An appeals court ruled Tuesday that the government does not have to unveil the information of cases involving U.S. soldiers if it has relinquished its right to exercise jurisdiction over them under the South Korea-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement, upending the original judgment.
Under SOFA, which governs the legal status of some 28,500 U.S. troops stationed across the southern part of the peninsula, South Korea can primarily invoke judicial power when a serviceman is implicated in crimes, except while on duty. But authorities here have frequently not exercised it, opting to hand over the cases to the U.S.
The Lawyers for a Democratic Society, better known as Minbyun, raised a suit calling for the Justice Ministry to release all the cases since 2001 that the U.S. requested South Korea to transfer, as well as their results. The ministry has kept the data undisclosed, citing diplomatic relations.
A lower administrative court decided in December that a revelation of the information is unlikely to infringe on critical national interests because it concerns “operation and management of an existing system” and many records and statistics are already available.
Overturning the verdict, the Seoul High Court said there is a “considerable” possibility that the exposure of all demanded data will affect the relationship with Washington and harm national interests.
Yet it allowed the release of information on a 2012 case in which seven U.S. military police officers arrested in handcuffs three South Korean civilians near their base in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, citing that the prosecution had already made most of it public.
“With SOFA being an accord that the two countries forged taking into account the distinctiveness of U.S. troops here, as well as diplomatic ties, in the face of the inter-Korean confrontation, the requested information has its implications, even though it may merely mean statistics,” judge Hwang Byung-ha said.
“There are also concerns that North Korea or its sympathetic parties could take advantage of the information.”
By Shin Hyon-hee (
heeshin@heraldcorp.com)
