Welcome to BASE21

by Sharon Ayling

Thousands of outraged Koreans mounted daily protests outside U.S. military bases in south Korea after the late November acquittal of two U.S. soldiers in the deaths of two Korean schoolgirls.

In two separate trials that Korean activists called a sham, a U.S. military court cleared the Army sergeants of negligent homicide. The soldiers ran over the 13-year-old girls with their 50-ton tank-track vehicle on June 13 while on their way to military training exercises.

Shim Mi-Son and Shin Hyon-Sun had been walking on a country road in their village north of Seoul to get to a birthday party.

Anger over the tragedy has fueled the biggest demonstrations in years against the U.S. military, which occupies south Korea with 37,000 troops.

On Nov. 22, the day of the second acquittal, egg-throwing demonstrators in front of U.S. Army Camp Casey demanded that all the U.S. troops leave the country, and that the soldiers be handed over for trial in a south Korean court.

The next day in Seoul, young protesters burned a U.S. flag and shook their fists in front of the Korean War Museum as they chanted, "Let's drive out American troops." On Nov. 25, dozens of activists hurled firebombs into Camp Gray, a U.S. military base in Seoul.

"This is so outrageous I can hardly speak," the Rev. Moon Jung-Hyun, a leader of the Pan-Korean Committee, said of the acquittal. "This clearly indicates that we are not a sovereign nation. If these soldiers are not guilty, then we say that the entire U.S. military is guilty."

The Pan-Korean Committee, which is leading the struggle, is composed of 150 civic groups from all sectors of Korean society.

The trials' outcome confirmed the widespread view that U.S. military courts unfairly favor U.S. military personnel accused of crimes against Koreans. The military accord that governs U.S. troops in Korea--the Status of Forces Agreement--gives the United States jurisdiction over its soldiers in all cases.

In a letter to U.S. President George W. Bush, the Pan-Korean Committee wrote that SOFA is "a clear violation of the spirit of international law, which states that the host country has the right to punish crimes committed in the host country's territory."

The letter also referred to Korean Ministry of Justice reports that document 7,381 crimes committed by U.S. troops between 1990 and 2001, noting that "in the majority of cases, those who committed the crimes were given very light punishment."

In a period of four months, over 1 million Koreans signed petitions demanding that Bush apologize, turn over jurisdiction to the Korean government and revise SOFA. In July, mass anger pushed the usually subservient Korean government into requesting jurisdiction, which Washington ignored. Even the right-wing candidate running in Korea's presidential elections was forced to call for revision of SOFA.

Taking the protest to the White House

After the U.S. Embassy refused to accept the million petitions, the Pan-Korean Committee formed a delegation to take its demands and petitions directly to the White House.

The delegation will be in the United States Dec. 2-9, traveling first to New York for a protest march and solidarity meetings, then to Washington for four days of picketing outside the White House, and then to Los Angeles for a final day of solidarity meetings.

On Dec. 3 in New York, Korean-American groups and the International Action Center will co-host a solidarity forum for the Korean leaders. Earlier that afternoon, the delegation and supporters will hold a protest march from the United Nations to Times Square. On Dec. 7, a bus will take solidarity activists to Washington, D.C., to join the delegation on their final day of picketing the White House.

For more information about the delegation's itinerary, readers can call the IAC at 212-633-6646 or go online to www.iacenter.org and select the Korea link.