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The mortician's tale: Time for US to leave Korea
By David Scofield

SEOUL - The mortician's tale that follows is the legal nightmare of a civilian morgue employee working for the United States military here. It is a small, concrete example that illuminates the depth of resentment among South Koreans toward the continuing US military presence in this strategically important allied nation.
And it's one more piece of evidence that despite the North Korean nuclear crisis, it's time for US forces to go, executing their long-planned East Asian redeployment - elsewhere.
The US deploys about 37,000 active-duty military personnel, and about the same number of civilian contractors, support staff and dependents, all of them covered by an agreement between the US and South Korea known as the the Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA.
As part of a plan agreed upon in 1992, the United States plans to shift forces south on the Korean Peninsula. The plan calls for a complete withdrawal from Yongsan base in Seoul and from bases along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) by 2008. The forces will be structured around two bases: one by Osan base at Pyongteak, the other around Camp Humphries in Daegu. The move conforms to changes in US military planning worldwide: creating a a lighter, more mobile force that can react faster to problems elsewhere in the region.
Now to the mortician: In February of 2000, civilian mortician Albert McFarland, employed by the US Forces in Korea (USFK), ordered his staff to dispose of about 120 liters of embalming fluid down a drain in the mortuary at the US Army base at Yongsan in the center of Seoul.
The fluid had been treated at two waste-treatment plants before reaching the Han River, where this capital city gets its drinking water, and later simulation tests indicated the fluid was not toxic when it reached the water. Still, it created a furor.
Toxicity questions aside, McFarland did violate US military environmental regulations while on duty. But similar and far more egregious violations by Koreans have received relatively little notice and little or no punishment.
Accord grants US jurisdiction in cases of US personnel
The Status of Forces Agreement between the United States and the Republic of Korea, a legally binding treaty first concluded in 1966, defines the rights and obligations of both the US forces and the Korean host government. Article 23, Paragraph 4 of that accord states that violations committed by on-duty personnel under SOFA coverage shall fall under the exclusive jurisdiction of the US military.
Prompted by the current emphasis on "independent" politics - greater assertiveness and a relative distancing from the US - the South Korean Ministry of Justice pursued the mortician's case, tried McFarland in his absence, and ordered him to pay a fine of US$4,000. The fine was paid and the USFK suspended McFarland for 30 days without pay.
Still not satisfied and seemingly undaunted by the law (giving jurisdiction to the US and presumably containing protections against double trials and jeopardy), the Seoul District Court and the Ministry of Justice pressed on, concluding that McFarland and the USFK should be punished further. A retrial was ordered.
This January 9, almost four years after the original incident, McFarland was sentenced, once again in absentia, to six months in prison. The second trial and sentencing underscored what observers call South Korea's penchant for the rule by law rather than the rule of law. The handling of this case presents a serious legal challenge to the US military, dependants, contractors and others affiliated with US forces in Korea.
McFarland has filed an appeal of the South Korean decision, though the US doesn't recognize Korean jurisdiction. He remains closeted in Seoul; he isn't talking; his only contact is through his lawyer.
The agreed-upon Status of Forces Agreement puts specific protections in place so that justice in foreign countries cannot be arbitrarily or politically applied to US military personnel - but this legalistic nicety does not seem to resonate in South Korean officialdom. Similar agreements are in place in other countries, and elsewhere the US is more confident in entrusting some legal affairs to national governments, given their degree of juridical sophistication and genuine independence from governments and political pressure. South Korea hasn't made it to the club of Japan, Britain and Germany when it comes to accords of mutual trust concerning US forces.
Alleging US 'poisoning' of Seoul's water
South Korean officials and figures in Korea's ubiquitous non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have railed against the mortician, McFarland, citing what they called his "attempt to poison Seoul's water supply" - as it has been described in local news reports.
However, as evidence of a double standard, there has been strikingly little coverage or discussion of the 15 Korean men arrested just last November for dumping 270 tons of formaldehyde into the Han River. The dumping site was less than three kilometers from where Seoul's drinking water is collected.
This sounds like a witch-hunt, but why?
This tide of anti-Americanism, known as "independencism", that President Roh Moo-hyun rode to power slightly more than a year ago was largely - though not exclusively - predicated on the deaths of two middle-school girls. They were struck on June 13, 2002, by a large armored vehicle driven by two US servicemen near the village of Donggucheon.
