Priests, monks, actors and singers have all taken to the streets of the South Korean capital to protest over the deaths of two school children run over by a US military tank in June.
Amid rising anti-American sentiment, several pubs and restaurants in Seoul are now barring US servicemen.
Demonstrators have been demanding that the US soldiers involved in the accident stand trial under South Korean law.
But US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who met South Korea Defence Minister Lee Jun in Washington on Thursday, said he saw no reason for the accord governing the 37,000 US forces in South Korea to be changed.
**“The innocent deaths of the young girls aroused South Koreans to the growing question - what are the US troops doing in this country?” ** asked the priest, who was leading a rally on Friday.
South Korean singer Lee Hyun-woo agreed.
“For a long time, we thought of American soldiers as friends, neighbours and allies,” he told reporters.
“But after the accident, I think our views have changed 180 degrees,” he said.
"The defence for Sergeant Nino argued that he alerted Sergeant Walker to the presence of the girls. The driver says he never heard the warning, because of an apparently defective communications system. " BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Korean anger as US soldiers cleared
TOKYO, Dec 5 (Reuters) - The United States said on Thursday it would not agree to Tokyo’s request to hand over to Japanese authorities a U.S. Marine suspected of trying to rape a woman on Okinawa, home to most of the U.S. military bases in Japan.
The U.S. refusal comes at a time when public resentment towards U.S. forces is growing in Japan and South Korea, with calls to revise treaties governing the conduct of the U.S. troops in the two key U.S. allies.
Japan had demanded the U.S. military hand over Major Michael J. Brown, 39, who police allege tried to rape the woman in her car on November 2.
Incidents involving the U.S. military, including the notorious 1995 rape of a 12-year-old Japanese girl by three servicemen, have fanned the resentment and prompted calls to shift the troops elsewhere in Japan or reduce their number, which the central government – anxious to avoid ruffling bilateral ties – is in general keen to avoid. :disgust:
About 50,000 South Koreans have rallied in the capital Seoul in protest over the deaths of two teenage girls killed by US servicemen in a road accident.
Several thousand riot police prevented the protesters from marching on the US embassy.
The BBC’s Caroline Gluck, in Seoul, says it was the largest demonstration since the two soldiers, whose armoured vehicle hit the girls, were acquitted of negligent homicide by a US military court last month
Large US flags were held aloft by the crowd and torn apart.
The Puppet bit i think most people can understand because we got too many of them in Asia and Africa already, They ain’t never gonna leave unless you force them out! :mad2: