Meanwhile, Back in South Korea

...But now it is under hostile pressure from a different enemy, local Leftists chanting "Yankee go home," while the North is developing nuclear warheads above the "demilitarized zone" that still divides Korea...

...No one could be more open than he to negoti ations with the Pyongyang regime on the most humanitarian terms...

...In his initial postelection press conference...

...others have been bad and, worse, badly handled...

...Young Koreans seem largely unaware of the suffering the South went through in fighting to retain its independence, and particularly of the role the United States played in the struggle...

...But it does not seem possible for Korean-American relations to drift along as in the past...

...The U.S...

...regular inter-Korean family visits and mail service, and regular road and rail links—the world will know there really is no way to work with dictator Kim Jong II on any rational level...

...withdrawal would embolden the North to repeat its June 1950 invasion, staged when American strength in the South was down to a handful of advisers...

...In one sense the present case is far worse, because the violated woman was not killed...

...The captain, identified only by his surname...

...Early on the conservative candidate Lee Hoi Chang, who called for a tough policy toward North Korea, appeared to be the frontrunner...

...Nowhere in the world has the United States ever accepted such a provision...

...But amid all their apologies, not one American official said a word about "command responsibility...

...Roh Moo Hyun has indicated that there will be no shocks, but there will almost surely be changes in the way the U.S...

...The Eighth Army has been here ever since, guarding the invasion route to Seoul...

...Some have been good...

...The activists demonstrating in central Seoul won't let President Roh forget their championing him during the campaign, despite his stopping short of identifying too closely with them...

...It accomplished that objective, even though it failed to reunify the country...

...Underlying those factors is a pivotal question an increasingly significant number of South Koreans have been asking: Why are American troops still here half a century after the end of the Korean War...

...They grazed his stomach before he managed to escape...

...Just as orders flow downhill, responsibility runs uphill...

...Even if the sergeants on the vehicle were not guilty of "negligent homicide," the charge against them, someone was to blame for what occurred...

...Testimony in an open court of inquiry by ranking officers would have revealed them...

...If the North refuses to offer anything in return—e.g...

...Should negotiations break down completely, Washington could go so far as to decide it is time for the Eighth Army to go home...

...A number of Americans here believe this would be desirable too...

...rather, he would "mediate" between the U.S...

...How much pressure was placed on the brigade by the commander of the Second Division, the large unit that covers the historic invasion route from North Korea to Seoul...

...Whether the presence of U.S...

...The crushing of the two schoolgirls is an example of the latter, and of how bungling on both sides brought on a crisis...

...Indeed, what was the commander of all U.S...

...From Washington's perspective, Roh's ascension ushers in a period of testing the durability of the U.S.-Korean alliance...

...The other sergeant, Fernando Nino, on the lookout on the right, noticed them seconds before they were killed, blurted a few words over a radio link to Walker that wasn't working, then said, "My God," as the vehicle crunched forward...

...Relationship Meanwhile, Back in South Korea By Donald Kirk Seoul The United States Eighth Army, Korean War veterans will remember, bore the brunt of the Communist North's invasion of the South in June 1950, then rampaged up the Korean Peninsula to the banks of the Yalu...

...No one knew that another column from the same brigade combat team was coming down the narrow road toward them...

...officialdom, especially the American command in Korea, sought to portray the tragedy as a mere road accident, one of those sad things that happens...

...A Gallup Poll taken prior to the balloting showed that half of the 1,054 respondents "dislike" the United States...

...The new occupant of the Blue House, though, will pursue his promised goal of softening the U.S.' hard line toward the North, particularly since Pyongyang admitted the existence of a new program for making nuclear warheads and announced it was pulling out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty...

...But I would point out that Korean history, as I have watched it since first coming to Seoul in 1972, has to a considerable extent been shaped by unexpected events...

...BUT IT IS not only the horribleness of the Uijongbu incident, and the misplaced anger about the sergeants' acquittals, that have triggered the worst wave of antiAmericanism here in memory...

