SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — An American charged with murdering a Seoul university student in 1997 has been extradited to South Korea to face a new trial in a case that has generated widespread interest and sparked a movie. 
 
 Arthur Patterson, an American charged with murdering a Seoul university student in 1997, is escorted by South Korean police officers upon his arrival at Incheon International airport in Incheon, South... (Associated Press) 
 
 Arthur Patterson, center, an American charged with murdering a Seoul university student in 1997, is escorted by South Korean police officers upon his arrival at Incheon International airport in Incheon,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Arthur Patterson faces charges he fatally stabbed Cho Choong-pil at a Burger King restaurant in Itaewon, an entertainment district near the U.S. military headquarters in Seoul. 
 
 Initially his friend, U.S. citizen Edward Lee, was sentenced to life in prison for the killing before an appeals court later reduced that to 20 years. Patterson initially got an 18-month jail term for destroying evidence and possessing a dangerous weapon. 
 
 But South Korea's Supreme Court later ordered a new trial, and a lower-level court acquitted Lee, citing a lack of evidence. It's not clear where Lee is now. Patterson and Lee, both teenagers at the time, accused each other of killing Cho, 22, who was found with multiple stab wounds in the restaurant's bathroom and died on the way to a hospital. 
 
 Patterson was set free in a special amnesty before finishing his prison term. Prosecutors, meanwhile, had launched a new investigation of Patterson and banned him from leaving the country until all court proceedings were finished. But he fled to the U.S. while South Korean authorities were trying to renew a travel ban on him, according to South Korea's Justice Ministry. 
 
 Calls to extradite Patterson grew after the release of a 2009 movie about the murder case. In 2011, prosecutors charged Patterson with murder, saying they had new evidence, Justice Ministry officials said. 
 
 "It's not right that they (Cho's family members) have to keep going through this pain over and over and over, but it's not right that I'm here either. I'm still shocked that I'm even here," Patterson told reporters after arriving at Incheon International Airport, just west of Seoul. 
 
 A Seoul district court will soon set a trial date, a Justice Ministry official said on condition of anonymity citing office rules. The official said it is not clear if Lee will testify at Patterson's trial. 
 
 Patterson was in South Korea in 1997 because his father was a civilian employee of the U.S. military at the time. There are 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea to deter potential aggression from North Korea, and crimes involving U.S. soldiers are a long-running source of anti-American sentiments among South Koreans. 

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 INCHEON, Sept. 23 (Yonhap) — A U.S. citizen accused of murdering a South Korean college student in 1997 was extradited to South Korea on Wednesday. 
 
 Arthur Patterson arrived at Incheon airport, west of Seoul, Wednesday morning. He is suspected of stabbing a college student, identified by his surname Cho, multiple times at a Burger King in the popular foreigner district of Itaewon in central Seoul 18 years ago. 
 
 “It’s not right that they (the family of the victim) have to keep going through this pain over and over and over, but it’s not right that I’m here either. I’m still shocked that I’m even here,” Patterson told reporters after arriving at the airport. 
 
 Denying the charges, he pointed to Korean-American Edward Lee, who he was with at the site of the homicide, as the culprit. 
 
 A local court found Lee guilty of murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment in 1998, but he was acquitted by the Supreme Court the following year on a lack of evidence. 
 
 At the time, Patterson, who is half Korean, was in Seoul as the dependent of a civilian worker with the U.S. military. The 35-year-old was under investigation when he fled the country in 1999. His departure was made possible after law enforcement authorities failed to extend his foreign travel ban. 
 
 Prosecutors indicted Patterson for the murder of the 22-year-old student in November 2011 and set into motion the extradition process. 
 
 While Patterson was caught in the United States in May 2011 in collaboration with U.S. authorities, he has been delaying extradition by submitting multiple habeas corpus petitions, the Ministry of Justice said. 
 
 He will be taken into custody at the Seoul Detention Center before standing trial. 
 
 U.S. citizen Arthur Patterson, who is accused of murdering a South Korean college student in 1997, speaks to reporters after being extradited to South Korea at Incheon airport, west of Seoul, on Sept. 23, 2015. He is suspected of stabbing a college student, identified by his surname Cho, multiple times at a Burger King in the popular foreigner district of Itaewon in central Seoul. (Yonhap) 
 
 scaaet@yna.co.kr 
 
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– An American man is about to face trial in South Korea for a murder he says he didn't commit. Arthur Patterson, 35, was just 17 when he and a Korean-American friend, Edward Lee, challenged each other to kill a man with a pocketknife in 1997, according to prosecutors. Both have admitted to being in the restroom of a Seoul Burger King where college student Cho Choong-pil was found with multiple stab wounds to his neck, but the two friends each blamed the other for the killing, reports the New York Times. In an initial trial, Lee was sentenced to 20 years in prison for murder, while Patterson got 18 months for possessing a dangerous weapon and destroying evidence, reports the AP. He was released in an amnesty in 1998. That same year, the Supreme Court ordered a retrial and Lee was let off for lack of evidence. Patterson, the son of an American military contractor, returned to the US in 1999 as the main suspect in the killing; he fled while authorities were trying to renew a travel ban that would keep him in the country. Yonhap News reports he was detained in the US and formally indicted for murder in May 2011, two years after a popular movie about Cho's murder led to fresh calls for justice. The AP notes crimes in South Korea linked to the US military are "a long-running source of anti-American sentiments." Upon his arrival at Incheon International Airport yesterday, Patterson expressed sympathy for Cho’s family but denied he committed murder. "It's not right that they have to keep going through this pain over and over and over, but it's not right that I'm here either. I'm still shocked that I'm even here," he said. A trial date hasn’t been set.