More details are being revealed about this guy’s history. Apparently he was stationed at Camp Bonifas basically right on the border, or near enough. He was a problem child and had missed morning roll call or head count formations before. This is a big deal in the military.
The pattern I’m sensing is a certain level of mischievousness or willful misconduct or whatever. It takes work to get incarcerated, there are status of forces agreements between the military. Ordinarily they are more than content to let the military handle any punishment for minor things but they do have a wing in their prison set aside for US military folks. They allow US personnel to periodically visit and inspect, but make no mistake they are in a South Korean prison.
One thing I was told by a local Korean, maybe this only applies to the smaller jails, the prisoner is responsible for his own food, basically. He suggested that it is important to have good relations with friends and family, because otherwise it is much more difficult if they don’t have money to pay for meals.
The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) is a treaty between the United States and the Republic of Korea, not between the militaries.
It’s been some years now that “minor things” which are not considered as occurring during the performance of one’s official duties are relinquished to the USFK for disposition. That’s because any misbehavior off base in South Korea is not minor.
The wing is for all foreigners incarcerated in South Korea, not just USFK personnel who get up close and personal with South Korea’s judicial system.
The SOFA requires periodic command visits, inspection, chaplain visit if requested by the prisoner, and provision of health and welfare items.
IIRC (not from personal experience, mind you), the prisoner is responsible for additional foodstuffs on top of what is provided by the prison. The prisoner is not going to be starved to death because he doesn’t have the wherewithal to get food from the outside.
Wait, he was scheduled to fly back on a civilian airliner? I thought all of our GIs overseas went there and back on military flights.
I know that both my father and my uncle, during their service, got some nice (brief) vacations in exotic places while on leave, traveling on military planes that happened to have a few free seats.
You’re correct I remembered wrong. It was on the edge of the JSA near the Bridge of No Return. Not the area you see filmed most of the time but still part of the JSA.
Normal PCS (permanent change of station) moves are on commercial flights. Sometimes from overseas they are military charter flights on civilian airlines. Even when I was deployed to Iraq we flew on a civilian plane from Texas to Kuwait. The only part of the flight that was on an Air Force transport was from Kuwait to Baghdad.
Space A flights like you are describing are often just cargo planes with a few extra seats.
From what I could gather this guy wasn’t under arrest. He had already been to Korean court and was fined for his crimes. The Army was sending him home to kick him out of the Army. Administrative penalties not criminal. If it was agreed under the SOFA that he be tried in Korean court then the Army wouldn’t also charge him criminally. They would just chapter him out, probably on a less than honorable discharge.
Right. The type of discharge is determined by court-martial (for Dishonorable and Bad Conduct Discharges) or administrative action such as “being chaptered out”. The character of service is determined by a matrix in the DOD separation instruction based. The South Korean civilian authorities were finished with him–arrested, tried, incarcerated, and released–so he was yet again the US Army’s problem.
Does “whatever” include mental illness? I regularly encounter people I think act willfully in certain ways, only to be told that is a manifestation of some pathology.
Sent by whom? Army or jail might have been a thing 50-60 years ago. It hasn’t been for a long time (if ever).
The Army’s Recruiting Regulation, 601-210, paragraph 4-8b: states that any “applicant who, as a condition for any civil conviction or adverse disposition or any other reason through a civil or criminal court, is ordered or subjected to a sentence that implies or imposes enlistment into the Armed Forces of the United States is not eligible for enlistment.”
It hasn’t been a thing in decades but it used to happen. It happened to my friend’s father who was in a street gang. He went to Korea during the war and then retired from the military 20+ years later. He said it saved his life.
Jerry Garcia stole his mother’s car at 17 in 1960 and was given the choice of Army or jail. He was about the worst recruit ever and was kicked out after less than a year.
There have always been anecdotes about it but any documented cases of a judge ordering it? I’m not dismissing it. It’s probably something that used to happen at some point which caused the regulation to be made. Just as often someone thinking they needed to get out of their situation before they got into legal trouble morphs into “I had to join or go to jail” when they get older. It has certainly been prohibited for many decades at this point. Any criminal convictions on your record will prohibit you from joining. It is possible to get a waiver for that but it has to be signed off at a high level.
It also might not have been part of the formal paperwork. I can imagine a judge telling a defendant “Well, now, son, if you were to join the Army, I just might be more lenient”.
It doesn’t officially happen now, and even back in the day the military probably frowned on it (you don’t get very high quality recruits that way). But lots of things in history have been officially disallowed or discouraged, but happened anyway off the books.
I can imagine it being more common in the draft era, particularly during times when military service was something to be gotten out of, rather than gotten into.
Similarly, I can imagine it was harder to get kicked out of the military during the same era. One of many reasons I think a draft could be disastrous in the modern US military. We’re used to troublemakers, but not to whole units of unwilling conscripts anymore (or even just people “volunteering” in the hopes of getting a better job than if they had waited to be conscripted, but no intention to stick around any longer than absolutely necessary). It’s a discipline problem no one now serving has ever had to wrap their minds around.