Anti-American sentiment has eased over the last few years as Seoul and Washington maintain relatively amicable relations in the absence of high-profile incidents. More recently, however, crimes committed by American soldiers have surged, raising the need for the allies to come up with fundamental solutions.
On Saturday night, three American soldiers escaped into a U.S. Army base after staging a high-speed car chase in downtown Seoul, which led to a South Korean police officer shooting a soldier after being hit by a car. The U.S. service members ― a sergeant, a corporal and a private ― reportedly fired a BB gun at civilians from inside a car.
Two of the three soldiers appeared for questioning on Monday and admitted to shooting a BB gun and ramming into the officer. It remains to be seen what happened during the incident but it simply defies our understanding that the soldiers perpetrated such an outrageous crime. They fired at innocent passers-by on the street and drove through officers and people trying to block them from fleeing the scene.
The U.S. military apologized for the incident and vowed to cooperate fully with the police investigation. But the time for hushing up crimes by U.S. service members is long past, given the recurrence of such crimes.
In early February, six American soldiers were arrested for sexually harassing a Korean woman in her 20s on a subway. In July last year, U.S. military policemen were accused of handcuffing South Korean civilians over a parking brawl in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province. The number of crimes committed by GIs rose from 283 in 2007 to 344 last year, a 22-percent increase. But punishment has been slight with only four service members receiving custodial sentences although nearly 2,000 crimes were perpetrated by American soldiers in the five-year period.
There is a definite reason why crimes by U.S. soldiers have soared ― the difficulty to penalize criminals under the status of forces agreement (SOFA) governing the status of American soldiers, which is lopsidedly in favor of the U.S.
Currently, Korean police are authorized to begin investigations only when GI suspects are captured red-handed. If not, probes are impossible until the suspects comply with summons. That’s why the American suspects struggle to return to their bases by all means.
The U.S. Forces Korea need to keep in mind that more American soldiers feel tempted to commit crimes owing to irrational SOFA clauses. What is urgently needed is to let American service members know that they will pay the price for crimes through the revision of the SOFA.