the mortician did not meet either criteria. Despite this the mortician was tried in absentee in a Korean court and fined. USFK actually paid the fine, but the anti-US groups were not happy with the fine and demanded a re-trial. Thus the Korean courts re-tried the case even though they had already reached a verdict. In the re-trial the mortician was sentenced to six months in jail, which was a longer sentence than what a child molester in Korea would receive[viii]. This was all because of the Korean court’s attempt to appease public sentiment instead of holding a fair trial to render justice.
This issue gave the anti-US groups a platform to bash the US-ROK SOFA, but if anything this issue only demonstrated to the United States why the nation needs a SOFA with Korea in the first place, to protect US servicemembers from politically charged trials. Even more telling is that Korean logging companies that were caught dumping 271 tons of lethal chemicals directly into the Han River without passing through any water treatment plant were simply fined with no one receiving jail time yet the USFK mortician is sentenced to jail[ix]. Such hypocrisy in the Korean courts and subsequent bashing of the US-ROK SOFA is not uncommon in Korea and the greatest example of this is the aftermath of the 2002 armoured vehicle accident.
2002 Armoured Vehicle Accident
On June 13, 2002 a USFK armoured vehicle struck and killed two thirteen-year-old Korean schoolgirls walking to a friend’s birthday party. The incident was clearly a tragic accident that led to apologies from every commanding general in USFK, the US Ambassador to Korea, and even President George Bush himself. In accordance with Korean law USFK payed over $150,000 to each of the effected families in compensation for their loss. Additionally $22,000 was raised for the two families through a candle light vigil fundraiser held by US soldiers after the accident and another $30,000 was eventually raised by US soldiers to fund a memorial for the two girls.[x]
Despite all of this, the anti-US groups were able to very successfully portray this accident as an act intentionally committed by US soldiers and that they were exempt from Korean justice because of an unfair SOFA. This perception only grew when the two soldiers were acquitted of negligent homicide charge after the conclusion of a military court martial. The USFK Commanding General Leon LaPorte felt that a military court martial could be used to disclose all the facts in an open setting to show the Korean public that this was simply a tragic accident. General LaPorte however unintentionally fed the frenzy because the perception of a court trial in Korea is very different from what Americans perceive trials to be in the US.
In the US defendants are presumed innocent and trials are held to have an open debate about the facts of the case with a verdict rendered by either an impartial judge or jury. In Korea when someone goes to trial, they are already presumed guilty; the only question to be found out during the trial is how guilty that person is. So when the two soldiers were acquitted, the Korean public took it to mean a cover up by the US military because if they were not guilty to begin with than why put them on trial? This belief of a cover up by USFK validated many people’s feelings of why the SOFA with the US must be changed so Korean courts can try soldiers who commit crimes while on duty.
After the not guilty verdict, anti-US groups and their media allies were able to feed this perception of a cover up and injustice by making claims that US soldiers regularly avoid Korean courts by claiming on duty status. Others even claimed US soldiers were never tried in Korean courts at all because of the unfair SOFA. However, US soldiers have actually been regularly tried in Korea courts since the 1960’s with some even receiving the death penalty[xi]. With such information easily available to those willing to look for it, it was incredible to see how the Korean media would simply avoid such inconvenient facts in their reporting.
Legal Status of ROK Military Servicemembers
The most hypocritical aspects of the anti-US groups and the Korean media’s claims of an unfair SOFA is that servicemembers in the Korean military are not subject to civilian courts whether they commit a crime on or off duty. For example, four young Korean males attacked and stole two K2 assault rifles from two on duty Korean soldiers. The gang was not able to get any ammunition for the rifles until one member of the gang stole ammunition from his ROK Army unit while conducting his annual reserve training. The gang used the weapons to execute a bank robbery in 2002 where they stole over $11,000[xii]. When the gang was apprehended by authorities, all four of the gang not just the reserve soldier who committed a crime while on duty were tried in a ROK Army court martial.
