Category: Uncategorized

Here is a true Korea Finder for you. Maybe in the future I will do another Japan Finder, but for now I have decided to get back to doing Korea Finders. So where in Korea is this picture located?

According to Nomad hell does in fact freeze over.

Most of the Korean protesters that assaulted policemen and destroyed property in Hong Kong are going to be released:

Some 838 Korean anti-globalization protesters arrested in violent protests against the WTO Ministerial Meeting in Hong Kong were let off with a caution on Monday afternoon. Twelve people remain in custody while police investigate whether they instigated the violence.
Vice Foreign Minister Lee Kyu-hyung arrived in Hong Kong on Monday and met with the territory’s top interior official and the chief of police. He apologized for the violent protests and asked authorities for lenience. The Hong Kong officials reportedly told him the matter would be dealt with judicially. The ministry said Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon plans to call Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang.

Meanwhile, a Foreign Ministry official said Hong Kong in all detained 1,001 Korean protestors, a lot more than the 600 or so reported a day earlier. The 151 women among them were released on Sunday night. The remaining 12 are likely to be indicted.

If these rioters were Hong Kong citizens I wonder if they would have been let off the hook with just a caution? At least 12 of riot organizers are going to be indicted. That is still more than what happens to these rioters here in Korea.

The military is now trying a new approach to preventing black marketing in Korea:

U.S. military officials here are using homeland security technology to crack down on a different sort of crime: black marketing.

The technology is so precise that it can spot the shopper who occasionally buys one or two packages of hot dogs but never remembers the buns. It can find the childless person who routinely buys baby food and formula. It can pick out the retired officer who just happens to cash out in the same checkout lane — manned by the same cashier — during every shopping excursion.

This may sound like a good idea but the professional black marketers aided by their AAFES accomplices will find a way around it. This computer program also doesn’t take into account all the merchandise that magically disappears at the port.

The only way to stop black marketing is for the Korean authorities to shut down the black markets. In the downtown Uijongbu market for example you can pretty much buy everything from the CRC commissary there. Some of the items still have the AAFES price tags on them. Why doesn’t someone arrest these people? If black marketers don’t have a market to sell the items to that might actually leave some meat on the shelves for service members. This computer program is only going to prevent a drop in the bucket of the real problem, the black markets themselves.

Only in Korea would people be so concerned about video game game safety that ranks right up there with Fan Death in terms of total deaths inflicted on the Korean population. I think the Korean government could save more lives by instituting a campaign for public traffic safety than promoting ways to prevent video game inflicted death.

Andrei Lankov has another great piece about curent events in North Korea:

However, more sinister scenarios are being discussed in Seoul these days. There are growing worries that Chinese involvement will not be limited to just shipping trainloads of grain and fertilizer to prevent the North Korean government from collapsing. More direct involvement in the event of a crisis is possible, up to the point of installing a pro-Chinese government in Pyongyang, according to some observers. These fears are not necessarily paranoid: if anything, South Korean public opinion is rather pro-Chinese these days.

The existence of prosperous and democratic South Korea means that a complete collapse of the North Korean system will probably lead to a German-style unification. If this were to happen, the people who run the North now will have no chance of keeping their privileges, and perhaps have reasons to worry about their lives.

The question I am wondering is South Korea willing to go to war against China if the Chinese annex North Korea after a regime collapse. It might be a good thing to keep the Uncle Sam on your good side if you are concerned this might happen.

Hat tip: Marmot

Korea has had a recent wiretapping scandal and now America has it’s own wiretapping scandal, or should we consider it a necessary provision to prevent future terrorist attacks in America? I have been wondering how the US media and their Democratic allies would down play the recent success of the Iraqi elections and today I got my answer. After the election that drew an amazing 70% turn out, I figured the Democrats would complain about 30% of the population being disenfranchised voters in order to down play the election. Instead they were even more clever.