The accident investigation fell within the jurisdiction of the USFK, but the United States involved the Korean National Police at every stage of the investigation.
But the Korean people, all too familiar with their own nation's less than impartial approach to law and justice, became convinced that a cover-up was taking place. Although the US and South Korea made public much of the evidence and allowed coverage by the Korean press at an inquest, the belief in cover-up persisted and still persists. It is perpetuated by the press and by independence-minded Internet users.
Five months after the girls' deaths and the conclusion by the Korean National Police and USFK that the tragedy had been an unavoidable accident, the USFK, under its new four-star General Leon LaPorte, initiated a formal court martial at an infantry base in Dongducheon, near the accident site. Those proceedings were open to the victim's families, concerned NGOs and the press - in an effort to demonstrate further the transparency and fairness of US judicial proceedings guaranteed by SOFA.
The US forces, however, gave little consideration to how the trial would be interpreted by Koreans, especially in the run-up to a presidential election. Choi Woon-sung, a former Korean ambassador and Seoul-based professor of international law, said in an interview: "The worst thing the US can do is dig this all up again [with a court martial]. It's not the Korean way and it won't be understood." He was right.
Court martial itself seen as proof of guilt
The trial was viewed by most Koreans as an acknowledgment of the Americans' criminal guilt. Why, they reasoned, would the United States place its own people on court martial unless it knew the defendants were criminally responsible? The trial ended in acquittal for the soldiers - who many US-based legal experts maintained should not have been put on trial in the first place. The acquittal generated a flood of angry anti-US nationalism, and protesters poured into the streets of Seoul and other South Korean cities.
Protesters charged that SOFA "allowed them to get away with murder", demanding the arrest of the two US servicemen and the scrapping of the military agreement.
"Pro-independence" feelings, which permeated the election campaign in the autumn and winter of 2002, had been lying just beneath the surface for decades and had begun surfacing in earnest after the North-South Summit in 2000.
After former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung's groundbreaking - and now controversial - summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in June 2000, and their Joint Communique focusing on "peace, independence and national unity", a fundamental policy and public relations shift was undertaken. It was a distinct move away from the previous harsh depictions of the North and its leadership.
Official announcements also changed radically, presenting kinder, gentler descriptions of the North, and these dominated the print media and airwaves. School curriculums were "updated" to reflect the new, politically correct view of North Korea and some of the nastier bits of recent history concerning North Korea were excluded or extracted from their historical context. Within the nation's universities, academics long quiet about their more tolerant views of the North came loudly to the fore - some assuming the intellectual high ground at South Korea's influential educational institutions.
Perceptions of North Korea began to change, and with them the perceptions of the United States and the Status of Forces Agreement. These reordered perceptions occurred especially among those in their 20s and 30s - a generation that never knew the sufferings caused by North Korea's preemptive attack on the nation 50 years ago.
Older Korean War veterans, young progressives, academics and others view the US Forces in Korea with emotions ranging from reverence to envy to contempt. The US presence is still viewed by many as a necessary evil, vital to the nation's defense. Many others view it as the primary impediment to reunification of the divided peninsula.
All but the most radical find common ground in the "economic necessity" argument for the presence of the US forces, but few seriously support the US presence beyond the pragmatic economic and security reasons.
Roh pledges to redress 'inequities' in US accord
In Roh's presidential election campaign, standing before tens of thousands of Koreans demanding that the US give "pride" back to the Korean people, he pledged to "redress" what he called the seriously prejudicial clauses of the Status of Forces Agreement. Roh advocated a new understanding and model of enlightened relations that would reconcile the presence of the United States with the developed status of the country, and with the Korean people's self-perception as an economically and politically important nation.
But the other side of the argument - the one that sees fundamental shortcomings in South Korea - garners very little attention within the Korean press, even among "conservative" dailies such as the Chosun Ilbo. Proponents of this argument cite the domestic institutional weakness and cycles of corruption that inhibit international faith and trust in South Korea's judicial and other institutions.
Seoul's systemic problems, they say, make it impossible to relax and revise the current Status of Forces Agreement with the US so that it more closely resembles similar but more liberal US military agreements in Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom.
