Itaewon, South Korea. On the town with the U.S. military
Young Kim
Itaewon, South Korea.
On the town with the U.S. military
Itaewon - A GI Camp-town
A mile or so outside of Yongsan U.S. Army Garrison in central Seoul, past the tourist shops and street vendors selling Bulls, Raiders, et al., apparel, past the Burger King and the newly-opened Orange Julius and down a series of narrow roadways packed wit h American soldiers who are falling in and out of scores of ramshackle clubs - Cadillac Bar, Love Cupid, Texas Club, Boston Club, the King Club, the Palladium, the Grand Ole' Opry - is one of the 180 GI camp-towns that exist outside of every significantl y sized military base in South Korea. Or, in the clever catchy jargon of the 37,000 U.S. troops stationed here to help keep the peace - Downrange.On any given night in Itaewon women in prostitution costume hang out club doors soliciting GIs; one part come on, one part contempt. An old Korean woman, hands clasped behind her back, spends the night strolling up and down Hooker Hill, approaching youn g GIs in their downy sports jackets asking "Lady?" as the GI, after questioning How much? and How old? follows her up the hill and down an alley. Later in the barracks the soldiers imitate mockingly, "Suckee, Suckee, fuck, I do everything, I go home w ith you," clinging to the full metal jacket fantasy that they're still occupying forces in the hooch village.
A drunk troop is screaming at his even drunker buddy who is up against the wall occasionally vomiting "Yo, let's go, these are American girls, not slant eyes. American girls!" A black soldier is dragged by military police out of a packed bar into a pack ed street screaming "Why me? Why me? What about him?" then breaking loose from the M.P.s who are asking for his ID card and unit commander and answering his own question bitterly, "Because I'm a nigger."
In the club eight drunk GIs are huddled together, jumping on top of one another on the dance floor while next to them Korean women dance with each other pretending oblivion. A sergeant holds up his beer mug and says with made-for-t.v. despair, "This got m e here, this is keeping me here."
A Korean woman outside a hostess club is yelling at a young soldier, "Get out, get out of here." The G.I. has his foot in the door, responding periodically with "bitch," "asshole." When he finally storms away she hisses after him, "Go home, your mummy wil l feed you."
A GI is in the middle of the street with his buddies, pummeling another GI and screaming, "I'm your worst nightmare," until M.P.s arrive
A black soldier who's a member of NFL (Niggas for Life) - a group complete with NFL baseball caps (banned by the Army command) and a member nicknamed O-Dog ("O-Dog don't give a fuck...O-Dog's Korea's worst nightmare") who's looking for payback over last nights brawl - is outside a club telling the story of how a short while ago some of NFL encountered a group of white soldiers sitting on the curb. The white soldiers made a mock plea for money ("Help the poor"). Words were exchanged. One white soldier u sed the word "boy." A fight ensued and NFL "Grabbed that white boy by the throat and BAM BAM." He demonstrates how the white soldier, dazed and wobbling, crumpled to the ground, as NFL tae kwon doed him in the face to finish him off. He told parts of the story over and over, occasionally interrupting himself with the exuberant, self-conscious pop psychology riff: "I had my sex tonight."
US Army - Home of the Underdogs?
Since the advent of the all-volunteer military in 1973, the enlisted ranks have for the most part been a place for young people with limited prospects; those looking to escape bad neighborhoods, bad families, bad job markets.A 1993 survey of new recruits found that they come from homes where 78.4% of fathers and 84.5% of mothers didn't have college degrees. They come from the ranks of the unemployed, working in dead end jobs as cashiers, in factories, at fast food franchises. A 1994 RAND study on Army recruiting trends listed the youth unemployment rate, which has risen almost 27 percent since 1989, as by far the most significant factor affecting the army's ability to attract high quality recruits.
The Department of Defense spends $207 million a year on advertising to reach this market and to pitch life in the military as an amalgam of vocational school, outward bound and character building camp replete with benefits. A way out and up.
But for many of the 176,000 new troops the US military recruits each year, the promise of employment opportunities, education and a better life often aren't realized.
According to a recent Government Accounting Office report, one out of every three recruits doesn't even complete the first term of enlistment. The base pay for a private is $199 a week before taxes and according to a Department of Defense Quality of Life report, in a recent year 11,000 military families overseas were eligible for food stamps.
Military recruiting literature states that offering money for college is the "...single most important product that they [recruiters] have to entice people into the military these days." And in fact, approximately 95% of the Army's new recruits sign up fo r the Montgomery GI Bill, where you contribute a nonrefundable $1200 into the program and (if you meet a number of conditions and qualify for certain bonuses) can earn up to $30,000 for college. But a significant number of these men and women are paying into a program they might never use.
Though the military spins the numbers a variety of ways, the bottom line, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs, is that 2.03 million service members have contributed into the program since it began in 1985, and to date only about 436,000 have a ctually used the benefits. Of those soldiers who did use it when they left the service, their average payment has amounted to about $7,000 dollars, $1200 of which was their own money. A substantially lower sum than the "$30,000 for college" that the mil itary uses in its advertising.
