Anywhere from 18-23 Korean missionaries and NGO workers were kidnapped by Taliban terrorists in Afghanistan during a bus ride from Kandahar to Kabul. The Taliban is demanding that Korea withdraw their troops from Afghanistan for the safe return of the abducted people. The Marmot has an excellent post following the developments of this story as they happen.
You have to admire somebody like this:
A woman in her 60s surnamed Lee donated land she owned in Cheongdam-dong, Gangnam worth 40 billion won to the Korea University Medical Center (KUMC) recently. It is the single largest individual donation in Korean history.
The donator was once hospitalized in KUMC to have her chronic disease treated. KUMC, located in Ahnam-dong, Seongbuk, said on Thursday that Lee delivered land-related documents in May, saying, “My mother told me not to obsess with material wealth. I want to follow her words.” The KUMC did not disclose her name or family information at the request of Lee. As a result, her praiseworthy deed was left unknown for the past two months.
When the KUMC asked her why she wanted to remain anonymous, she replied, “When my mother bequeathed her wealth to me, she told me to return it to society. I am only a mediator between her and KUMC.”
I saw this in HomePlus and I fail to see what people see in Che Guevara much less spend the time to make a puzzle of him to hang on the wall. This is the guy who aspired to make Cuba in the image of North Korea and used as many firing squads as possible in his quest to make it happen.
The Joong Ang Ilbo has now reported on the controversy surrounding the Yanghwajin Foreigner Cemetery in Seoul. The article is a good read and provides a decent overview of the fight going on over the future of the cemetery:
Those visiting the cemetery’s 14,000 square meters likely appreciate the sacrifice of those early missionaries, but they may be unaware that a present day conflict is underway between two Protestant churches one foreign and one Korean over the right to manage the cemetery and affiliated properties.
The foreign congregation, Seoul Union Church, with 100 members, claims that its Korean neighbors in the 2,000-strong 100th Anniversary Memorial Church are trying to push it out of a chapel on the cemetery grounds, which the union church has occupied since 1986 and has shared with the memorial church since 2005.
Seoul Union, founded in 1885, was the first Protestant church in Korea and its congregation has included some of the most venerable foreign families in the country. Many of its former members are buried in the cemetery. It worries that a demand by the memorial church that it change its service time from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. is a disguised attempt to displace it from the cemetery and the chapel. The deadline for the schedule change is Sunday, Aug. 5.
The situation has become so bitter that it seems headed for court. Both sides accuse the other of mismanaging the cemetery, while Seoul Union leaders say a long-standing agreement to leave the property under the effective control of the foreign church is being violated.
Union church member John Linton, a prominent Seoul doctor whose missionary family has been in Korea for more than a century, says the prospects for resolution are bleak. “We think this is a kind of war,” he said.
Yes war has been declared and it appears August 5th is when battle is going to commence:
Rev. Prince C. Oteng-Boateng, the current pastor of the union church, recently sent a letter to Korean church leaders asking for help. The pastor requested supporters to attend the morning service at union church on Aug. 5 and block any physical coercion by the Korean church.
“We believe that any attempt by the memorial church to disrupt or forcibly remove Seoul Union Church from its rightful home, and to obstruct our right of usage, will result in a public demonstration [against] its actions,” the pastor said in the letter.
“We are appealing to you and the entire Korean Christian community to pray with Seoul Union Church and to seek your direct intervention in defeating this persecution,” the pastor wrote.
The controversy over the Yanghwajin Foreigner Cemetery in Seoul has been covered in great detail before by guest blogger Robert Neff over at the Marmot’s Hole. He was the first person to get the story out about why the Korean Memorial Church wanted to get rid of the foreigner composed Union Church; because they planned to disinter the bodies of foreigners in the cemetery:
In an interview with The Korea Herald, Kim Yong-nam, who identified himself as administrator to the Church and Yangwhajin, supported the claim that those who were unsuitable for the cemetery such as Koreans, a foreigner he described as an “Itaewon pool player,” and members of the U.S. military – who chose to be buried at the cemetery along with their families – would be removed at some time in the future.
