SEOUL — Former Army Sgt. Mark Walker is still haunted by the day three years ago when the U.S. military vehicle he was driving killed two South Korean girls on a country road in Uijongbu, according to a news segment that aired in South Korea late Friday night.
“I know there was nothing I could have done to stop it,” he said during an interview at a McDonald’s in the Atlanta area in April. “I have flashbacks every day.”
Walker granted the interview in April with producers from “W,” a South Korean news magazine that airs each Friday night on the network MBC. He told the network he lost 50 pounds during the subsequent trial and that he sleeps four hours a night, if he’s lucky.
Kim Hyun-Chul, an MBC producer and director, said he wanted the 20-minute news story to explore the American perspective of the controversial and traumatic accident. Kim and his colleagues went to the States last month and spent 10 days trying to find Walker.
They used Web searches on America Online, inquiries to the U.S. military and even random phone calls to dozens of people named Mark Walker in Atlanta before finding the right one, the segment showed. When they finally interviewed him, he agreed to a microphone but not an up-close camera shot.
“Those two families,” Walker said, “they’ve lost their daughters. I know how I’d feel if I lost my son.”
On June 13, 2002, Walker was driving a 60-ton tracked bridge carrier along Highway 56 in the northern part of the country as part of a convoy. According to court-martial testimony, Walker didn’t see the two 13-year-old girls as the vehicle went up a hill and rounded a curve. After his commander spotted the girls, Walker tried to brake, but the vehicle’s momentum carried them forward and they crushed the girls, according to U.S. military officials’ accounts of the accident.
The deaths prompted an outpouring of grief throughout Korea for the girls, Shim Mi-sun and Shin Hyo-soon. It also unleashed torrents of anger and violent protests against the U.S. military in South Korea. When Walker and the vehicle commander, former Sgt. Fernando Nino, were found innocent by a military court, protests erupted again with one group of angry people declaring war on American troops here.
Three years later, Kim, the producer, said he wanted to show how Walker is living after going through such an emotional, international incident. Kim said he hoped his audience would think about how this man, or any man, would live after playing a role in such an event.
What Kim found in Walker, he said during an interview Friday afternoon as he took a break from final edits on the piece, was a man who is suffering daily.
The segment, which aired during South Korean prime time just before midnight Friday night, also addressed some of the failings U.S. troops have had in other foreign countries, including scenes from prison abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
But the news story also focused on support that Walker received during the trial. A South Korean man in the United States donated money that helped pay for his lawyer. The “W” news teams tracked down that man as well.
The producers at “W” learned that both Walker and Nino are no longer in the military. They are still searching for Nino to hear his side of the story, but they have not had any luck yet.