Army Character Building Programs
As for character building, the military model is in vogue today, invoked for everything from rehabilitating youthful offenders in boot camps to graduating wayward high school students. In some cities applicants for the police force are allowed to substit ute two years of military service for a required 60 college credits. The military also makes a point of grandstanding on morality issues, like the argument that allowing gay soldiers to enlist would be bad for morale, recently defeated legislation that would discharge all soldiers who tested HIV-positive, new legislation intended to ban the sale of pornography anywhere on U.S. military property and disallowing abortions at military hospitals.But in actuality, the military is an institution beset by a variety of destructive behavior in the enlisted ranks. In interviews with scores of soldiers the predominant theme that emerges is that they feel neglected and betrayed by an institution that has n't met their expectations and isn't concerned with their welfare. And they've responded in kind. Soldier after soldier tell stories of assaults, sexual violence, gang activity, serious alcohol and drug abuse, suicide, psychiatric problems and racial ho stility.
The statistics bear these anecdotes out. The military has a rate of heavy drinking for soldiers 18 to 25 years old twice as high as the civilian rate. A recent survey revealed that 5% of active duty personnel answered "yes" to the question of whether th ey've been the victim of actual or attempted rape or sexual assault in the last twelve months. In the last year there were 83 reported homicides and reports of gang activity at over 50 stateside bases.
And there have been a steady stream of incidents: soldiers with white supremacist ties are arrested for killing a black couple in North Carolina; a soldier is sentenced to death for opening fire on a formation, killing one and injuring 18, explaining, "I wanted to send a message to the chain of command that had forgotten the welfare of the common soldier"; 10 black soldiers at Fort Bragg beat a white GI into a coma off post near an IHOP; a soldier at Fort Campbell rams his vehicle into a crowd of fighting soldiers and civilians killing two people; two soldiers are shot dead, one injured at Fort Riley Kansas, the second double homicide at the base in less than a year; 14 service members are arrested for smuggling cocaine and heroin; 23 women working at For t Bliss military post file a class-action complaint charging that they have been harassed to pose nude or perform sexual acts; in Japan a service member is accused of exposing himself to a sixth grade girl; four others are sentenced for raping a 14 year o ld girl; another service member is arrested for slashing the throat of a Japanese woman and stealing her purse; two marines are arrested for assaulting and robbing a 56-year-old another Japanese woman; and a 12 year old girl in Okinawa is raped by three servicemen inciting a protest of more than 50,000 people.
It is overseas, where nearly a quarter-million American troops are stationed- primarily in Asia - where some of the most problematic elements of the military manifest themselves. A 1995 study by the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services sur veyed male and female soldiers stationed in 18 different installations overseas and found substantial alcohol problems, high levels of physical assaults (men on men), sexual assaults, racial hostility, depression, discipline problems, low morale and on so me bases a high number of suicide attempts and soldiers on anti-depressant drugs.
These are young men and women who are shipped to countries they know little about and have little interest in, who are disconnected from their culture and their families and arrive overseas with a misguided sense of superiority because of their role as a protecting force. Yet they find themselves ghettoized in GI camp-towns, on the bottom rung of society economically, denied entrance to clubs, bypassed by taxis, protested against, regarded on the street with wariness or utterly ignored - second-class cit izens in their own country, they're sent overseas to be treated like second-class citizens in other people's countries.
The soldiers - who feel let down by an institution that hasn't met their expectations and isn't concerned with their welfare, who typically consider the host nation as a GI-want-good-time camp-town writ large that is only interested in milking them for money - reciprocate. And often behave like the ugly Americans they are perceived as.
On-the-Spot Guidance from the Public Affairs Chief
I meet my Pentagon appointed public affairs contact, Jim Coles, Chief of Public Information for U.S. Forces in Korea (to be referred to hereafter as Public Affairs) at Yongsan Army Garrison in central Seoul, Command Headquarters for the Republic of Korea /US Combined Forces.A civilian employee of the Army, Public Affairs is the official source of information on relations between U.S. soldiers and Koreans and is regularly quoted in stateside newspapers and appears on CNN and NPR as a spokesman for the military. He's a heavy set, ex-military man in late middle age who doesn't seem too keen on helping me report. In fact, he seems to despise me. His attitude is basically: Reporter, shut your mouth and listen to me, there are absolutely no problems here. Anything short of th at enrages him.
Public Affairs' attitude is consistent with the army chain of command's reluctance to acknowledge any type of deviant behavior in the ranks. Every incident is dismissed as an aberration, a few bad apples. When I asked a Pentagon public affairs officer f or the numbers on crimes committed or on UCMJ actions, he tells me that's the old army, those problems are such a small part of today's military he's not even sure if they keep track of things like that. When I persist I find out that of course they do.
Public Affairs keeps me waiting in his office as he talks openly to his buddy on the phone about where to get a good Korean prostitute nowadays. He complains that some of these girls won't even touch an American guy now, preferring the rich Koreans and Japanese with their BMWs and asks rhetorically if his buddy can imagine how it feels to be snubbed by a whore.
Access to post means seems to mean listening unquestioningly to Public Affairs lecture me on Korean culture, offering "uh-huh" when he says Korean is "a completely fucked up language," "uh-huh" to "Korean women aren't used to foreigners because most Asian men have small penises."
Public Affairs insists that all the problems between GIs and Koreans are caused by the irresponsible reporting of the Korean press. In May of 1995 a large brawl broke out among American soldiers and Korean passengers on a subway train, the latest incident in a series of crimes involving GIs and Koreans. Eight months later, when the issue was still resonating in the press, Public Affairs' stateside newspaper quote was: "The American guys were giving better than they were getting."
He tells me I can only interview soldiers with an escort present and dumps me off to a 25 year old 2nd Lieutenant, Maya Danforth, who's been in Korea for 15 months. She's getting out of the Army in 23 days and is supposed to be my P.R. guide.
A short while into a conversation it turns out Lieutenant Danforth doesn't think much of the Army. They try to break you and if they can't break you they get rid of you. That's what's happening to me," she says. Danforth tells me she didn't get along wi th her company commander (who's since been discharged from the Army) and who retaliated by sending her for a psychiatric evaluation. She says the commander had half the company in alcohol rehab, the other half seeing psychiatrists.
On being stationed in Korea, Danforth complains that there is absolutely nothing for soldiers to do but drink and there is nobody here who really cares about the welfare of the soldier. "The army doesn't have morality principles," Danforth says, "They h ave principles based on is somebody going to get killed and am I going to get in trouble because they got killed."
"You would not believe the stuff that goes on here," she says.
Conflicts with the Natives on the Rise
In South Korea, where the U.S. military has been a presence since 1950, there are approximately 98 installations spread throughout the country - from small camps close to the North Korean border to posts that are closer to small towns, complete with golf driving ranges and mini-malls, all closed to non-military personnel.The hostility and separation between Koreans and American soldiers is palpable, off-post as well as on. In the barracks the KATUSAs (Korean soldiers assigned to U.S. military units) and the American soldiers are almost completely segregated, living in dif ferent rooms, with little interaction. American soldiers call the KATUSAs gophers, insist they're weird, gay, have no respect for their rank and are vaguely annoyed by the fact that they speak a different language and eat strange food.
American soldiers say Korean men are jealous because they get all their women. They call them gooks and mock their language during protests: "Yankee Go America," "Go Hell." The resentment the Americans feel toward Koreans isn't just expressed by the men . A female American soldier at one post, Specialist Danielle Moseley, says, "Korean women [speak English] when they want the GIs-'Buy me drinkee, I give you something,'" she imitates.
Other female soldiers say Korean women try to marry young GIs for "That big P.X. in the sky," and try to get a military ID "So they can sign their little friends in."
"GIs, they love Korean girls for their pleasure, they don't like KATUSAs I think," says PFC Yung Jin Yang, a soft-spoken 22 year old who's been a KATUSA for a year. Yang had looked forward to being a KATUSA, thinking that he'd be living and interacting wi th Americans and would have a chance to improve his English but he's so far been disappointed. He took me around off base, eager to introduce me to Korean food, explain the culture, the language, shocked that an American would ask him what a Korean word meant, would actually want to have a conversation with him. He thinks American soldiers take pleasure in ordering the college educated KATUSAs to mop floors.
Jin Soo Lee, a KATUSA who is Yang's roommate says, "Changing our position, U.S. and Korea, if a United States woman who could be your sister or your mother or your daughter, is dancing in front of Korean soldiers, how would you feel about that?"
Last year there were over 861 reported offenses committed by American service members involving the Korean public. The most recent incident was the September 11th arrest of Pvt. Eric Munnich, a 22-year-old soldier, who confessed to strangling Lee Ki Sun, a 44-year-old Korean woman, allegedly over an argument about payment for sex.
And there have been a steady diet of incidents, seldom reported in the stateside press, that have reinforced the tension. In the last year there has been regular protests and demonstrations by Korean nationals outside of U.S. military bases, including ni ne days of campus protests involving over 7,000 students, demanding among other things the removal of U.S. troops. There has been a fire bombing of a U.S. housing complex, 8 GIs were accused of beating two South Korean men who were trying to break up the ir fight with a cab driver, an 18-year old soldier was arrested for the aggravated assault of a 48-year old Korean woman outside of a club, another soldier was arrested for breaking and entering and attempted rape, yet another was accused of raping and b eating a bar hostess, a civilian employee of the Army was arrested for beating a Korean woman who later died of her injuries and a host of other arrests and accusations.
In 1993, the rape and murder of a Korean woman, Kum E. Yoon, by an American soldier, Private Kenneth Markle - a name now recognized throughout Korea - led to widespread outrage and protests. A crime scene photograph of Yoon was passed to me by a Korean minister in New York City who runs a domestic abuse shelter there for Korean woman married to or abandoned by American servicemen. The photo shows Yoon's naked body sprawled on the floor of her apartment, legs spread widely apart, her body and face covere d with blood and powdered laundry detergent, a bottle inserted in her vagina and an umbrella inserted 11 inches into her rectum. Her murder led to the formation of a Korean organization called The National Campaign to Eliminate Crimes by U.S. Military in Korea which keeps track of crimes committed by military personnel in Korea and is involved in activism against military abuses.