In sharp contrast to the strident rhetoric of Roh's campaign, the previously scheduled SOFA talks shortly after his inauguration produced no great changes, and South Korea signed the treaty without fundamental changes or amendments. The talks were held behind closed doors, but the implication leaked by Seoul to the press was that the weak economy and the North Korean nuclear crisis gave the South Korean authorities little choice but to acquiesce. This interpretation has now become a victim drama play that has become a staple of the country's political system.
South Korea's institutions could be shored up. This is a wealthy, well-educated nation with abundant human capital. But the needed fundamental political and judicial development and reforms are obstructed as lawmakers and officials manipulate national institutions to further their narrow political agendas. Underlying issues remain unresolved, ensuring they will come to the fore as soon as it becomes politically expedient.
Tinkering with SOFA won't solve the problem
Tinkering with the Status of Forces Agreement won't settle the issue. If the US Forces in Korea acknowledged the right of South Korean authorities to prosecute in situations like the McFarland case there could be great US animosity toward Korean "justice". McFarland's six-month sentence - one month longer than that given a South Korean man recently convicted of sexually molesting a five-year-old girl - could rightly generate charges of political influence and prosecutorial bias, exacerbating dissent and animosity.
The only solution is to remove the distraction of the USFK: Remove the Status of Forces Agreement as an issue by removing the US military presence on the Korean Peninsula.
As long as the US military remains, so too will the nationalistic antagonism generated by the troop presence. The very visible presence of the world's most powerful military has been used for decades by political groups of all stripes to deflect criticism from domestic leadership and domestic problems.
Many observers, both Korean and Western, say the US now has an obligation, in support of South Korea's national development, to withdraw its military assets from the country.
Removing troops might seem unwise given the North Korea nuclear threat, but the changed socio-political environment on the peninsula has made it impossible for the US forces effectively to project foreign-policy objectives. South Korea's new policies of relative assertiveness and distancing itself from the United States are increasingly at odds with Washington's strategies.
Indeed, recent surveys indicate that most South Koreans believe the US is a far greater threat to their security than the North.
Recently announced US base closures and the southward movement of some troops is an important first step, but in an effort to promote national development and encourage the "equal" relationship the South Korean government and people have been loudly demanding, it's time for the US Forces in Korea to go.
David Scofield is a lecturer at the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University, Seoul.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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Europe Resisting Islam's Dark Ages
By Alexis Amory
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 28, 2004
Long a sea of tolerance that provided a buoyant platform for Muslim immigrants to preach a fundamentalist agenda, Europe seems only now to be waking up to the threat posed by some Muslims intent on bending their host societies to suit themselves.
The original intention, particularly in Britain and France, which admitted large numbers of citizens of their former colonies after granting them independence, was that Muslim immigrants to European shores would assimilate. Many did. But many primitive thinkers flooded into Europe only to be shocked by the enlightened society they encountered. Some groups developed an agenda of imposing their old ways and their religion on their host societies.
In the name of "tolerance", most societies in the West have done their best to accommodate these malcontents - mostly in defiance of the wishes of their own citizens. Now, the tide is turning.
France has just set the cat among the pigeons by announcing a forthcoming ban on the wearing of the hijab (headscarf) in the classroom. [Front Page Magazine January 23 '04 issue.]
In many areas ringing the large industrial cities in France, the Muslim population outnumbers the native French, and there is a perception that wearing the hijab is an act of aggression against the host society. Chirac himself, in a moment of rare candor, called it such.
Member of the Senate Jacques Myard, of Chirac's conservative party, is quoted as saying, "We are facing a genuine political policy that tries to enforce their own Sharia Law on the civil law which is not acceptable."
Eschewing nuance, he also said, "A lot of Muslim girls say that they wear the headscarf freely. But, in fact ... in most cases, [they're] motivated by religious fundamentalists and if you give them just a bit of a finger they will eat up your arm up to the elbow. So we have to be strict and very adamant - and say this is the way things are in France."
Seventy per cent of the French electorate have said amen to that and many moderate Muslims are fully in accord, some of them vocally so.
The first international figure to vocalize the threat of fundamentalism to his own country was Holland's Pym Fortuyn, a flamboyant millionaire businessman turned politician. Holland had long been the ne plus ultra of a tolerant, libertarian society preaching a multicultural message that was not necessarily endorsed by its citizenry.
