It's never easy for a mighty military to tread lightly on foreign soil. In the case of American forces in South Korea, protectors of the nation's sovereignty since the Korean War, the job is made doubly difficult by local sensitivities arising from a history of foreign domination. So when a few GIs commit particularly brutal crimes against the local populace, it's easy for some South Koreans to ask. Who will guard us from our guardians? That kind of questioning grew more insistent on January 20, when police found the body of a 30-year-old Korean woman, Kang Un-gyong, in the apartment she shared with her American boyfriend. An autopsy showed Kang, who had bruises over most of her face and chest, died after being hit on the back of her head with a blunt object. Her boyfriend, Henry Kevin McKinley, 36, an electrician at the United States military base in Seoul, admitted beating her. McKinley said he pushed Kang, who then struck her head on a radiator, but denied that he tried to murder her. On January 21 McKinley was arrested on charges similar to involuntary manslaughter under Korean law. As a civilian employee of the U. S. military in Korea, he comes under the purview of the Status-of-Forces Agreement between Washington and Seoul. This grants the South Korean government criminal jurisdiction—but not pre-trial custody—over members of American forces in Korea. Because of the gravity of the charges against McKinley, however, the Americans waived their rights to keep him in their custody before trial. The Kang case was only the latest in a series of crimes involving members of U. S. forces and Koreans. Just a few days earlier, a U. S. army sergeant was sentenced to six months in jail for assaulting a local in a subway brawl last May—even though some reports said it was a Korean who instigated the fray. The murder also followed two separate incidents in which American soldiers were indicted on charges of attempted rape. With the spotlight already on the behaviour of American servicemen abroad because of the rape of a 12-year-old girl in Okinawa, allegedly by a group of U. S. soldiers, the Kang murder burst the lid on many Koreans' resentment of the presence of 37,000 American troops in their midst. Official relations between Seoul and Washington remain on an even keel, and most Koreans don't blame the entire U. S. military for the crimes of individual servicemen. But the incidents have played into the hands of those who are questioning the very basis of the American presence in South Korea. Some observers believe the seeds of Koreans' estrangement from the U. S. military were first sown in 1980, when troops under the control of former President Chun Doo Hwan massacred some 200 pro-democracy protesters in the southern city of Kwangju. Many left-wing students—usually at the forefront of anti-government protests—still insist that the U. S. military command acquiesced in the crackdown. But public alienation against U. S. troops really took off after the brutal 1992 murder of a Korean prostitute by an American soldier. Pictures taken at the time—not released publicly but seen by the REVIEW—showed the dead woman's mouth stuffed with matches and a bottle stuck in her vagina. The man convicted of the murder, Pvt. Kenneth Markle of the U. S. army's 2nd Division, received a life sentence, later reduced to 15 years. Cultural misunderstandings haven't helped matters any. Many Koreans believe all GIs are racist young men with little education from rural areas of the U.S. 'I've been hit and called names by Koreans, but I didn't respond,' says a soldier at Camp Hmnphreys in Pyongtaek. He says the U. S. forces' command 'drills it into your head every day: don't fight with a Korean. You can't win. ' Other factors are also at play, not least the swelling self-confidence of the younger generation of South Koreans, bolstered by their