Army Camp Culture
At one camp I sat with Specialist Jim Ahnefeld, and a Private named Skaarup on a curb outside their office on post. They say they're not working their MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) and that they basically do nothing all day. GIs of E-4's and be low are dissatisfied, this place is a joke," Ahnefeld says, and ridicules the idea that the army wants a smarter recruit today, "We run around mopping floors, cleaning things; they want a smarter army so we can really think about that floor."After high school Ahnefeld spent 3 years as a civilian where he said he worked 15 to 20 dead end jobs; supermarkets, warehouses, Sears, construction, driving a school bus, a tow truck. He thinks the government has too much control and that the military t ries to brainwash people about humanitarian missions when it's really about oil and economics. He also feels he's been treated unfairly by the army and complains "I'm an American, I don't have to take being treated like a dog."
Skaarup, who is white, recently got into a fight with a black GI and admits in front of his black superiors that he used the "N word" but he didn't mean it, just the heat of the moment. As a result Skaarup had to go to drug and alcohol counseling where he said all they do is ask you how much you drink. He said he lied. He said that he came in the army for his people not the Korean people, complains that because of regulations he can't hit Koreans in a fight, he can't defend himself, that we shouldn't be over here and refers to South Korea as the property of the United States.
On another post in the city of Taegu, I met members of the RATT (Radio, Telephone and Teletype) Platoon, a group of mostly white enlisted soldiers who work an MOS which they've imbued with a certain pride. Before the military they worked as managers at Bu rger King, at McDonalds, as roofers and laugh about being stoned when they took the ASVAB (the military entrance exam). When they get out they want to be police officers and have vague plans about college.
Their barracks are similar to the college dorm with the small brown refrigerator, stereo system and Beavis and Butt Head posters. They go on beer runs and swap Ann Rice books. After work the boys pile in to a room to play dominoes with their women who w ork as 71 Limas (secretaries). At night they go to the club on post, slam into each other during hard-core songs, get drunk and scream out with very thinly veiled racist exuberance when the USO comedian mentions OJ or rap or anything connected to blackne ss.
They're against welfare, okay with gays in the military, talk about "fag bars" being off limits and the whole hall full of dykes that used to be in the barracks and constantly direct funny little Mexican jokes to the one Mexican soldier in their unit.
GANG LIFE or NFL
"I'm in it for something, and it's not for patriotism. I'm in it to get mine, just like they're in it to get theirs," says Specialist Joseph Eatman, a 26 year old soldier and one of the founders of NFL. I first met members of NFL, who number about 10, o n a Saturday morning in the barracks in Yongsan, after I got another soldier I met to sign me on post. We sat down in a room for a discussion of life in the military.In addition to Eatman there is Specialist Bill Smith,* 23 years old with four years in the Army, and Specialist Kenyett Johnson who is 24 years old, has five years in the Army and a wife in the states. Johnson and Smith both repair communication security equipment.
I ask who joins the army today. People with nothing better to do," Eatman says. Smith, an intelligent, funny kid who occasionally feels obligated to pretend he is or was a criminal, says that after he graduated from high school he sat around and did not hing, briefly working as a cashier at Target. He says he didn't really attend high school, joined the Army to "stay out of jail, stay out of trouble."
One day he just got in his car and drove to the recruiting station. "They were throwing stuff at me so fast, I didn't really know what was going on. I was just like 'Yeah, okay, yeah that sounds good. Oh, man, that's real good,' not knowing-I was young , y'know, I didn't know what was going on.
"They've got some nuts in here that like it. I don't feel the pride, the joy," Smith says. "Instead I feel stupid out there doing their - I ain't gonna lie to you, I used to feel, back in AIT [army training school] I was always Oh, yeah, gotta' do all th at, be up there, locked and cocked, BOW! And now, man I'm like-"Smith trails off.
"The army traps you in a certain way too, "Eatman says, "because you get in the Army and you can get all the credit in the world, and by the time it's time to get out you can't, you gotta' have a job to pay off all these bills. You get started partying a ll the time, you don't go to school. I'm going to school right now, I'm not even using my GI Bill or College Fund and they're giving me tuition assistance. There's a lot you can take advantage of, but you have to ask, you have to know, you have to look into it yourself, because they're not going to tell you."
I ask about drinking in the Army. The room erupts into laughter "Look behind you," Johnson tells me, behind me being a wall of alcohol bottles. "We all drink.", "Religiously.", "Excessively.", "Guzzle.". Eatman and Smith both said their recruiters enco uraged them to lie about their civilian drug use when they enlisted and they did.
"In the states, oh, man, our unit, we had them [urine analysis tests] every other week and they were kicking people out right and left," Eatman says. "We were supposed to go support Panama but we couldn't because we were too high on the drug blotter," me aning there were too many soldiers who had tested positive for drugs.
