Road deaths ignite Korean anti-Americanism

By Don Kirk

Published: THURSDAY, AUGUST 1, 2002

UIJONGBU, South Korea: On a concrete wall surrounding Camp Red Cloud, a small U.S. Army post here, an identification photograph of Sergeant Mark Walker stares blankly from dozens of posters proclaiming him "wanted" for the "crime of murder."

As banners beside the wall declare in large Korean lettering, Walker was driving a 57-ton armored vehicle that crushed to death two 13-year-old girls as a convoy passed their village on its way to a training range about 19 kilometers (12 miles) north of Seoul. The accident June 13 has become a focal point for local opposition to the presence of the 37,000 U.S. military personnel on Korean soil.

"Basically, the entire country is galvanized behind this incident," said a U.S. official in Seoul, speaking anonymously. "It will be forever brought up in news articles that we callously ran over these two girls. I don't think we are going to recover from this."

On Tuesday a group of South Koreans charged onto the main U.S. base in Seoul and attacked U.S. soldiers to protest against the accident. The American command, called United States Forces Korea, said three staff members were kicked and beaten by the protesters, who were escorted off Yongsan Base by South Korean police. Seventeen protesters were detained.

Protests are expected to reach a crescendo Wednesday when several thousand people, led by a coalition of students and clergymen, are expected to demonstrate in central Seoul. Posters throughout the region announcing "the 49th day of mourning" — a critical date after any death in Korean culture — urge crowds to converge in front of the Seoul City Hall and the nearby U.S. Embassy.

On July 5, the U.S. Army charged the driver of the vehicle and another sergeant with negligent homicide in the deaths of the girls. On July 10, the South Korean Justice Ministry asked the U.S. command to transfer jurisdiction over the two soldiers to a Korean court.

Under a bilateral agreement, the U.S. command has jurisdiction over U.S. military personnel while on duty. But the command can transfer jurisdiction to the host country on a case-by-case basis.

Anti-U.S. activists have rejected as insincere a series of official U.S. apologies for the accident. In a meeting Tuesday with representatives of a group called the Civil Society Solidarity Network, the U.S. ambassador, Thomas Hubbard, again apologized but said the U.S. command "had done all it could" since the tragedy occurred, according to a member of the network.

Hubbard promised to consider "the Korean people's feelings," according to this account, but said the final decision on whatever happened to the two sergeants responsible for the accident "lies in the hands of the commander" of U.S. forces in South Korea.

U.S. apologies have been little reported in the South Korean press, prompting the U.S. command to issue a rare complaint over what it said were "many inaccurate reports that have created false impressions in the Korean public."

Every day protesters carry signs outside Camp Red Cloud, about 1.5 kilometers from the base of the U.S. 2d Infantry Division, whose 13,000 soldiers form the first line of defense on the historic invasion route from the Demilitarized Zone between South and North Korea, 24 kilometers north of here.

"President Bush must publicly apologize to the families of the girls," a young woman shouted from a loudspeaker in a tent nearby that has become a command post for the protesters' campaign. "This killing was an act of murder, not negligence. Turn over the killers to the Korean government."

Yoo Soon Buk, whose son was in the same class with one of the girls, said, "Every day I go to the site of the accident." Carrying a sign with pictures of the girls near the gate of Camp Red Cloud, Yoo said she would continue to demonstrate until President George W. Bush apologized and the two sergeants on the vehicle were tried in a South Korean court.

How much average Koreans support the protest is far from clear. Radicals are viewed as a fringe element, and polls show that a majority of South Koreans favor the conservative candidate in the presidential election in December. He rejects reconciliation with North Korea and supports the U.S. presence. The same religious and academic figures have been turning up at anti-American demonstrations every Friday for the past few years outside the main gate of the U.S. headquarters in Seoul.

The commanding general of the U.S. 8th Army offered condolences hours after the tragedy. Then the commanding general of the 2d Infantry Division, the commander of U.S. Forces Korea and the U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific all sent apologies.