Even this recent deadly earthquake in Japan cannot stop the Dokdo madness:
Seoul’s foreign ministry expressed a strong protest against Tokyo on Tuesday as Japan’s weather agency included South Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo in a tsunami advisory issued after a 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck Japan.
In a map showing tsunami alerts on the Japan Meteorological Agency’s website, the rocky islets were highlighted in yellow, along with other regions on Japan’s west coast, indicating tsunami advisories were issued for the areas.
The powerful quake struck the Noto Peninsula and surrounding areas in Japan’s Ishikawa Prefecture on New Year’s Day, reportedly killing several people and causing tsunamis on South Korea’s east coast.
You can read more at the link, but this is really an issue that President Yoon needs to work with Japan to resolve to further improve bilateral relations.
Here is a very sad story in the New York Times about two Japanese men who have searched for six years for their wife and daughter that were swept away by the 2011 tsunami. Â Their search has now shifted to the ocean as they have increased their scuba training to look for bodies at sea:
Yasuo Takamatsu with his wife, Yuko, before her disappearance.
Yuko Takamatsu was somewhere in the sea off the coast of Japan. Two and a half years had passed since the tsunami, and no one had found her; but no one was really looking, either, except her husband, Yasuo Takamatsu, who loved her very much. Takamatsu first searched on land, at the bank where she vanished, and along the beaches of Onagawa, and in the forests in the mountains. After two and half years, in September 2013, when he still hadn’t found her, he turned to the sea.
He contacted the local dive shop, High Bridge, to ask about lessons. The dive instructor, Masayoshi Takahashi, led volunteers on dives to clean up tsunami debris along the coastline. Takahashi and his team had encountered bodies locked inside cars or drifting through the water. Takamatsu felt sure Takahashi would be the one to help him find Yuko. On the phone, he said, “Let’s just meet and talk about it.” At the shop, he confessed his plan. “At the age of 56,” he said, “the reason I’m actually interested in learning to dive is that I’m trying to find my wife in the sea.”  [New York Times]
Korea has been named to the deputy leadership position in an international audit of tsunami disaster relief donations.
It was named to the position on a task force set up to audit the relief funds by the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions, a group of national auditors. The announcement was made at the group’s meeting in Norway.
The task force was set up after questions were raised in many countries about the use of the funds donated to help victims of the December 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Critics have charged that of the funds that Indonesia and Sri Lanka received for disaster relief, only 10 percent has found its way to the victims.
Jeon Yun-cheol, the chairman of the Board of Audit and Inspection of Korea, was a leading proponent of the special auditing task force within the organization.
It shouldn’t come as no surprise that much of the donated money would be swindled similar to what happened with the 9/11 funds. Hopefully the Korean taskforce can uncover where all the money went.
“This group is here for humanitarian reasons,” said Indonesia’s chief detective, Lt. Gen. Suyitno Landung. “We should not be prejudiced against them. I’m worried the media is exaggerating the threat of this group.”
Against such a backdrop, the South Korean government issued a warning Thursday that it had “acquired intelligence that our relief groups in Indonesia and some other areas are becoming a possible target of terror attacks.”
A South Korean Foreign Ministry official told the AP on condition of anonymity that the statement was “not based on verifiable intelligence” and was a “precautionary warning.”
Any terrorist attack against a country providing relief supplies in the Tsunami affected areas would be totally idiotic. They could not win any popular support from the Indonesian people if they did it. They won’t do it because of these reasons. These Islamic terrorists are smart and well trained plus they are masters of propaganda and watch all the news channels. There is no way they can win anything by attacking American or Korean troops. Is Korea just looking for an excuse not to deploy the ROK Army there?
