Students Sentenced to Imprisonment for Burning US Flags

The court in its rare move sentenced imprisonment of members of the Federation of Korean University Students` Councils who burned US flags during their protest.

Seoul district court sentenced a university student from the student activist group imprisonment of six years to ten years. This kind of sentence is usually delivered to defendants aged under 20 and the amount of jail time varies depending on the prisoners` behavior in the prison.

The student known as Yu was charged for trespassing onto a US military firing range in Pocheon and burning US flags in protest of a possible war on the Korean peninsula Last month. A student known as Lee was sentenced 10 months in prison for the same charges and 4 other students are sentenced to 8 month in prison with the 2-year suspension of the execution and 120 hours of community service.

The court said in its verdict that "The student action was understandably purely based on the student activism movement. But it is guilty to trespass onto other country`s army training field and burn the nation`s flag, undermining the US people`s pride in their nation and causing negative impacts on the Korea-US relationship."

The court also said that it had to sentence prison terms to the student Yu as he burned and destroyed the US flag, which takes on a huge symbolic meaning. Lee was sentenced with imprisonment as he had been fined in violation of the law on demonstrations and gatherings in June.

12 students from the Federation of Korean University Students` Councils were indicted for trespassing into the US military firing rage in Pocheon and burning US flags during their anti-US protest on August 7th to express their opposition to the Stryker unit`s training in Korea.

Soo-Kyung Kim skkim@donga.com