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This from the New York Times is interesting. Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico is going to travel to North Korea:

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a United Nations ambassador in the Clinton administration who has long maintained contacts with North Korea, will travel next week to Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, for talks aimed at persuading the North to give up its nuclear arms program, Mr. Richardson’s office and the Bush administration said Thursday.

Mr. Richardson, a prominent Democrat, said that he would not represent the United States as an official negotiator but that his trip was intended “to move the diplomatic process forward,” following an agreement in principle reached last month in the six-nation talks involving North Korea and the United States and its partners, South Korea, Japan, Russia and China.

Why do the North Koreans like Gov. Richardson so much? If he can keep the diplomatic process moving forward then so be it, but I won’t get my hopes up. By the way I like how the NY Times article’s headline is US Democrat Goes to North Korea instead of New Mexico Governor Goes to North Korea.

Ever wonder why the US $20 bill keeps changing? It is because of the quality of counterfeit bills coming out of North Korea commonly referred to as “Super Notes”. North Korea relies on counterfeiting, drug trafficking, and illegal bootlegging to bring in hard currency for the North Korean elites. A lot of this activity is done through North Korean diplomatic missions. Yes that is right North Korean diplomats are regularly involved in criminal activity. Now the US government is trying to crack down on this illegal activity and they are starting in Ireland of all places:

North Korea’s continued involvement in counterfeiting is not helping its relations with the U.S., the State Department said Wednesday (local time). Spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters his government was seeking the extradition of Northern Ireland’s Worker’s Party chief Sean Garland, who has been indicted on suspicion of circulating counterfeit U.S. banknotes of North Korean origin. The way US-North Korea relations will progress is highly contingent on North Korea’s implication in illegal activities, the human rights situation and its nuclear weapons programs, Ereli said.

The daily quoted U.S. officials as saying the inclusion of North Korea in Garland’s indictment was the first time Washington has officially charged North Korea with an illicit activity in court, which suggested a stepping-up of U.S. attempts to crack down on activities like counterfeiting, bootlegging cigarettes and drug trafficking across the globe it accuses Pyongyang of.

This indictment is just a drop in the bucket but at least it is a start.

I’m not sure how real the Great Korean ESL Purge of 2005 is, but it continues to pick up attention in the international press. First the Canadian Globe and Mail ran an article on this “crisis” and now the English Guardian has run an article as well:

Immigration officers are believed to have raided schools, arresting teachers and recruiters.

She added: “The whole situation is totally inhumane. I’ve heard of 70 [foreign teachers] being put in a room with capacity for only 30 or 40. It’s not like they were dealing drugs or running guns.”

I really don’t see any problem with the Korean authorities cracking down on illegal English teachers. If some of these teachers entered the country to teach English without the proper paperwork the Korean authorities have the right to detain and deport you. They should also focus on the business owners that hired them in the first place as well knowing full well that they did not possess the proper documents. As far as jail space that is how the Koreans are treated in jail as well. Maybe the ESL teachers need to get themselves a SOFA agreement that defines the amount of space they get in jail.

Here is something I didn’t know:

These latest arrests follow the high-profile case in March of two Canadian teachers who were involved in an alleged assault outside a Seoul bar. One of the teachers was found to be working in Korea on a tourist visa. The pair were eventually deported, but not without having to pay thousands of dollars in “blood money”- a form of compensation – to their alleged victim.

For being supposedly high profile, I sure don’t remember ever hearing about this incident. If they assaulted somebody it seems like this would of been handled in the Korean courts and not just ended with a compensation payment.

Here are some interesting statistics from the article:

Officials put the number of English teachers working legally in South Korea at 7,800. The number of those working without the necessary documentation is believed to be around 20,000.

That is a lot of people working in Korea illegally if true, but I wonder how many of the 3D workers are working here in Korea illegally as well that are not making many headlines. Then again this whole issue seems pretty over blown to me.

The new Korean soccer coach Dick Advocaat, has gotten off to a good start with his team by having a solid 2-0 win against a quality Iranian soccer team last night. Hopefully the Korean squad will continue to build on this win as they prepare for the up coming World Cup this summer.

Seven North Korean defectors were sent back to North Korea by the Chinese government:

It was reported on October 10 that China repatriated all seven North Korean defectors who had entered an international Korean school in Yentai, China and demanded to be sent to South Korea.

The South Korean government strongly protested the move and asked them not to let it happen again. As the issue appears to be related to the China’s North Korean defector policy in the future, chances are that it could lead to a diplomatic conflict between South Korea and China.

Unification Minister Chung Dong-young even said he was shocked by this. Some how I don’t think he or the ruling government really care about any of the defectors. However, they did lodge a complaint with the Chinese government and recently China allowed eight separate defectors to go to South Korea. This makes me wonder if China did this more out of international condemnation than pressure from the Korean government. You be the judge.

Obviously Kim Dae Joong doesn’t like President Roh to much after reading this article. Here is the best excerpt from the article:

A country where one Prof. Kang Jeong -koo of Dongguk University — man who has hailed the “spirit of Mangyongdae” (where Kim Il-sung lies embalmed) — threatens to sue the Republic of Korea at the UN if he is prosecuted for his remarks; a government that doesn’t pay attention to the return of South Koreans abducted to the North and prisoners of war still languishing there, even while attempting to return North Korean spies who served long prison terms here home to the North; a government that does not utter a word of complaint when a long-term prisoner is publicly praised as a “patriotic fighter”; a country whose Human Rights Commission says restrictions on students’ hairstyles breach their human rights but averts its eyes from the starvation and suffering of our brethren in North Korea; a country whose unification minister slanders a majority of the people as Cold War relics; a country where huge numbers of people flock to the North to watch the “Arirang” mass calisthenics, which North Koreans have been forced to rehearse at the end of a club — that is the sort of state the president has got us into, and the 70 percent whose views differ from the president’s have no reason to respect him. That is why he is being ridiculed and reviled.

So does anyone think he missed anything?

The Anton Ohno bashers who were giddy the last few days after he was twice disqualified in two prior races are sure to be furious with rage after Ohno comes back to win the overall speed skating competition buy winning two gold medals over his South Korean competitors on their home ice:

In the men’s 1,000-meter final, Ohno, last year’s overall world no.1 sprinter, clocked 87.452 seconds to outrun China’s Li Jiajun (87.646) and Ahn (87.833) for the gold medal.

With a last-day rally, Ohno, who was disqualified in the 500-meter and 1,500-meter events, took the first spot in the men’s overall classification ahead of Ahn. Both had 68 points but Ohno had the advantage of winning the long-distance event.

I wonder what twisted CIA conspiracy theory will surface to explain Ohno’s win this time? Maybe the race organizers will let him finally talk to the media now that he won.

Lotte is now offering to take over the North Korean tourism project after the North Koreans falling out with Hyundai over the dismissal of Vice Chairman Kim Yoon-kyu who embezzled millions of dollars to North Korea.

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Ever wonder who those people are that fill Korea’s Internet Cafes? Well here is an interesting article explaining who these gamers are:

Many of South Korea’s 17 million gamers — some 35 percent of the population, principally males in their teens and twenties — are obsessive. At the 1,000 won-per-hour ($1) Internet cafes popular among young South Koreans, they’ll sit eyes glued to monitors for hours on end. Sometimes play will extend for days.

Gamers camped out at Internet cafes typically live on instant cup noodles and cigarettes, barely sleeping and seldom washing.

My first tour in Korea Camp Casey did not have on post Internet access in the barracks so I always had to go to the off post Internet Cafes and I was always amazed by the fact that I would go to the Internet cafe in the afternoon and then come back some time the next morning and the same Korean youths wearing the same clothes sitting at the same computer would still be sitting there playing the same game. Hopefully the guys I saw didn’t end up like this:

This year’s gaming death wasn’t the first such case of someone dying at a computer terminal in this game-crazed nation: In 2002, a man died in Kwangju after 86 hours of marathon gaming.

One of Kim’s patients, a high school student, would leave his house and not come back for weeks, practically living in Internet cafes playing games, Kim said.

However, some of these game addicts are making big money off of their addiction or hobby depending on how you want to characterize it:

Computer games can also be a path to big rewards. Three cable channels are devoted to broadcasting game matches and a total of 4.5 billion won ($4.4 million) is given out as prize money in competitions each year.

Hong Jin-ho, a 24-year-old professional gamer, earns more than 133 million won ($130,000) a year, living and training with his fellow game team members in an apartment in central Seoul.

I play strategy games like Civilization III and Rise of Nations every once in a while and they can be addicting, but 50 hour game marathons? I can go maybe 4 hours before my eyes get worn out. It makes me wonder if the amount of these Internet cafe addicts is directly related to youth unemployment in Korea? I guess if you have nothing better to dom the Internet cafes are an inexpensive entertainment option to fill your day up with, or in the case of some these gamers, fill your weeks up with.

The first new F-15K that the South Korean government purchased from Boeing has arrived in Korea:

South Korea has received its first batch of next generation fighter jets, a development that boosts its aerial defense over the Korean peninsula.

The US$5.5 billion deal saw the Eagle from America’s Boeing beating off competition from the Typhoon Euro-fighter, and the Rafale from France.

Some of you may remember the controversy that started when President Bush publicly advocated the purchase of the F-15 to then Korean President Kim Dae Jung. It was unwise for President Bush to do that because anything he says will get interpreted in the Korean media in some anti-American way which was the case with F-15 purchase. This gave the French government an opportunity to also jump in and play to anti-American sentiment in hopes of selling their inferior aircraft.

Ultimately the Korean government did the right thing and buy the best aircraft. Here is what one Korean pilot thinks of the new F-15K:

Boeing test pilots and South Korean fighter pilots took the first two F-15s through a number of performance tests on their way to Hawaii.

This K-model F-15 is compatible with other South Korea Air Force systems as well as U.S. assets in the region. The K-model version packs all the latest avionics capabilities available on the market.

Since the ROK Air Force now has F-15’s I wonder if the “citizen groups” will sue the ROK Air Force for noise pollution like they did the American F-15’s?

Nomad has more on his site.