"Slicky Boy"

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 (last year's losses were 1,500,000 gallons, enough to carry one tank company 22,400 miles). 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" (a fact most of the Korean newspapers failed to mention), and promised "appropriate action."

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