Many of the graves that may be disinterred include members of the US military. Robert Neff in a later posting at the Marmot’s Hole provided names of all the US military servicemen and their family members buried at Yanghwajin. The list was forwarded to the US Embassy and USFK, but there has yet to be any feedback on what course of action if any US officials plan to do. The list of servicemembers and their families buried at Yanghwajin is quite long, and it is sad to think these people, even death, are not free from discrimination of foreigners in Korea.
This is why the Union Church is fighting so hard to protect the cemetery from the Memorial Church and it appears this is headed for a final showdown on August 5th.
Family members of Korea’s most famous Christian missionary family, the Underwood family, are buried at Yanghwajin. The members of the Memorial Church never caused any issues until Dr. Horace Grant Underwood III died in 2004. It cannot be understated the amount of respect and influence a man like Horace Underwood III had in Korea. It seems more than just a tad bit coincidental that this dispute over the fate of Yanghwajin began shortly after his death.
It would be interesting to hear what the Underwood family has to say about this matter, but the remaining members of the Underwood family left Korea for unspecified reasons shortly after the passing of Horace Underwood III. The way things are looking now foreigners buried in the Yanghwajin Foreigner Cemetery maybe leaving for “unspecified reasons” as well.
It will be interesting to see how the Seoul City government intends to enforce this new law:
Put out those butts while waiting for the bus.
Seoul city officials will ban smoking at bus stops beginning Sept. 1, according to a Korea Herald news report.
More than 5,300 bus stops now have signs stating, “Bus Stops, No Smoking,” according to the report.
According to the report, some parks in Seoul will be declared no-smoking zones this month and smoking at all city government parks will banned by the end of 2008.
I expect this law to be enforced like stop lights, as in once a year "crackdowns" that last for one week. Personally I really don’t care if someone smokes outside, what bothers me is when people throw their cigarette butts on the ground. It also bothers me when people throw litter in general on the ground which cigarette butts make just a fraction of in Seoul. So when will litter laws be implemented and enforced in Seoul?
So what was President Roh doing while the memorial ceremony was going on for the six sailors murdered by North Korea during the West Sea Naval Battle? Kim Dae-joong from the Chosun Ilbo has the answer:
Despite being supreme commander of the armed forces, the president did not show up at a memorial service honoring the dead in an inter-Korean naval clash near the Northern Limit Line, the de-facto sea border between the two Koreas, on its fifth anniversary. At the time, the chief executive was busy at Cheong Wa Dae handing letters of appointment to steering members of the Presidential Committee for the Inspection of Collaborations for Japanese Imperialism and the Advisory on Democratic Peaceful Unification. It was a glaring display of his lack of interest in, and disrespect for, the status and role of our armed forces. Yet no one complained.
So authorizing more searches for Japanese collaborators over 60 years ago is more important than attending a memorial ceremony for six sailors murdered in service to their country five years ago. Why am I not surprised?
The Korean government is using one of its favorite political weapons by targeting four major media outlets with tax probes:
The National Tax Service has sent notices on the investigation to the media outlets – the JoongAng Ilbo, MBC, BBS and the weekly Ilyo Shinmun, the sources said. The office is planning to start the investigation Monday. The inquiry into MBC is expected to focus on its payments of corporate and value-added taxes in the 2003-04 fiscal year, while the content of investigations into the other companies was not immediately known.
I’m sure this has nothing to do with controlling the South Korean media before the upcoming presidential election.
I have been saying this for years that many of the Korean civic groups are nothing more than front groups for their political puppet masters. Often the purposes for these groups are to spread anti-Americanism. Well now my thoughts on this are being confirmed even by Korean intellectuals:
On June 28, the Liberty Union released a book on the types of malicious propaganda and the problems involving civic groups which utilized propaganda in the run-up to the 2002 presidential election. Law professor Jeong Seung-yun of Busan National University wrote a book entitled, ‘Civic Groups & Political Maneuvering.’ And former student activist Lee Dal-won, who works for the Liberty Union and runs his own company, Kyungrim R&C, wrote a book entitled, ‘Co-failure, Civic Groups & the Participatory Government.’ The two authors combined their books into a single volume, which is entitled ‘Civic Groups, are they a hope or a drag?’
Here is how the propaganda process by the civic groups work:
Professor Jeong said “Malicious propaganda in the 2002 election was carried out in four steps.”
