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Seoul seeks more legal control over US troops

SEOUL: President Kim Dae-jung said on Tuesday his government would push for greater legal jurisdiction over US troops in South Korea after a deadly traffic accident, which inflamed anti-American sentiment.

Last week, President George W. Bush joined a long list of US officials to apologise to South Korea since the June accident, in which a US Army vehicle crushed two schoolgirls to death on a village road north of the capital Seoul.

The accident, and the US court martial acquittal of the vehicle’s driver and navigator last month, have sparked street protests, with activists rejecting the apologies and demanding the withdrawal of 37,000 US troops based in South Korea.

Kim directed his officials to press for a revision of the bilateral Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) at the annual US-South Korea Security Consultative Meeting which opens in Washington on Friday.

The agreement grants the US military legal jurisdiction in cases involving soldiers on duty.

“The SOFA was revised last year to bring it to the level of those (US pacts) with Japan and Germany, but with this incident as a lesson, the two sides must work more closely to improve SOFA further and develop the Korea-US alliance in a future-orientated direction,” Kim was quoted as telling his cabinet in the transcript of the meeting released by his office.

The emotive case has come to a head as Seoul and Washington grapple with North Korea’s newly revealed nuclear arms programme and South Korea prepares to elect a successor to President Kim, who steps down in February.

Kim also condemned recent violent demonstrations by students and other activists who have thrown petrol bombs at or broken into US military facilities in Seoul and surrounding areas.

“Constructive criticism of US policies is permissible, but a tide of indiscriminate anti-American sentiment is of no benefit to the national interest,” he said.

The US Forces Korea (USFK) issued a statement on Monday warning against further encroachments on the more than 100 military bases it maintains in South Korea under a 50-year-old treaty designed to deter North Korea from attacking the South.

The USFK says the SOFA gives South Korea’s legal authorities more powers of intervention in US military cases than any other American ally — and more authority over American forces than they exercise over South Korean military cases. —Reuters

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