They launched a story about domestic spying that was uncovered over a year ago by the New York Times. They have been holding on to this story for over a year and have been waiting for the right moment to drop it. The NY Times alleges that they held on to the story this long at the urging of the Bush administration, but now they just happen to publish this story right after the Iraqi election and the upcoming vote to renew the Patriot Act. Coincidence, I think not. With so much success and buzz coming from the Iraqi elections the media and their Democratic allies needed something to cloud the buzz and change the subject; so they launched this story. Plus it puts the supporters of the Patriot Act in a difficult position to vote for the continuation of the act.

What is sad is that the media is implying that the wiretapping is illegal when in fact it is legal and President Bush followed all the appropriate guidelines for domestic spying:

The official said that, since October 2001, the program has been renewed more than three dozen times. Each time, the White House counsel and the attorney general certified the lawfulness of the program, the official said. Bush then signed the authorizations.

“The president has authorized NSA to fully use its resources ¿ let me underscore this now ¿ consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution to defend the United States and its citizens,” the official said, adding that congressional leaders have also been briefed more than a dozen times.

The Bush administration did not break the law and the NY Times article did not even say the Bush administration broke the law. The US President can authorize the domestic wiretapping only if a threat of a catastrophic terrorist attack is possible. Bush authorized the wiretapping in October of 2001 right after 9/11. I would say the risk of another terrorist attack was very high and the President responded accordingly. Plus he informed the Senate Intelligence Committee which is headed by a democrat Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) which did nothing to stop the domestic spying. How come Senator Rockefeller’s name and the Democrats responsibility in this issue is not spread all over the news?

Before you become concerned about the NSA listening in on your conversations with your significant other keep in mind that the NSA was only spying on suspected terrorists making phone calls or e-mails abroad not internally within America. Warrants were issued for phone calls and e-mails that were made domestically:

The surveillance, disclosed in Friday’s New York Times, is said to allow the agency to monitor international calls and e-mail messages of people inside the United States. But the paper said the agency would still seek warrants to snoop on purely domestic communications ¿ for example, Americans’ calls between New York and California.

So basically if you aren’t making phone calls to suspected terrorists in let’s say Egypt you don’t need to worry about the NSA wiretapping your conversation.

The NSA requested these powers after 9/11 because some of the Al-Qaida hijackers based in San Diego communicated with their superiors abroad through phone and e-mail and the federal authorities were forced by law to not monitor such conversations. If the NSA had picked up on these phone calls and e-mails from San Diego before 9/11 the whole tragedy could have been prevented.

Intelligence officials are even saying that the wiretapping powers prevented one publicized terrorist attack to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge:

Iyman Faris, a/k/a Mohammad Rauf, 34, of Columbus, Ohio, was charged in a two-count criminal information filed under seal in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, on May 1, 2003. Faris pleaded guilty to the charges in the criminal information on the same day. The charges and plea agreement were unsealed today.

In court documents accompanying the plea agreement, Faris admitted casing a New York City bridge for al Qaeda, and researching and providing information to al Qaeda regarding the tools necessary for possible attacks on U.S. targets.

This guy pleaded guilty to organizing an Al-Qaida terrorist attack and was caught due to the NSA’s ability to wiretap. What I find interesting about this, is that the same people now complaining about civil liberties violations would be the same people criticizing the Bush administration if they did nto prevent this thwarted terrorist attack on the Brooklyn Bridge. We know that the powers given to the NSA prevented one terrorist attack, but how many other attacks were foiled that we don’t know about?

However, playing politics and selling books is more important than national security. That is right this is also about selling books. The author of the NY Times article is releasing a book next month and the article is an actual excerpt from the book. How can any reasonable person think that this the release of this article is not based on politics and selling books? How can this all be a coincidence?

Some may remember the recent wiretapping scandal that happened here in Korea. This scandal involved the Korean CIA wiretapping for political reasons. There has been no evidence that any of the wiretapping done by the Bush Administration was done for political purposes. There is no evidence that Bush was wiretapping John Kerry for example. The wiretapping was done for national security yet opponents to the wiretapping are opposed due to political reasons not civil liberties.

This article has already had the effect of delaying the passage of the Patriot Act that the Democrats are currently filibustering plus no one is talking about the Iraqi elections anymore. It is amazing to me that a big chunk of the media and a political party wants the US to lose the war in Iraq and set conditions for another terrorist attack in America in order to return to power politically.