As for gangs in the military Eatman says, "This is just like home, people trying to go international and get a rep," alternately amused and a bit worried that NFL evolved from fraternity to the quasi gang that it is now. They do tell me that they know a lot of people who were in gangs, joined the military and continue to live the lifestyle.
Eatman offers a few examples, "I was in situations at Fort Carson [Colorado] at a club on post. I had a red R.I.P. T-shirt on and a corporal came up to me wanting to fight, saying this is 111 neighborhood, you know, it's on. He's still claiming his old se t. I told him I gave that up a long time ago, I don't bang no more...[In another incident] We were at this club The Step, and these 2 military guys they drew guns on each other outside. One had a silencer on a Mac 10, another had a 9 millimeter."
He says one of those soldiers who pulled a gun was involved in another dispute. "This guy came back with a whole bunch of people, they were all getting out of the car. And with no qualms, my friend just got out, started busting-GOOZH -- just started sho oting. And he was Army. They still got that mentality. He didn't hit nobody, he didn't get caught, and he's still boxing at Ft. Carson."
Eatman was recently called in by the Sergeant Major to sign a statement against a 26-year old white soldier who threatened to kill his First Sergeant, the staff in the First Sergeant's office and the Colonel. The soldier first made the threat to Eatman a nd showed him the knife he was going to use. He's now committed to a psychiatric ward on post.
NFL describe him as "country," and say he always talked about making bombs and was in the historic cavalry in his last unit. They call him McVeigh and laugh.
Although just the other night NFL was involved in a brawl at a club Downrange over soldiers throwing gang signs, in actuality, NFL is less a gang than a group of young men with not a lot to engage them, who are in an environment that lends itself to going Downrange and playing warrior.
The military, however, will most certainly not see it that way. An Air Force training manual on gang activity makes no allowances for the gangster pose as image, warning: "There is no such thing as a wannabe. If a person wants to be a gang member, acts like a gang member and dresses like a gang member he is a gang member and just as dangerous."
And it's likely the archetype of the gang member will be defined as the black male as seen on television. In the Army, where 41% of the enlisted personnel are non-white, the allegiances tend to fall across racial lines. Beside NFL, there are white group s like the Wild Ass Cowboys and the Silver Star Outlaws, Latinos in La Raza and throughout the camp-towns in Korea and on base, the clubs are de facto segregated, racially divided by terms like "hick night" and "R&B night."
Johnson describes one confrontation he had with a white Sergeant, " An E-5, don't even know me, told me `I had your wife last night, that was the best piece of black pussy I ever had.' White guy told me this shit, and I don't even know him, I'm like-the only thing stoppin' me from bustin' his head, you gotta' understand, I'm just out of basic and AIT, I still got that mentality, he's an E-5, if I hit one I'm gonna' get in trouble... I was a private.
An NFL soldier from Watts says, "I know there's something that goes on behind closed doors. I can hear how white folks talk about Koreans. I could just hear them talking about black people like that. They talk about Koreans like, 'Look at them, look at these people.'"
With An Army CID Man
In one camp-town I run into a soldier who's wearing a leather jacket covered with biker patches and an FTW patch. I make small talk with him, tell him who I am, what I'm doing, and he tells me he's a 29 year old sergeant in the military police, stationed at the nearby base (this was confirmed when he ran into several of his M.P. colleagues who were on duty and addressed him as such). We spend some time talking, going to different bars. After a while he tells me he rides with a 1% (outlaw) motorcycle cl ub back home, which he refers to generically as the Brotherhood. He says he pledged before he joined the military and always lets the club know where he's stationed.After some more time together he tells me he was CID (the Army's Criminal Investigation Division) and spent 4 years undercover in the States and Europe, with long hair, civilian clothes, and a fake ID card, working drug interdiction. He says he took down about 19 M.P.s who were dirty, and arrested officers and First Sergeants for dealing and trafficking drugs. He quit when they wanted him to inform on the Brotherhood.
On military crime statistics he says, "They bury so much shit you can't tell what's true," adding that the unit commander can deal with some crimes through non-judicial punishment (issue what is called an Article 15, which can include reduction in rank, f orfeiture of pay and confinement to post or barracks), and the incidents wouldn't show up in the crime statistics.
On his post he estimates there's about 3 assaults a day, 1 suicide attempt at least every other week and a sexual assault or rape every 2 weeks. He said at his last duty station in the States, in a typical week they'd confiscate 22 to 25 knives and guns like Tech-9s, Mac-10s and sawed off shotguns, usually from soldiers' cars.
He gave me his name but I agreed not to use it. He said, half-jokingly, that when he gets out he wants to grow his hair long, kick back, get stoned and talk bad about the government.
