Fortunately no one was injured or killed from this crash:
An American F-16 Fighting Falcon crashed Saturday in an agricultural field near Osan Air Base, according to the 51st Fighter Wing
The crash occurred around 9:45 a.m. about 10 miles from Osan and 30 miles south of Seoul, the wing said in a news release. The pilot ejected safely and is in stable condition after being taken to an urgent care facility on base.
No other injuries were reported and an investigation is underway, the wing said.
The F-16 was assigned to the 8th Fighter Wing out of Kunsan Air Base, about 115 miles south of Seoul. Around 30 F-16s from Kunsan were temporarily relocated to Osan in March due to routine repairs of the base’s runway.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link.
I really think the biggest obstacle to major gains in bilateral relations is going to be how does President Yoon convince Kishida that anything they agree to will actually last after he leaves office? The Japanese have seen so many agreements get reneged on after a new person takes over the Presidency that is why they are probably going to be very cautious before agreeing to any major deals:
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida arrives at Seoul Air Base, south of Seoul, on May 7, 2023. (Yonhap)
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida arrived in South Korea on Sunday for a summit with President Yoon Suk Yeol, marking the full-scale resumption of “shuttle diplomacy” between the two countries’ leaders after 12 years.
Kishida’s visit comes as bilateral relations have warmed significantly following Seoul’s decision in March to compensate Korean victims of Japanese wartime forced labor without contributions from Japanese firms.
Yoon traveled to Tokyo 10 days after the decision was announced and held a summit with Kishida as the first South Korean president to pay a bilateral visit to Japan in 12 years.
Kishida’s two-day visit is also the first bilateral visit by a Japanese leader in 12 years, marking the full-scale resumption of “shuttle diplomacy,” or regular mutual visits, as agreed between Yoon and Kishida during their summit in Tokyo in March.
Upon arrival, the Japanese prime minister headed to Seoul National Cemetery and paid his respects to Korea’s fallen independence fighters and war veterans.
Later in the day, he will hold a summit with Yoon at the presidential office, hold a joint news conference, and then have dinner with Yoon and first lady Kim Keon Hee at the official presidential residence, according to diplomatic sources.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but that was a very symbolic move by Kishida to pay his respects at the National Cemetery.
Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.
Just another example of the growing trilateral cooperation between the ROK, Japan, and the U.S.:
The U.S. military has revealed South Korean, U.S. and Japanese submarine commanders jointly boarded an American nuclear ballistic missile submarine for the first time last month, in a sign of bolstering trilateral cooperation against North Korean threats.
On the Pentagon’s Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, it posted a series of photos showing the three officials aboard the USS Maine, an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, in the vicinity of Guam on April 18.
The three were Rear Adm. Lee Su-youl, the commander of the South Korean Navy’s Submarine Force; Rear Adm. Rick Seif, the commander of the U.S.’ Submarine Group 7; and Vice Adm. Tateki Tawara, the commander of Japan’s Fleet Submarine Force.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
This is absolutely horrible:
An apartment in Seoul’s Nowon district where an apparent murder-suicide involving a family of three occurred is cordoned off by police on May 3, 2023. (Yonhap)
A family of three, including a months-old baby, were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide in northeastern Seoul on Wednesday, police said.
A 33-year-old-man surnamed Lee, his 37-year-old wife and their baby, believed to be several months old, were found dead by the police at an apartment in the Nowon district at 4:46 a.m.
The woman was found stabbed with a knife inside the apartment, and the bodies of the man and the baby were found outside, the police said, adding officers went there after receiving a call from the man’s father.
The police began an investigation, speculating the man may have killed his wife before jumping off the apartment building with the baby.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
It took a few decades, but the New York Times discovered there was prostitutes in South Korea to worked in the villes outside of U.S. military bases decades ago. It must be a slow news day for the New York Times to rehash old news like this:
In Dongducheon, South Korea, north of Seoul, women forced to work as prostitutes to American soldiers in the decades after the Korean War were confined in this building when they were discovered to have a sexually transmitted disease. (NYT)
When Cho Soon-ok was 17 in 1977, three men kidnapped and sold her to a pimp in Dongducheon, a town north of Seoul.
She was about to begin high school, but instead of pursuing her dream of becoming a ballerina, she was forced to spend the next five years under the constant watch of her pimp, going to a nearby club for sex work. Her customers: American soldiers.
The euphemism “comfort women” typically describes Korean and other Asian women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese during World War II. But the sexual exploitation of another group of women continued in South Korea long after Japan’s colonial rule ended in 1945 — and it was facilitated by their own government.
There were “special comfort women units” for South Korean soldiers, and “comfort stations” for U.S.-led United Nations troops during the Korean War. In the postwar years, many of these women worked in gijichon, or “camp towns,” built around U.S. military bases.
New York Times
You can read more at the link, but the kidnapping of women to be sold to brothels back then was very rare. What mostly happened was that families sold their daughters to brothel owners to pay for tuition for their sons with the thought that the son will lift the family out of poverty after finding a good job. The “kidnapping” was just the brothel owners picking up the girl that was sold.
Overall the article is just a rehash of old information that can be read in many books about Korea. A good book to read about the club system is Seasons in the Kingdom by Tim Norris. It is also worth reading the comments at the attached link with many former GIs providing context about the women and the conditions they found themselves in back then.
By the way, I wonder if the New York Times is next going to do an article where in recent years they discover there was a “juicy girl” system outside of U.S. military bases as well?