Another more recent example is when in 2007 a South Korean man struck two patrolling South Korean Marines with his truck and then assaulted them with a knife, killing one of them and then fleeing with their weapons and grenades. A manhunt ensured for the killer and he was eventually apprehended a week later. However, even though he was a civilian he was handed over to the Korean military to be tried by a military court martial[xiii]. The fact that ROK military personnel never stand trial in Korean courts and the fact that civilians can be forced to stand trial in a military court martial is an inconvenient fact that many Koreans would rather not acknowledge. A USFK servicemember on the other hand is subject to Korean civilian court for any crime committed while off duty. With the differences in jurisdiction between the Korean and American militaries, it makes you wonder if the Korean civilian judicial system is not good enough for the Korean military than why should it be good enough to try American soldiers in? This is an inconvenient fact that is left unaddressed by the anti-US groups and their media allies
Korean Media Disinformation
This avoidance of inconvenient facts would continue long after the 2002 accident. A year after the tragic 2002 accident, a USFK servicemember was involved in a DUI hit and run that killed a Korean woman. The servicemember was handed over to Korean authorities and put on trial in Korean court. A Korea Times headline about the trial of the USFK servicemember read, “First US Soldier to be Tried in Korean Court”[xiv]. What is quite ironic about this article is that the first GIs tried in Korean court was in 1967 when an airman was tried for arson and assault [xv]. In the article covering the rape convictions the newspaper said, “This is the first case which the Republic of Korea has exercised criminal jurisdiction over an American serviceman”. Nearly 40 years later and the media is making the same claims.
Later on other incidents that happened between GIs and Koreans that were ultimately handled by Korean courts would be covered in the Korean media with passages that would say, “However, many U.S. soldiers have evaded the South Korean jurisdiction by citing their exemption from the SOFA clause by claiming on-duty status.”[xvi] This claim in the years after the 2002 accident was made repeatedly in Korean newspapers in regards to incidents with GIs. I e-mailed the newspapers that made these proclamations to substantiate their claim by providing one example of when a soldier was off duty and claimed to be on duty to avoid prosecution in Korean court, I did not receive one reply back.
Probably the most stunning hypocrisy of the SOFA criticism is the fact that the Korean military has status of forces agreements with every nation that is host to South Korean military personnel. In every one of these SOFAs, the ROK Army has primary jurisdiction of crimes committed by their soldiers both on and off duty. A couple of recent examples of when the ROK military’s SOFA was activated were both in Iraq and involved the deployment of the ROK Army’s Zaytun Division outside the Kurdish capitol city of Irbil. In the first case a South Korean soldier was playing with his rifle when an accidental discharge killed a nearby Kurdish soldier[xvii].
The SOFA was activated and the Korean soldier was handled by a ROK military court martial. In 2006 a Korean soldier driving a military truck was involved in a traffic accident where he caused the death of a 53 year old Kurdish politician. Once again the South Korean military activated their SOFA. This is what Colonel Ha Du-cheol told reporters after the accident,“The traffic accident occurred in the line of duty, so we are seeking ways to compensate the victim’s family.”[xviii] Sound familiar? It should because it is the same thing the US military did after the 2002 armored vehicle accident, which everyone demanded SOFA revisions for, however when a nearly identical situation happens with a Korean soldier it receives a small passage in the newspaper and no righteous indignation from anyone complaining about an unequal SOFA between Korea and Iraq.
The Korean military has never allowed one of their soldiers to be tried in a foreign host nation’s civilian courts, which shouldn’t be surprising considering that Korean soldiers do not even stand trial in civilian courts in their own country. Despite all of these inconvenient facts the anti-US groups and their media allies have the nerve to condemn USFK for an unfair status of forces agreement. The hypocrisy is really quite stunning.
US Camp Pollution Claims
In recent years the claims of GIs getting away with crimes in Korea because of the SOFA have become more muted probably because of the sheer hypocrisy of it has become too evident as I noted. Instead the anti-US groups and their media allies have decided to shift their focus back on to so called USFK environmental crimes. This logic is a recycle of the anti-US tactic used in 2000 in regards to the Yongsan Water Dumping Scandal. However, this time the anti-US groups were not making claims that USFK is poisoning the Seoul water supply, but rather that the bases USFK was closing down and handing back to the Korean government were grossly polluted and a threat to their surrounding communities. USFK was handing back the bases as part of a USFK transformation plan made between the United States and the Republic of Korea that would see all 2nd Infantry Division bases in the north of the country and Yongsan Garrison in Seoul closed down and consolidated on an expanded Camp Humphreys base south of Seoul.
This agreement was made in compliance with the SOFA, and the ROK government stated that the Korean government would receive all the USFK land “as is”.[xix] This is because in the SOFA it states that USFK is “not obliged … to restore the facilities and areas to the condition they were at the time they became available to the U.S. armed forces, or to compensate the government of the ROK in lieu of such restoration.”[xx] The reason for this is because the ROK government is receiving 33,000 acres of prime real estate with many modern buildings and amenities already constructed on them. For example when Yongsan Garrison in the heart of Seoul is closed out, the Korean government will be receiving 615 acres of land, nearly the size of New York City’s Central Park, right in the middle of a city with some of the world’s highest real estate prices. Plus the Korean government will be receiving at no costs modern facilities on the camps such as the brand newly refurbished hospital on Yongsan Garrison[xxi]. Any costs in regards to cleaning any pollution on handed over USFK camps can easily be covered with the profits the Korean government is sure to make from the sale of the acquired USFK land.