...Donald Kirk, who began writing on Asian affairs for the NL in 1966, is the author most recently of Korean Crisis...

...The Army would not divulge the contents of orders passed down the chain of command...

...These officers should be answering for the poor morale, for overwork, and especially the failure to secure a road running through civilian territory before sending off the ill-fated expedition...

...It is most unlikely that Kim Jong II could plausibly tell Russia's President Vladimir V Putin that his forces could easily take over the South—as Kim II Sung, his father, told Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin in the months before the Korean War...

...If there is a lesson to be learned from the killing of the schoolgirls, it is probably this: Their case has come to symbolize the presence of a foreign force in a country beginning to believe it can now stand on its own...

...Well, maybe...

...Roh's election also means Seoul will be reviewing its entire military relationship with the United States...

...It admitted, however, that officers up the line needed to have the combat team fulfill its "mission-essential task list," to show it was combat ready...

...The U.S., on its part, has already launched a charm offensive...

...In December, he expressed his regrets directly to President Kim Dae Jung by telephone...

...The Army hinted at high level errors with a cryptic revelation of "administrative action"—but refused to say what action, against whom...

...troops in the country is necessary anymore is debatable...

...The troops, in their 10th day of a 14-day exercise, were tired, as testimony revealed, and hadn't a clue what else was going on...

...What was the responsibility of the brigade commander who organized the combat team that Captain Mason's company of engineers was a part of...

...But he was unable to hold the lead in the face of the huge anti-American sentiments engendered by the accident...

...The next day, however, Roh defeated Lee by a margin of 2.3 per cent...

...For tensions to be reduced, a restoration of mutual good faith on the ground is critical...

...The radicals, who tried to penetrate the rows of Korean policemen in Darth Vaderlike masks defending the American Embassy, were merely the most visible foes of the U.S...

...Had he taken the stand, he would have been asked why on that beautiful June morning the armored column was moved out hurriedly, without a briefing...

...For Washington is not about to accept a revision of its status-of-forces agreement that would enable Korean courts to try American soldiers for anything that went awry in the course of a military exercise...

...American military officers and diplomats apologized so often for the killing of the girls that they were running out of ways to say, "We're sorry...

...He has said the South should go on giving aid to the North regardless of its nuclear program or the presence of more than a million troops above the demilitarized zone...

...The Left-leaning candidate, Roh Moo Hyun, nominated following a series of primaries by members of Kim Dae Jung's Millennium Democratic Party, thus struck a popular chord when he declared before the voting on December 19 that he would not "kowtow" to Washington...

...Soif Americans are no longer welcome, there is no reason why they should not start leaving...

...So far they have escaped public blame...

...And what was the commander of the Eighth Army telling the division commander...

...Caught by surprise when thousands of Chinese "volunteers" joined the North in November 1950, it retreated and then advanced again, recapturing Seoul and holding the line across the peninsula...

...The Koreans were justified, though, in wanting to establish responsibility...

...At the same press conference where Hubbard read the first Bush apology, Laporte said he could not discuss a matter that was under investigation...

...With their country's emergence as one of the world's dozen or so largest economic powers, many South Koreans desire to demonstrate that it no longer needs foreign troops...

...Yet all the apologies, not to mention the courts-martial of the sergeants, had the aura of a cover-up for officers who lacked the courage to fall on their swords and confess their malfeasance...

...No country, their own included, would surrender its troops to a foreign court for something that happened in the line of duty...

...One frustrated woman asked, "Are we supposed to hold the armored vehicle responsible and park it in jail...

...All they heard were the words "Let's roll," uttered by Captain Mason...

...One outcome of the talks on the matter may be a U. S. decision not to hold exercises outside the confines of American bases...

...They suggested the South was on the North's side, he felt, loudly withdrawing his support...

...Top-ranking officers should not have been allowed to shield themselves and their subordinates behind apologies and expressions of remorse...