The first step: spreading rumors through the Internet and minor news outlets; the second step: political parties and civic groups making rumors appear real and affecting public opinion; the third step: collective hypnosis meaning some mainstream media report rumors as established fact; the fourth step: civic groups aggressively incite voters.
This process perfectly describes what happened with the 2002 Armored Vehicle Accident. These same tactics were used even before 2002 with the 2000 Water Dumping Incident and the Kooni Range protests. The tactics of these groups continues this day with their activities to stop the USFK relocation at Camp Humphreys along with their claims of pollution on vacated USFK camps.
Expect to see these tactics used over and over again until like the article states, the members of these groups as well as the media are held responsible for spreading rumors and lies:
Regarding this matter, Professor Jeong said, “Civic groups want to get involved with smear campaigns because they know they will not be punished for their involvement.
In fact many of these civic groups and their media allies like OhMyNews are actually funded by the ruling Korean government, so of course they do not fear any prosecution for their rumor mongering and lies. In fact the government has leverage on them with the public funding to set what rumors and lies need to be spread. Others that aren’t receiving funding from the South Korean government are front groups for the North Koreans.
Finally some people in South Korea are waking up to the tactics and true purposes of these so called civic groups and their media allies.
I’m sure by now everyone has heard that the Korean-American dry cleaner won his case against his dissatisfied customer suing him for $54 million dollars over a pair of pants. I am happy the dry cleaner won his case, but here is something I found interesting in an interview of the dry cleaner Chung Jing-nam in the Chosun Ilbo:
Chung thanked Koreans who supported him, saying he might have given up without the Korean media’s interest and the support of the Korean-American community. The U.S. media welcomed the Washington court’s decision, but some did not rule out an appeal.
Just to let Mr. Chung know, it wasn’t just the Korean-American community and the Korean media behind you, every common sense loving American along with even the media were behind you. The cases acquittal was posted on the front page of the CNN website. In fact I haven’t heard of one person even supporting the dissatisfied customer’s case. This was definitely a victory for common sense.Â
I was watching KBS1 last night and they had did an uncover report on how cab drivers in Seoul particularly at Incheon Airport were overcharging foreigners. The cab drivers had found techniques to rig their meters so that when a foreigner takes a cab they would hit a button that would speed up the meter to charge the foreigner more than a Korean customer who would better know how much the cab fare from the airport should cost.
KBS pointed out that a cab fare from the airport into Seoul should cost about 48,500 won while the cab driver they did the uncover report on cost 67,500 won. A cab fare that is 19,000 won more expensive converts to about $20 US dollars more in expense for foreigners. The report also had interviews with foreigners in Seoul who told other stories of how the cab drivers try to rip them off.
I have never taken a taxi from the airport, I always use the airport bus or the subway train that is now available as well. So I can’t really add any personal experiences about the airport taxi drivers, but the fact that they are ripping off foreigners does not surprise me. Also with Seoul taxi drivers I have never had any problems with as well. I’m sure there are crooked cab drivers there, but personally I have had no problems which I think suggests that only a really small minority are crooked.
The only places I have had regular issues with taxi drivers are in Uijongbu and Dongducheon where they love to play the game of not running the meter and than charging GIs an overpriced fare at the end of the ride. A tactic I used to combat this is to simply not pay the cab driver. If he doesn’t run the meter it is a free ride. The cab drivers scream and yell and one time a cab driver tried to get the police stationed in front of Camp Red Cloud to arrest me. I simply showed the policemen the meter which had zero on it and the policemen had no issues and let me go into the camp.
I even had one cab driver stop in the middle of the ride and stop the meter and then try to negotiate an overpriced fair with me and my buddy. If we didn’t agree we would have to get out of the cab in an area where he knew we would have to walk a long ways to find another cab. I just simply started writing down his information from the panel in the taxi. He asked me what I was doing and I told him I was going to contact his taxi company as well as file a complaint with the local authorities. The taxi driver started the meter again really quick and got us to our destination in no time.
The cab drivers in Uijongbu and Dongducheon is something I wish KBS or someone in the Korean media would do an expose on because they regularly screw over soldiers and really portray a bad image of Korea to the soldiers serving in the 2nd Infantry Division.
