Okinawans have been complaining about helicopter noise and safety issues with Marine Corps Air Station Futenma for many years, but they don’t like the relocation plan either:
Construction equipment is visible at Camp Schwab, Okinawa, Dec. 4, 2018. CARLOS M. VAZQUEZ II/STARS AND STRIPES
Just over half of Okinawa’s 1.15 million registered voters turned out Sunday to deliver a resounding “no” vote in a referendum on the plan to relocate Marine Corps Air Station Futenma. Out of the 601,733 voters who turned out, 434,149 — or approximately 72 percent — voted against the reclamation of land in Oura Bay at Camp Schwab for a new military runway. The plan is to close Futenma and relocate Marine air operations to Henoko on Okinawa’s less populated northern coast. The vote is sure to further complicate matters for Japan’s central government, which has pushed forward with the project for decades despite a persistent local protest movement. Construction of the runway is already underway and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said the relocation project will continue regardless of the referendum’s result.
Im skeptical of any NK watcher who does not recognize the primacy of ideology and the Kim family cult in all affairs and decisions in the DPRK. Instead of arrogantly retrofitting Western presumptions about what motivates NK behavior, see NK as it sees itself. NK is immutable. https://t.co/azbTmb6ox3
Kindergarten operators’ protestMembers from the Korea Kindergarten Association, an organization of private kindergartens, stage a protest against the revision of kindergarten-related laws in front of the National Assembly in Seoul on Feb. 25, 2019. (Yonhap)
You would think that after the Nut Rage drama Cho Hyun-ah would be keeping an extremely low profile:
Injuries allegedly caused by Cho’s violence / Courtesy of Cho’s husband
Cho Hyun-ah, 44, the Korean Air heiress who made headlines around the world for the 2014 “nut rage” incident, is being investigated for allegedly attacking her husband during divorce proceedings.
The Suseo Police Station in Seoul said Saturday that investigators started analyzing evidence provided by her husband, surnamed Park, 45, who claims Cho’s abusive behavior against him and five-year-old twin sons destroyed their marriage.
In a recently released video, Cho shouts “Die! Die!” at Park, who told investigators his wife repeatedly “strangled him” and threw a tablet PC at him, which seriously injured his toe.
On Feb. 20, Park said he was preparing for a long legal battle.
“I thought it would be better to put up with it, but when my child asked me, ‘Dad, would you protect me?,’ I was able to get up the nerve (to fight),” he wrote on Facebook.
“I’m afraid of standing up to a chaebol family, but as a father, I will protect my children.”
It is looking like things are moving closer to women having to register for the draft:
A federal judge has ruled that a men-only draft is unconstitutional, but he stopped short of ordering the Selective Service System to register women for military service. The Houston judge sided with a San Diego men’s advocacy group that challenged the government’s practice of having only men sign up for the draft, citing sex discrimination in violation of the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection clause. “This case balances on the tension between the constitutionally enshrined power of Congress to raise armies and the constitutional mandate that no person be denied the equal protection of the law,” wrote U.S. District Judge Gray Miller of the Southern District of Texas.
A senior lawmaker from Korea’s ruling Democratic Party is on the record saying that their support among people in their 20s is falling because those people were “poorly educated under conservative administrations.”
N.K. to not issue anti-U.S. stampsThis document, released by the Seoul-based Korea Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation on Feb. 25, 2019, shows a North Korean plan to issue stamps for this year. According to the plan, North Korea will not issue anti-American stamps, which it has published every year since 1952. (Yonhap)
It looks like the Vietnamese authorities do not have a sense of humor:
A Kim Jong-un impersonator was hauled from his hotel Monday ahead of his planned deportation from Vietnam before the real North Korean leader meets US President Donald Trump in Hanoi later this week.
Howard X arrived in town with Trump impersonator Russell White last week, staging a fake summit on the steps of Hanoi’s Opera House amid a swarm of press and hired security guards.
The real Trump and Kim will meet for a summit in Hanoi on February 27-28 to build on their first meeting in June in Singapore which failed to produce any concrete moves to dismantle Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal.
The Kim lookalike was questioned by Hanoi police on Friday and informed he would be put on a plane back to Hong Kong where he lives.
The impersonator was told by Vietnamese immigration officials his visa was “invalid”, but said he received no further explanation.
“The real reason is I was born with a face looking like Kim Jong Un, that’s the real crime,” he told reporters Monday, getting into a van headed for the airport with three Vietnamese men, not in uniform and who did not identify themselves.
It appears there are more problems with the quality of work done constructing the new buildings on Camp Humphreys:
Eighth Army commander Lt. Gen. Michael Bills, left, and Camp Humphreys garrison commander Col. Scott Mueller, right, address the community about housing concerns at Camp Humphreys, South Korea, Friday, Feb. 22, 2019.
A 10-year-old girl was stuck in an elevator for 45 minutes before somebody heard her screaming and called for help, her mother said. Soldiers complained about mold and temperature control problems in the barracks. Residents of Camp Humphreys gave commanders an earful Friday during a town-hall meeting about housing woes on the U.S. military’s new headquarters base in the rural area of Pyeongtaek, about 55 miles south of Seoul. Military and housing officials, who seemed surprised by the severity of some of the complaints, responded swiftly by sending people to check on the situation the next day. But many in the audience asked how the problems were allowed to occur considering many of the facilities are new and touted as state of the art. The meeting, held in the Four Chaplains memorial chapel, was part of a military-wide outreach effort seeking feedback from soldiers and their loved ones following congressional testimony and media reports revealing dangerous conditions on bases in the United States.
Here is what the USFK Commander had to say about this, which was essentially don’t blame us, but we are trying to fix it:
U.S. Forces Korea commander Gen. Robert Abrams explained that the Army Corps of Engineers, which oversaw the expansion project, could not do quality checks until 80 percent of the project was complete according to the bilateral agreement. The hospital and some other facilities have failed that test in the past, forcing the builders to go back and fix things even if that meant starting from scratch. “We’re actually at the mercy, if you will, of those contractors,” he told the audience. The four-star later clarified that he understands why South Korea wanted the oversight since it is making such a huge investment in the base. “We can provide feedback, which we do. We have direct access and we’re pretty aggressive about it,” he told Stars and Stripes. “I was really driving home the point that this is not the garrison’s fault and it’s not our Corps of Engineers’ fault.”
You can read more at the link, but the Camp Humphreys expansion project has been plagued by corruption scandals over the years so the fact Soldiers are dealing with apparently poor construction should not be too surprising to everyone.