...He is eager to make Kim Dae Jung's "sunshine" policy a lasting legacy...

...Although Korea cannot really fulfill its potential until it is a unified country, Roh's rhetoric has inspired the hope that this will now be accomplished, if not in five years then over the next decade...

...The Koreans \vere wrong in calling for trials by a local civilian court...

...The incident that touched off the protests was the crushing last June of two Korean schoolgirls by a 50-ton U.S...

...and South Korea relate to each other...

...Roh's presidency offers perhaps the last and best opportunity for North-South reconciliation...

...Leftists have also tossed Molotov cocktails into American bases, assaulted U.S...

...Nor do they realize that when the Korean War ended no one could have imagined the level of prosperity they take for granted today, or that the South's association with the United States has been central to its economic development...

...and the North...

...This may prove no less difficult aproblem than dealing with North Korea...

...military presence...

...soldiers, hung anti-American banners on water towers at two small posts, and demonstrated almost daily...

...The President-elect's attitude toward North Korea will provide a real test of North-South relations as well...

...From the outset U.S...

...After military courts in November failed to find either sergeant aboard the vehicle guilty of any wrongdoing, Korean radicals, backed up by a wide segment of the populace, charged the trials were a sham and a shame and went on an antiAmerican binge...

...Roh spoke as though there would be no shocks once he is inaugurated on February 25...

...The driver, Mark Walker, could not have seen them since they were on his blind side...

...Mason, might have incriminated a lot of people besides himself...

...A hint of this surfaced when the officer serving as presiding judge at one of the trials said the captain in command of the company the sergeants were assigned to would not testify, because his lawyer said he would answer no questions on the grounds he might incriminate himself...

...In terms of diplomacy, too, a new degree of candor and understanding is required...

...We don't know what to make of it," says Lieutenant Colonel Steven Boylan, the Eighth Army's public affairs officer, who was himself attacked in a pedestrian underpass last December by three knife-wielding Koreans shouting "GI get out...

...Or it could be that a U.S...

...It could be that North Korea, regardless of its million-man military and nuclear potential, is by now simply too weak to attack...

...in another sense it is better (if one may use that word in this context), because no matter what some people insist, it was clearly an accident that occurred during a military exercise...

...While attending several of the courtmartial sessions at Camp Casey, the large U. S. post north of Seoul, I heard two witnesses complain that the soldiers in the exercise were given too much to do, that morale was low, and that there was a lack of respect for some of the officers...

...True, those remarks did not sit well with key Roh backer Chung Mong Joon, an heir to the Hyundai business fortune and the man responsible for bringing the World Cup soccer finals to Korea in June...

...Nevertheless, the deaths of the two girls made anti-Americanism an issue in the recent presidential campaign...

...forces in Korea saying to the Eighth Army commander...

...Roh's claim that he does not want the American troops to leave notwithstanding, he probably would be happy to have their present strength (37,000) vastly reduced...

...That prompted two more apologies, this time from President George W. Bush...

...The great difference is that then the Cold War was at its height, Communist Chinese forces had completed their victory over the Nationalist Chinese on the mainland just nine months earlier, and Soviet troops held sway over Eastern Europe...

...Korean observers have often compared the girls' deaths to the rape of a young woman on Okinawa by an American GI several years ago...

...First, he relayed his sorrow through the American ambassador, Thomas Hubbard...

...General Leon LaPorte, the top U. S. commander, dodged the issue...

...Army armored vehicle during a military exercise near Uijongbu, the northern Seoul suburb that is home to Camp Red Cloud, headquarters of the Second Division...

...In fact, they are the ones who had to be pressuring the troops to rush through the exercise...

...Ambassador Hubbard called on Roh the morning after his victory, and President Bush quickly followed up with a phone call inviting him to Washington...

...did not come to conquer Korea, they note, but to defend the South against Communist aggression...

...The two sergeants, who were on the lead vehicle, saw the advancing column as they rounded a curve, veered to the right, and ran over the girls...