Camp Casey
Joshua, a retired Sergeant and self-described alcoholic who now delivers for the on-post Popeyes franchise is walking me through a GI camp-town in the city of Tongduchon, a semi-rural city in northern Korea outside of a military based called Camp Casey. He's telling me he knows every dirty thing in this so very dirty town, as he warns me that CID is tailing me (paranoia) and reminisces about what it was like when he was in Korea in '73 and '74, when a 6 oz. jar of Tasters Choice, a pack of Spam and 4 pac ks of hot dogs could get you anything you wanted.The landscape in Tongduchon is sometimes as surreal as it is depraved. There's the Rambo Sports store, the Homeboy Shop, the mute woman walking the streets selling flowers who bites Joshua's arm, soldiers being paraded around in dress uniform by M.P.s i n and out of the clubs all night as punishment, the soldier in the train station who says he's been sleeping in the same clothes for days, talking about running through the camp-towns to escape from MPs, bumming the equivalent of 35 cents for train fare. Joshua takes me to a soju (Korean alcohol) house run by another retired American soldier where members of a traveling Morale, Welfare & Recreation show (a version of the USO) are getting drunk. The troupe includes an 18 year old blonde, packaged as the a nachronistic Bombshell Singer, who complains how disgusted she feels being ogled by our boys overseas, and a classically trained mime who resents the white face shtick he has to do for the GI shows.
The cynicism, the antipathy toward the military and the level of dysfunction is pervasive among the American soldiers in Korea. You can literally walk up at random to any soldier on post or in a camp-town and you'll hear some tale of crime, drugs, alcoh ol, racism, suicide, training accidents, black marketing. The place where this is most in evidence is also the place that is the center of military force in Korea: Camp Casey.
Casey is home to the 2nd Infantry Division, a high security combat arms post, located about 12 miles from the DMZ. It's a 19,000 acre expanse of nondescript brick buildings and Quonset hut-like structures that resembles the grounds of a penitentiary, hou sing close to 8,000 soldiers. It's been visited by Presidents Bush and Clinton, who referred to it as, "The frontier of freedom." It's where soldiers have kept telling me I should go because that's the real Army, the infantry, hard-core.
Pvt. Willie Holcomb, a black tanker stationed there says, "Camp Casey is like a fucken ghetto. If you treat a person like an animal they're gonna' act like an animal. At Casey what do we have to look at? Tanks and a bunch of hard dick niggers."
(Holcomb's now awaiting discharge - personality disorder, too hostile for the military - for punching a white First Sergeant in the face after he says the First Sergeant pushed him while he was standing at parade rest. He said the First Sergeant told him after the incident "Holcomb, you can leave this army with a chapter 513, personality disorder, honorable and get all your benefits and be a productive person when you get out or I can give you an article 15, give you the worst chapter there is and you can go back selling drugs on the corner.")
Casey is a place that has been involved in a variety of incidents, including the fact that it was the base where Pvt. Markle was stationed when he murdered Kum E. Yoon in Tongduchon. The recent murder of Lee Ki Sun, of which the American soldier Pvt. Eri c Munnich hs been accused, also took place in a room near the base. A month before I arrived there was a midnight curfew imposed for the entire base to cut down on problems downtown. A short time afterward, about 400 local merchants scuffled with riot p olice during a protest outside of the gate to the base. Soldiers have nicknamed a club outside of post the "Stab or Jab."
Public Affairs denies me access to Casey, saying that the General in charge is one of those old military men who still view the press as the enemy (when Clinton spoke at Casey, reporters were not allowed to interview any soldiers except those hand-picked by the military public affairs office). The mime signed me on post with his temporary military ID.
On the base I meet up with Brandon Sexton, a 20 year old from East Tennessee who just arrived in Korea. We walk across the post, to get to his room in the 2nd Battalion 72nd Armor barracks. I sat down with him and PFC James Lewis, a frail, slightly shy 20 year old from Rhode Island. Sexton joined the Army three months after high school. "I never did think about anything else I could do," he says.
He tells the familiar story of his recruiting process: "He [his recruiter] asked me [if I smoked marijuana] and I said 'Yeah.' He looked at me and he asked me again and I said 'Yeah.' Then he looked at me and asked me again and I said `No,' and he wrot e down 'No.' I thought that was kind of weird."
Lewis has been in country 10 and a half months and says he used to go to church all the time before he got to Korea. He's on a two year tour and is not going to reenlist "After basic I was like fuck this shit, I want to go to college," he says. He also says when he gets out he wants to do something in law enforcement. "Maybe FBI or something...I'm an adventurous person, I want to do something that's a little bit crazy like a cop in D.C. or drug trafficking patrol, SWAT team, something like that."
Lewis has 75 cents to his name because he spent about two hundred dollars the last two nights on long-times (as in "GI want long-time?") with a Korean prostitute in the Sunshine Club. He says sometimes he'll go there and sit up the whole night talking.
I ask if he's picked up any Korean language since he's been overseas. "Yeah, 'Suck harder,'" he answers.
About the rape case in Okinawa they both feel strongly that the military shouldn't turn the defendants over to the Japanese government. Lewis didn't know the victim was 12 years old. When he finds out he's disgusted. "That's pretty bad, just go get a fri ggin' whore," he says, unknowingly echoing the comments of Adm. Richard Macke commander of all U.S. military operations in the Pacific who was forced to take early retirement for making a strikingly similar remark.
