S. Korean, U.S. teams agree
on SOFA legal custody issueBy Jim Lea
Osan bureau chief
PYONGTAEK, South Korea — U.S. military members accused of crimes in South Korea will be turned over to South Korean authorities under a new agreement reached during this week’s Status of Forces Agreement talks in Seoul.
No actual revision of the agreement — commonly called SOFA — that governs the U.S. military presence in the country was announced. The current SOFA remains in effect until revisions are finalized and put into place.
The proposed revisions to the SOFA were announced in a joint statement released Thursday.
"The two sides agreed to transfer custody at the time of indictment with ensured rights of the accused," the statement said.
Under the current agreement, American military members indicted by Korean authorities remain in U.S. custody until their trial and all appeals are completed. If convicted and sentenced to prison, they serve the sentence in a Korean jail.
Turning custody over to local authorities upon indictment has long been the case in Japan, and Korean legal authorities have been demanding the same benefit for at least six years.
Although U.S. military officials hold criminal suspects in an Army correctional facility and deliver them to Korean prosecutors for questioning, prosecutors claim not having the suspects in their custody often prevents them from adequately investigating cases.
U.S. troops tried in Korean courts generally are convicted; however, they usually receive lighter sentences than they might have received in an American court or a military court-martial.
For example, American troops convicted of murder by Korean courts usually are sentenced to seven to 15 years. And those sentences often are reduced by appeals courts.
"The real issue is sovereignty," said a member of the People’s Action for the Reform of the Unjust ROK-U.S. SOFA, one of more than 100 civic groups that have been pressing for revision of the agreement in numerous street protests.
"If an American soldier breaks Korean law, by all rights he should be held by Korean authorities. Koreans arrested in the United States are held by American authorities and [U.S.] soldiers arrested in Japan are held by Japanese authorities.
"Not putting them in Korean custody makes it appear that the U.S. military respects Japanese sovereignty but not Korean sovereignty," said the man, who would not identify himself.
Negotiators also "explored ways not to ‘report’ traffic accidents resulting in property damage as criminal violations," according to the joint statement. The South Korean press and protest groups frequently complain that members of U.S. Forces Korea commit several thousand crimes annually. The vast majority of those "crimes" are traffic accidents, however.
The statement called the two days of talks held at the national government office complex in downtown Seoul "constructive and productive." It said they "provided the basic framework for the early revision" of the SOFA.
The U.S. delegation to the talks was headed by Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asia-Pacific Affairs Frederick C. Smith, while the South Korean side was headed by Song Min-soon, director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s North American Affairs Bureau.
Bae Gi-chul contributed to this report.
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