My son, Stephen Michael White, walked into the men’s side of a sauna in Gyeongsan, near Daegu, at about ten o’clock on the night of 10 May 2008. He was fourteen years old. Before midnight he was in an ambulance. He was pronounced dead shortly after midnight on 11 May, which was Mother’s Day.
The police called it a drowning with no sign of a crime. This page sets out what was done about his death, and what was not. The contradictions inside the police file itself are listed one by one in the police record.
The file
For the first six weeks there was no case number. Someone trying to help me needed the police file number to make a request. I asked the US Embassy to get it, and the embassy told me none had been assigned. Only after I pressed, and the embassy pushed the police, did a number appear. It carries the date of the night my son died.
The file was never a criminal investigation, only an “internal inquiry”, and it was closed in the tenth week.
The cameras
The sauna had CCTV in the lobby, the elevator, the locker room and the jimjilbang rooms. A sauna employee told the police that staff had watched the footage from the night my son died and seen no fight. The police never collected the footage and never watched it themselves. When I asked about the cameras, I was told I would need a lawyer.
Three weeks later, the same sauna filed an assault complaint against me and offered its CCTV as proof. The cameras worked when the sauna wanted them to.
In the civil case I was told early on that the court would not take the footage. The reason given was that Korean courts accept photographs, not video, because they have no means of keeping video records. My case was then heard in a courtroom fitted with screens and full video equipment. The whole point of a CCTV system is to produce evidence. I do not believe that a court with a television on the wall could not play a recording.
The witness who would not speak
On Sunday 25 May 2008 we held the second of three silent vigils outside the sauna. Stephen-Peter Jinks and I were unloading the car and about to set up the table for Mike’s photographs when a Korean man walked up to us. He spoke a little English. He said he had been in the sauna that night.
This is what he told us. An important man from the neighbourhood, the boss of that alley, had come in. There was some razzing in the locker room. My son gave him the finger, turned his back and walked away. For that, the man told the students from the martial arts academy across the street to kill him. He said they did, and that a sauna employee, the man who worked the scrub tables, joined them. In his words: “older man told younger man to kill boy.”
He had already been to the police. He would not put his name on the record, so they wrote nothing down. He was told to come and tell me in front of another foreigner, and that is what he did. It was as much as he could manage. He was terrified of the man he was describing.
There is no trace of him in the police file. The only outside witness in it is a customer who, by his own times, reached the bathing area after my son was found.
Stephen-Peter was the other foreigner, and he heard every word. My lawyer told me that if he went to the police and his account matched mine, it would count as witness testimony. Three days later he told me he did not want to be involved and could not remember it. I believe someone reached him in those three days. I cannot prove it.
Later, the instructor from the academy brought his students to me to apologise. I was expected to accept that as the end of it.
The embassy
On 16 May 2008 I signed a Privacy Act waiver at the US Embassy in Seoul, witnessed by the Chief of American Citizen Services. It allowed the embassy to speak about my son’s case to anyone who asked.
In February 2009 the embassy told me it could not release information because it was bound to protect my son’s privacy. Four days later it confirmed in writing that it did hold the waiver I had signed. In May 2009 the same office told a reporter that it was not allowed to comment on individual cases. A United States senator’s office asked for the information and could not get it either.
In August 2008, after the second pathology opinion, the embassy and my lawyer repeatedly asked the Gyeongsan chief of police to request an examination by the National Institute of Scientific Investigation. The requests were ignored.
The court
On 18 June 2008 I filed a civil suit in the Daegu District Court against the State, the manager of the sauna, the province responsible for the 119 ambulance service, and the foundation that runs the hospital.
In February 2009 the court ordered the sauna staff to testify, ordered colour photographs to be produced, and ordered an inspection of the sauna because of discrepancies in the report. The inspection took place on 3 April 2009. The colour police photographs, taken on the night of 10 May 2008, did not reach me until April 2009, after the inspection. The sauna staff failed to appear before the court more than once.
On 25 August 2009 the court dismissed every claim I had made and ordered me to pay the costs.
If you teach English in Korea
The police file on my son was never more than an internal inquiry, and it was closed in the tenth week. They never took the names of the men who were in the sauna. I was told I needed a lawyer just to ask for the emergency call records or the CCTV. No one ever examined my son for evidence of a crime. My own embassy held my signed waiver and still told a reporter it could not comment.
The law against killing is on the books in Korea. In my son’s case, no one was ever asked to answer to it.