Their daily routine consists of waking at 5:30, doing physical training, cleaning their rooms and the common areas and after breakfast going to nine o'clock formation. Afterward, they go to the motor pool where they sit inside their tanks every day, all day, doing nothing or sleeping, occasionally acting busy if someone comes by. Or they go up to their rooms and play Nintendo.
Word spread in the barracks that there was a reporter present and soon there was a steady stream of soldiers coming into the room, all extremely eager to make it known that life in the military is not what people think it is, not what they thought it was . After hearing war story after war story, it became apparent that this was less bravado than matter-of-fact resignation: Look at us. Look at how we're living. Sick, isn't it?
23-year-old Specialist Sean Pruitt is this unit's white O-Dog; before he came in the room other soldiers continually offered," You gotta' meet Pruitt." Pruitt said his friend told him to join infantry because it was hard-core and you get the most respect . He says when he joined, "I had a GI Joe dream; ground poundin', runnin' around, fucken blowin' shit up-but we stay in that fucken motor pool, we just sweep and do details."
Pruitt joined the Army at 20, after he spent two years after high school "Drinking, smoking and getting in trouble." He said he was on the streets, staying with friends and had to do something with his life. He was in the Marines delayed entry program w here he got waivers for LSD use, but while he was waiting to ship out, he told the recruiter he experimented with crack cocaine and they rejected him. He then joined the Army. He said he told the recruiter about the Marines incident, but the recruiter t old him not to mention it.
"This place is a shithole," Pruitt says. "You get that many people over here angry, fucked up, feed them some alcohol, people are bound to fight. Plus you got to live with these people, smell their shit. I mean you see the same people every day."
Pruitt's received one summarized Article 15. "14 bottles of liquor and two cases of beer between about four people in a day," is how he explains it. "We hit blackout, we were just fucking going crazy in here, trying to kill Lewis, punching windows out. This guy grabbed a knife and said he was going to cut this dude's tonsils out," he says.
Lewis says Pruitt and another soldier came into his barracks room. Pruitt hit him in the head a few times and the other soldier slammed his head into a wall locker. The room laughs and Lewis manages an embarrassed little laugh along with them.
Pruitt continues, "I roped this guy the other night...this punk who lives across the hall. I tried to pull his fucken head off." "He almost killed him," Private Michael Waldron says, "I thought he was gonna' break his fucken neck" and adds that a number of people had to come in and pull Pruitt off, to stop him from choking the other soldier. "I was like, 'Y'all didn't see shit, nothing happened,'" Pruitt says and neither of the incidents were reported.
The violence isn't limited to Korea.
Sexton describes a recruit in basic training who was suspected of being gay and was given what's called a blanket party. "He was kind of tubby and always lagging behind on runs, couldn't do his work right...Drill Sergeants would call him fat ass and all kinds of shit," he says. "He got pretty messed up. They shoved a pillow on his head and they just went to punchin' on him," Sexton says.
The next morning the soldier went on sick call and two weeks later he packed his belongings and left the Army. Waldron, 23 years old, joined the Army because "When I got out of high school jobs sucked." He served for two years and extended for six months because of the Gulf War. He got out, joined the National Guard, got married and lived in a trailer in Georgia where he was working in construction, roofing, aluminum siding. He got divorced from his wife, his car died, he failed the police officer test, had to move back with his parents and after being out of active duty for two years, reenlisted.
"I hate Korea, I hate this fucken place," Waldron says. " We're not really appreciated here by the nationals. We don't want to be here and they don't want us here but yet the military wants us here." Waldron, who says, "The majority of Korea that I've seen was the inside or the outside of a Budweiser beer can," just lost a rank for coming on post a few minutes after curfew and said he's been getting "hammered" every night because he just had his drinking privileges reinstated.
"They look to fuck you any way they can," Waldron says of the Army. "That's why I'm getting out, they don't care about us, we're as disposable as fuck to them," Pruitt says They all complain about not having equipment or having shoddy equipment, about t raining accidents like the tank that rolled down a hill a few months ago, crushing a barracks and killing a soldier sleeping in his room. "Everybody thinks, 'Oh, the Army's the nation's fucken security system,' and shit-it's a fucken joke," Pruitt says.
"When you wait for nine months for a part to come in, to get your weapon, vehicle or anything off of deadline status and you're supposed to use this thing in a war... then when you get the part, half the time it's the wrong fucken part," says Matt Czaja a 22 year old infantryman.
Czaja is not the typical disgruntled soldier. He and his twin brother Mike, joined six months apart. Matt says he joined the Army to make his father proud, because he was patriotic and to repay a debt. "My father was in, my grandfather was in. When I was growing up someone was doing what I'm doing now," he says.
Matt says his first roommate at Fort Lewis was a self described Neo-Nazi with an SS tattoo who talked about killing the chairman of the North Carolina NAACP. The soldier's friends would come to the room ( "white males, hate-because-of -reverse-discriminat ion" types, Matt says) to drink beer and watch Neo-Nazi propaganda videos.
