SOFA meeting due over anthrax mishap

By Yi Whan-woo

Korea and the United States have launched a joint task force to investigate the accidental shipment of a live anthrax sample to a U.S. military base here in April, the government said Sunday.

In a joint statement, the foreign and defense ministries said the working group will begin their probe by visiting the U.S Forces Korea’s (USFK) air base in Osan, Gyeonggi Province this month. This is one of the 18 U.S. bases, both home and abroad, where the Pentagon delivered the deadly bacterium by mistake via FedEx between March 2014 and April this year.

The Seoul-Washington Joint Working Group (JWG) will be comprised of officials from the two countries’ defense, foreign, health, agriculture and food ministries and other related agencies, plus private legal and microbiology experts.

The JWG will be co-led by Maj. Gen. Chang Kyung-soo, director-general for policy planning at the Ministry of Defense and Maj. Gen. Robert Hedelund, commander of the U.S. Marine Corps in Korea.

The group will operate under the Seoul-Washington Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) Joint Committee, which will run a separate session in the Korean capital, Wednesday, to discuss related issues.

The SOFA committee has 20 sub-committees. A director from Seoul’s related ministries and a colonel from the USFK usually serve as co-heads of one of the sub-committees.

The two allies elevated the rank of the JWG leadership given the serious nature and gravity of the incident, according to the government.

The Wednesday meeting will be co-chaired by Shin Jae-hyun, director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ North American Affairs Department, and Lt. Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy, the USFK’s deputy commander, as stipulated by SOFA regulations.

The Pentagon announced its mishandling of the anthrax samples on May 27. The USFK acknowledged that it received one of them, saying 22 personnel of its may have been exposed to anthrax spores. It said that all of the personnel were given precautionary medical treatment, such as antibiotics and vaccinations, and have shown no signs of possible anthrax exposure.

It also said the sample has been destroyed and poses no risk to the public.

The incident triggered controversy over the need to revise SOFA in order to prop up legal and systemic efforts to prevent biological weapons and other potentially dangerous material entering the country.

SOFA oversees the mutual interests of the two countries and sovereign immunities of U.S. soldiers and their dependants, and contractors in Korea.