Korean activists protest the expansion of Camp Humphreys.
Once again the claims that the environmental clauses in the US-ROK SOFA are unequal compared to SOFAs the US has with Japan and Germany are totally unfounded as well. For example when the US closed camps in Germany the US was responsible for cleaning any environmental damage on the closed camps. This is a fact that the anti-US groups like to trumpet to claim that the US-ROK SOFA is unfair, however what they don’t tell people is that the German government was responsible for buying back all the facilities built on the camps. The money the US government received from the German government to buy back the facilities was more than enough to cover the environmental clean up associated with closing the camps[xxii]. In the US-ROK SOFA the Korean government receives all the facilities on the camp free of charge. For example the renovation and added wing to the Yongsan 121 General Hospital that the Korean government will receive free of charge cost USFK $39 million dollars. The cost savings the Korean government will receive from conducting an environmental clean up compared to paying to receive all the USFK facilities will be enormous.
Likewise the anti-US groups will also not mention the environmental provision in the US-Japan SOFA. In this SOFA the US has no responsibility to clean any environmental damage when handing over closed out bases. The Japanese government bears all the costs in cleaning the returned land[xxiii].
Unequal SOFA Claims
Finally another common claim is that Korea has an unequal SOFA with the United States compared to the one the US currently has with Japan or Germany. As I have already shown in regards to environmental regulations, this claim is totally bogus, however the rhetoric does have a grain of truth to it, but the vast majority of the people making the claims have no idea what they are talking about[xxiv]. Both SOFAs with Japan and Germany are reciprocal meaning that German and Japanese servicemembers have the same rights granted to them while in the United States as American servicemembers have while stationed in their respective countries.
The US-ROK SOFA however is not reciprocal and this is because Korea does not have permanently stationed troops in the United States while Japan and Germany do. The Germans and the Japanese have air defense soldiers stationed on Ft. Bliss, Texas for example. The Germans even have their Luftwaffe flight-training center located just outside of Alamogordo, New Mexico. South Korea on the other hand does not have permanently stationed units in the US and ROK military soldiers that do travel to the United States are usually soldiers there to attend training. International soldiers who attend US military training schools fall under a separate status of forces agreement.
This is the only reason how the SOFAs between these nations are unequal, but the common people who make the unequal SOFA claims think that Japan and Germany have greater rights over American servicemembers than Korea does when in fact the opposite is true. The latest SOFA revision in 2001, before the armored vehicle accident, gave Korean authorities the right to hold US servicemembers before their trials. In comparison to the US-Japan SOFA there is nothing written that says that the US has to hand over servicemembers to Japanese authorities before being indicted. However, the perception in Korea exists that the agreement does allow Japan to take custody of US servicemembers before a trial because the US military often hands over servicemembers suspected of serious crimes to the Japanese authorities as part of a gentleman’s agreement. When one views the US-ROK SOFA without an agenda, it is quite clear that it is not unfair compared to the over 80 other SOFAs the US has signed with other nations that host US troops[xxv].
Conclusions
If people in Korea want to complain about unfair status of forces agreements they can start with the agreements their own military has signed with foreign nations. As I have clearly demonstrated the US-ROK status of forces agreement is much more fair than agreements Korea has with other nations that host Korean troops. I have also demonstrated that the US-ROK SOFA is just as, if not more fair to the Republic of Korea than similar agreements signed between the US and with Japan and Germany.
The fact of the matter is that the anti-US groups and their media allies could care less about how fair the US-ROK SOFA really is. The anti-US groups find an issue that will appeal to the wider Korean public and then the groups demagogue the issue by only presenting facts that support their side of the story while ignoring all the other evidence that says otherwise. Their media allies than spread this disinformation around the country without challenging the veracity of the claims. These anti-US groups manipulate issues such as the US-ROK SOFA in order to create increased anti-US sentiment in the country as well as drive a wedge in the US-ROK alliance.
Past political leaders in Korea would not show any leadership in exposing the untruthfulness these groups’ claims and often time were complicit in their activities. With all this misinformation being passed to the public is it any wonder why the average Korean has such a skewed view of the US-ROK SOFA when all they are fed by the Korean media is one-sided propaganda?
[iv]David T. Johnson, The Japanese Way of Justice, (Oxford University Press – 2002), pg 83
95% of lawyers in Japan never bothered to attend their client’s interrogation , 2/3rd of lawyers in Japan never recommended that their clients remain silent, and 3/4th of Japanese lawyers never asked a judge to have the prosecutors release evidence. The book’s list of Japanese defense lawyers colluding with the prosecution is extensive.