Mike says when he was stationed at Ft. Stewart in Georgia he was assigned to parking lot patrol because soldiers were breaking into cars and stealing radios. One night four or five M.P. cars pulled up and ordered him to get out of the area because there was some GI running around in boxer shorts and shower shoes, wielding two nine millimeters.
This wasn't the Army they expected and Mike, who originally joined for a career, realized the military life wasn't for him and is getting out, as is his brother. They rarely drink, don't get into fights and avoid going Downrange. Mike says that in his year and a half in Korea he's only had two positive experiences: One, when an old man stood up and saluted a vehicle he was driving in and the other when he was at the zoo and an old man came up to him, shook his hand and walked off.
"These are the only two experiences that I've had here in Korea that made me actually feel like, whoa, some people actually do care for the fact that I'm wasting a year and a half of my life...these two guys were the only ones who seemed like they actuall y gave a fuck." he says.
He finally reduces all the political and cultural issues surrounding the experience of the GI overseas to what it often comes down to, the personal: "Koreans think we're good enough to fight their war, they think we're good enough to die for their coun try, but we're not good enough to date their women."
When he told a sergeant that he wasn't reenlisting the sergeant asked him mockingly, "What are you gonna' do when you get out, go work at McDonalds?" And Mike Czaja, the good American boy who loves his country, who joined the Army for all the reasons des cribed in the brochures, who even bought his own tools for his track-vehicle and is leaving them so the next soldier will have them, responded with what he probably had no intention of ever saying before he joined, "When I get out, if I was flipping burge rs at McDonalds at least I'd be wearing a uniform I was proud of."
A Night out with the Public Affairs Chief
Back in Seoul, Public Affairs swings by my hotel room to take me down to Itaewon and show me the ropes. We start at the Veterans Club where we drink shots of vodka as two black stockinged, mini-skirted waitresses force "Haven't seen you in a while." We w atch a Korean woman in traditional dress strip on a stage flanked by military and U.S. flags.Then we drive off post to the clubs in Itaewon, an odyssey of small bars where we consume shot after shot and buy drinks for the hostesses so they'll pretend small talk. Public Affairs is known by almost all the hostesses in the different clubs. He buys them drinks as they sit on his lap and he goes through his koochikoo routine, telling me which ones he had, which ones he almost had.
After a while we need more money so it's a drive back to post to the ATM. Public Affairs is almost certainly legally drunk by now and I don't have a military ID to get on post. He lets me know that if he follows procedure and gets out of the car to sign me in, the gate guards might detect alcohol on his breath, so I pull out an expired student press pass, flash it and the gate guard waves us through.
On the way back downtown, Public Affairs alludes to a past incident when the authorities took away his car, the mistresses he has all over the world, the secret bank accounts that the government can't touch. During one conversation on military policy he a nnounces with utter conviction: "The Army will absolutely not tolerate sexual harassment."
Then it's more bars, more shots, hostesses hanging on us, asking for more drinks, making more small talk through almost gritted teeth. Public Affairs occasionally calls over to see how I'm doing (he likes me now, I'm one of the boys). I'm in a booth wit h a hostess trying to play the I'm-not-like-the-rest-of-them game, as my hostess grows further disgusted, at one point reaching into my shirt and yanking out the press pass that hung around my neck, thinking it was dogtags and I was really a lowly GI, not the quasi-respectable kija (reporter).
I want to see this through. I ask Public Affairs about the prostitution scene he's so knowledgeable about, I tell him I'll help out with the cost. He's game and we get into his car and inch through the packed streets of Itaewon, up Hooker Hill. He pok es his head out the window and asks two women sitting on a bench if they want to have some fun. They negotiate a price and get in the back seat. After about ten minutes they ask where we're going and Public Affairs says the name of my hotel.
We get to the room and there's a pairing off, Public Affairs asking Kim and Sun Young* which one of us they want. Sun Young, who is paired with Public Affairs, asks about condoms. He says he doesn't have any. She's reluctant, confers with Kim in Korean. Public Affairs pressures, she relents.
Public Affairs takes her into the bathroom while I stay in the other room with Kim. After a few minutes he comes out and asks to borrow my blanket and pillow to lay on the floor. Kim speaks practically no English, says she's 18, but looks younger; a ne rvous, chubby teenager, obviously not experienced in this. She manages to tell me she has a husband who will get mad if she has sex. I tell her no problem, I'm a kija (reporter) and try to ask her questions, looking up words in the Korean/English pocket dictionary. She gets a kick out of this. She says "You are a gentleman," though she later says the same to Public Affairs.
We lay on the bed and as Kim flipped through a copy of Rolling Stone I gave her (it had one of my articles in it; I was using it to convince the soldiers that I wasn't CID), getting excited recognizing the big name ads.
After a while Public Affairs comes out of the bathroom announcing, "She couldn't give a blowjob, but she sure was a great piece of ass." Sun Young starts intently describing something to Kim in Korean. Kim listens for a little while, then goes over to get the dictionary, leafs through it and finds a word in Korean. Keeping her finger on it she brings the open book over and offers it to me. I follow her finger to the Korean and then across the page to its English translation: "abuse."
*Not their real names