Several months ago I wrote about the most notorious neighbourhood in Seoul. Itaewon is roughly like Temple Bar in Dublin; it is the favoured playground for foreigners, it is perfectly located in the heart of the city centre and it has a vast array of bars, restaurants and entertainment facilities. But there are some major differences, too. For starters, Itaewon is an enormous city district; it is arguably not as popular with the locals as Temple Bar is to Dubliners; and, most importantly, it is full of US military personnel.
Walking from East to West, to the end of the main street before it connects with a highway spanning the wide Han River, you can’t help but notice the enormous Yongsan Garrison looming on the horizon. Itaewon is on the doorstep of this 620-acre military zone, which acts as the headquarters for the US military presence in Korea. Yongsan Garrison also served as the headquarters for the Imperial Japanese Army when they colonised Korea from 1910-1945.
Numbers vary depending on the source, but there are roughly 35,000 US servicemen and women still stationed in South Korea. The devastating Korean War, which ended in 1953, failed to bring about a peace treaty, so the two nations, North and South, are technically still at war. And this is why the American troops are still based in the country.
Itaewon, meanwhile, has turned into a modern-day ‘Wild West’. There’s a frontier that separates where the teachers, tourists and locals dine and drink from where the soldiers – commonly referred to as ‘GIs’ – have their fun in the evening. The frontier is merely the busy main street of Itaewon, but its symbolism is as important as the River Liffey is for defining the identity of Dubliners.
The American soldiers don’t have a solid reputation in Korea. Earlier this month there were reports that two US soldiers had been accused of raping Korean teenagers in separate incidents near the capital. The allegations sparked minor demonstrations outside the US embassy in South Korea, prompting the head of the military to issue an apology in the hope of appeasing the rising anger. Gen James Thurman, America’s top commander in South Korea, installed a 30-day curfew on the US forces for what he called “the incidents over the last several months”.
The strong anti-American sentiment is said to stem from the apparent support for the authoritarian governments that ruled South Korea after the war. But other incidents still linger in the public consciousness. In 1992, Korean prostitute Yun Geum-I was brutally murdered by a US army soldier, Kenneth Lee Markle, in horrific circumstances. Markle was sentenced to life imprisonment, but had the sentence reduced on appeal to 15 years. In 2006, he was released on parole and flown back to the US after serving 13-and-a-half years in jail.
Markle’s release angered many Koreans, who felt that crimes in general were not being punished enough. Their fears were exasperated in June 2002 when two 14-year-old schoolgirls were fatally injured by an armoured vehicle that was returning to the base on public roads. The US soldiers involved were found not guilty of negligent homicide in the court martial, sparking one of the biggest anti-American protests in modern Korean history.
When the military base moves out of Yongsan, freeing up hundreds of acres of prime real estate, it will move to a ‘new’ city called Pyeongtaek, roughly two hours south of Seoul. Whether this will have an impact of incidents involving US troops remains to be seen, but what is certain is that Itaewon will never be the same again.
Andrew Farrell works as an English language teacher in Korea.
