SOFA talks to resume Tuesday

Korea and the United States will resume talks on revising the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) for two days beginning Oct. 17 in Washington, diplomatic sources here said Sunday.

The chief delegates, the Foreign Affairs-Trade Ministry's American Affairs Bureau director, Song Min-Sun, for Korea and Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Asian-Pacific Affairs Frederick Smith for the United States, will discuss a range of problems, including criminal jurisdiction, labor, the environment and quarantine. The sources predicted that a draft paper on criminal jurisdiction over U.S. troops stationed here will be worked out soon.

Washington is demanding the arrangement of a legal guarantee in return for advancing the time of transferring custody of American military suspects from the U.S. authorities to the Korean government to the point of indictment. At present, the transfer is deferred until the time of conviction by a court of justice. The Korean side is likely to stand firm in its rejection of the demand on the grounds that it deviates from the Korean judicial system.

As the Washington government is reluctant to concede on this point for the reason that a change in favor of Seoul's position would have an adverse impact upon similar agreements with other countries, further arduous negotiations will be required.

During Aug. 2-3 talks in Seoul, the two governments had agreed to resume their meetings early in October, but the date was reportedly delayed on account of time-consuming intra-governmental fine-tuning and preparations on the part of the United States.

Boo Hyung-Kwon bookum90@donga.com