With all this said, if you are still worried about losing your civil liberties, remember the only civil liberty you are losing is your right to communicate freely with terrorists. I don’t know about you, but this is one right I don’t mind giving up.

Here is a great link that shows the power of photography to influence public opinion. How is this photograph bending the truth of it’s message? Click here to find out.

I got an e-mail from the Lost Nomad that should put to rest the conspiracy theories about the Korean government targeting Typepad accounts to silence criticism about Dr. Hwang. Nomad was informed from Typepad about what happened:

During routine maintenance of our network and storage systems last night, we experienced an issue with our primary disk system where data from published blogs are stored. We are currently running diagnostics on the device, and working to restore your data as soon as possible. Verifying data can be a slow process and will take time.

In the meantime we are currently deploying backup copies of your weblogs from approximately 2 days ago. This is what will be displayed for your blog. The TypePad application is currently unavailable, which means that users will not be able to log in, and visitors to weblogs will not be able to post comments. We are working to bring TypePad back online as soon as possible.

Is it just me or does Typepad have a lot of problems with their accounts for some reason? Hopefully they will get this problem fixed successfully so the great K-blogs affected by the problem will be back up and running properly.

Once again the do gooders are blaming the US military for prostitution in Korea:

South Korea is edging out Japan as the new destination of trafficked women, most of whom are forced into sex trade, a woman rights advocate revealed.

Nuqui recalled that during her trip to South Korea in August, she noticed that those working in clubs near the US military bases were made to wear sexy outfits, perform on stage, and sell drinks to customers. If they refuse, they risk not getting their salaries.

Really nothing new here besides the fact that Korea beat out Japan this time in human trafficking. This is a little surprising considering Korea has 1/3 the population of Japan. This however, is a topic that continues to bug me.

Can someone please tell me how the US military is responsible for prostitution in Korea? The world’s oldest profession was alive and well in one of the world’s oldest countries, Korea long before the US military ever came here. Can also someone please tell me how USFK would even stop prostitution in Korea? Well, that is exactly what people expect the United States to do:

“We urge the United States of America to take a second look at the trafficking of women in Korea, as well as the reported involvement of US military personnel,” she said.

This is ridiculous because I see this over and over again where people expect the good old USA to stop prostitution in Korea. For example should USFK send soldiers down to the Red Light Districts in Mia-ri or Yongsan-gu and arrest all the Koreans there because the USA is expected to stop prostitution in Korea?

Does Korea and the Philippines have no responsibility as well for the prostitution problem? This is Korea and the Koreans are responsible for policing their own laws, not USFK. Plus 95% of the prostitution in the country happens away from US military bases. Even the smallest villages in Korea still have their own “massage parlors”.

The Philippines has a responsibility in this matter as well because the common perception is that the Philippine women are duped into coming to Korea. I’m sorry to burst some people’s bubbles, but most of these women know what they were getting into before they ever came to Korea. These women came anyway because they were desperate to get out of poverty and coming to Korea gave them an opportunity to earn more money than what they would have made in the Philippines plus the outside chance of marrying a US GI.

Often these women say they were duped to everyone that talks to them in order to draw sympathy from customers in order to have more drinks bought for them along with the fact that very few people would openly admit anyway to wanting to become a prostitute; especially girls from a staunchly Catholic country like the Philippines. So the do gooders take these stories and run with it. Think about it; how could these women not know that they would end up as prostitutes in Korea? For years it has been well known about the plight of Philippine women in Korea.

These facts have been discussed not only in the world media, but also the domestic media in the Philippines. Yet, the Philippine women keep coming. Why doesn’t the Philippines not allow their women to apply for the E6 Visa? They won’t do that because officially the Philippine government is against prostitution in Korea, but unofficially they sanction it by letting Philippine women get E6 Visas. The government allows this because the country needs these women to bring in the foreign hard currency to aid the economy. Plus it reduces the amount of unemployment in the country.

Yet with all of these factors out there, the USA is supposed to stop prostitution in Korea.