For many of South Korea's poor, stealing
from the U.S. Army is a trade and a livelihood. They steal from PXs and
officers' homes, raid railroad yards, pilfer from trucks on the move,
and diligently bleed oil pipelines . But after U.S.
soldiers on guard duty, potshotting at intruders, killed several
innocent bystanders, General George H. Decker ordered: “No more
shooting.” The thieving went on, the 40,000 men of South Korea's police
force seemed unable or unwilling to catch a single thief, and the U.S.
Army chafed with frustrated exasperation.Early one morning last week, a 14-year-old Korean boy named Kim Choon II
was nabbed by a guard inside the Eighth Army's aircraft maintenance
center at Ascom City, 15 miles west of Seoul. He had broken into
noncommissioned officers' quarters, pocketed a traveling clock,
cigarette lighter, flashlight, two PX ration books, $6 worth of scrip.
He was frog-marched to the guardroom, where a group of U.S. officers
and enlisted men, irked by 20 burglaries in six weeks, decided to teach
Kim a lesson.According to a report released later by the U.S. Army, Kim claimed that
he was first struck by a soldier. A captain came along, beat him some
more, jabbed his legs and arm with a knife point, Kim said. They shaved
his hair off with electric clippers, daubed coal tar on his head and
face. Then they packed 4-ft. Kim into a 3-ft. crate used to carry plane
parts, put holes in it to give him air and loaded their cargo aboard a
helicopter. The camp commander, Major Thomas G. James of Plymouth, Pa.,
flew the copter himself. James planned to leave the boy at a disused
field and make him walk back to Ascom City. But he found he could not
get the box open, and flew on to Uijongbu, twelve miles north of Seoul.
'T have a box of spare parts on board,” he radioed the field. When the
box was unloaded, a Korean soldier heard “whimpering,” found Kim
inside. “That's a slicky boy [slang for thief],” observed James. Freed,
Kim made his way back to Ascom City, told his story to Korean police,
who took him to a U.S. Army hospital. Doctors washed off the tar, found
Kim otherwise in “good condition.”Bursting with fury, Korean newspapers labeled the incident a “vicious
lynching,” demanded a status-of-forces agreement that would allow
Korean courts to try U.S. servicemen. General Decker hastily expressed
regret at the treatment given the boy, “even though he was caught in
the act of stealing” , and promised “appropriate action.”