Despite the "tolerance" required of the Dutch themselves, the Muslim immigrants were granted special rights and favors that did nothing to encourage assimilation. The government encouraged immigrant children to speak Turkish, Arabic or Berber in primary schools rather than insisting they learn in Dutch. Funding was provided for "ethnic diversity projects", including 700 Islamic clubs that were sometimes grabbed as showcases by radical clerics.
Assimilation? Forget it! Even now, 30 years later, between 70 and 80 per cent of Dutch-born members of immigrant families import their spouse from their "home" country, mostly Turkey or Morocco, perpetuating a fast-growing Muslim subculture in large cities, according to London's Daily Telegraph. This means Dutch Muslim men are rejecting Muslim women born in Holland and trawling for someone more ignorant and more obedient from their "home" country. The ones marrying female Dutch-born Muslims are foreign males who pay the girl's family to use marriage as a ticket into the West .
Fortuyn played a strong hand. A homosexual with a multi-hued history of amours, and with a deputy party leader who was not just black, but an immigrant, the left couldn't credibly accuse him of racism. He was the first to understand that the rigid and conservative immigrants, who kept themselves apart, wished to demolish the freedoms and tolerance of which Holland was so proud and were thus a threat to Dutch liberal society. He spoke to the fears of a large number of the Dutch who had kept quiet for fear of being branded "racist". Within a scant three months of forming his conservative party, which called for a moratorium on all immigration until those already in situ were assimilated, the party had already laid claim to 26 of Holland's 150 seats.
Had he lived, it is likely that he would have won the upcoming election and been Holland's prime minister today. But he was murdered almost two years ago - ironically, by a leftie animal rights activist, although what animal rights had to do with anything was never explained. So great was the sense of loss, that Fortuyn's funeral in Rotterdam drew vast crowds and outpourings of grief in an eerie echo of Princess Diana's funeral in Britain three years previously.
Without his brave and charismatic presence, Fortuyn's party fell apart, and the then-upcoming election was won by the usual suspects.
And that, you may suppose, was that.
But no. Two years after his assassination, mainstream politicians are beginning to speak out. Referring to the policy of teaching immigrant children in foreign languages instead of Dutch and encouraging immigrants to cleave to their own culture rather than fitting in with Dutch society, the leader of the Christian Democrats recently said, "Immigrants in the Netherlands top the 'wrong' lists - disability benefit, unemployment assistance, domestic violence, criminality statistics and school and learning difficulties."
And yes, you guessed it. Holland has just become the first country in Europe - perhaps the world - to declare a four-year moratorium on any fresh immigration, including "asylum seekers".
Another wealthy, tolerant European country, Spain, has also had a bracing flirtation with flinging open the windows and letting fresh air pour into the sour corridors of political correctness. A few days ago, a jury in Barcelona returned a verdict of guilty against a Muslim cleric who had written a book advising men how to beat their wives without leaving marks.
Mohamed Kamal Mustafa, who is the iman of a mosque in a small southern resort town, was sentenced to 15 months in prison and fined around $2,200. He wrote that, to discipline a wife, "The blows should be concentrated on the hands and feet using a rod that is thin and light so that it does not leave scars or bruises on the body."
Mustafa, who is all heart, cautioned that beating should only be used as a last resort. First should come verbal warnings and if that didn't work, there should follow a period of sexual inactivity to discipline a disobedient wife. Having seen Mustafa's photo, I'd say he'd be unwise to invest too much faith in the power of withholding his personal charms to get disciplinary results.
If that failed, he said, according to Islamic law, beatings could be then judiciously administered.
The Spanish judge tore into Mustafa, saying his book was "guided by an obsolete machismo that in places is very accentuated. That is against the principles of equality laid out in the [Spanish] constitution resulting in intolerable discrimination". And to cap it, he flung in that prospective readers of the book "do not live in the Arabian desert of the 14th century". So take that, you medieval lunkhead!
Mustafa protested that he was opposed to violence against women.
It was a Spanish human rights group which fought for three years to get Mustafa charged, which is noteworthy, because "human rights" groups commonly side with the multi cultis against civil order and demands that immigrants obey the law of their adopted land rather than the land they fled.
The winds of change are aflutter.
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