Category: Uncategorized

Only in Korea could there be a human rights commission run by the government that is not concerned about human rights.

Asked in a parliamentary session on Friday what its priority was, the North Korean regime or human rights, the head of the National Human Rights Commission Cho Young- hoang replied, “It’s hard to tell.” The commissions is “yet to decide whether it can deal with North Korean human rights as it does with human rights” in the South, he explained. This is a reply by the head of the country’s top human rights agency, mind, after he watched footage of a public execution by firing squad in the North.
The NHRC is so concerned about human rights that it has taken a stand on teachers reading diaries written by schoolchildren expressly for the purpose of learning to write. When there was debate over sending Korean troops to Iraq, the commission raised an objection, asking the administration and the National Assembly to protect the human rights of Iraqi war casualties. National borders didn’t matter then, nor did the realities of individual countries, nor vital national alliances. But faced with egregious human rights abuses in the North, it will not open its mouth.

The NHRC has either caved into or is colluding with a particular political force now in power. It ought to speak where the administration is silent, but instead the two are as one when it comes to handling the Stalinist regime in the North with kid gloves. If it continues to close its eyes and block its ears to human rights abuses in North Korea, the National Human Rights Commission might as well give up its status as an “independent” agency and become a civic organization. There is no need to waste any more taxpayers’ money on it.

The Battle of Kapyong was recently remembered. Veterans from Canada, England, New Zeland, and Australia met at the Battle of Kapyong Memorial in the city.

KAPYONG, Kyonggi Province – More than half a century after one of the most important battles of the Korean War, veterans from four countries returned here on Friday to celebrate their victory and remember fallen comrades.

The past 54 years have done nothing to blunt the lingering emotion from the battle, which could be seen etched on the veterans faces, many of whom were returning to Korea for the first time since being discharged. “It’s very emotional to come back here,’’ said Hank Daniel who, along with several of his mates on the visit, served with the Canadian Army during the 1950-53 war. “We’re always thinking of those of us stayed behind.’’

I have posted about this battle before, and hopefully the city cleaned up the site before this memorial considering how trashed the place was the last time I visited there. Never the less this was an extremely important battle during the Korean War and everyone in Korea should be thankful for the sacrifices these men made during the war in defense of freedom on the peninsula.

According to Stars and Stripes loan sharks working out of pay day loan offices have been targeting the US military.

Law assistant professor Chris Peterson and geography assistant professor Stephen Graves examined the locations of thousands of payday lenders in 20 states, and found they tended to congregate in counties and zip codes near military facilities.

Outside of Fort Bragg in North Carolina, 18 payday lenders have set up shop within three miles of the front gate. Fort Hood in Texas has 13 instant lenders within one mile of the base perimeter.

Foot Hood only has 13? When I was at Ft. Hood there seemed to be a lot more than that. These pay day loan operations target the US military because they know they will get their money. Soldiers can face military legal action for not paying their bills. So these pay day loan shops give out loans and charge 30% interest and get soldiers into massive debt.

When I was stationed state side I knew an NCO who could not control his wife’s spending habits. She would keep buying computers, TV’s, DVD players, etc. which they could not afford. She kept taking out loans from the loan sharks and when those loan sharks would contact the command she would then get a loan from another pay day loan place to pay off the prior debt or use new credit cards to pay them off. In total this family was $50,000 in debt to loan sharks and $35,000 in debt with the credit cards plus they had 5 kids. He ended up getting chaptered out of the Army because of his money problems.

Many of these loan sharks are retired military and know that the Army can chapter soldiers out for not paying them off so they make it as easy as possible for soldiers to get a loan and then kill them with the interest fees.

Fortunately here in Korea we do not have to worry about soldiers running to a pay day loan place and getting in massive debt because they run themselves into enough debt with just credit cards. The loan sharks probably cannot setup business here due to issues with running such a business in a foreign country. Hopefully it stays that way.

You can always count on President Roh to provide blogging material. Now President Roh is complaining about pro-American Koreans.

In a talk with Korean residents here during a three-day stay in Turkey, President Roh Moo-hyun has worried aloud that his countrymen approached issues involving the South Korea-U.S. alliance too much from an American point of view.
Without giving examples, Mr. Roh complained Saturday that some Koreans are too what he called pro-American when they discuss relations between Seoul and Washington.
“I am most concerned and feel troubled when I see that there are Koreans who possess a more pro-American way of thinking than Americans themselves,” the president said.

President Roh is trying to increase his approval rating before the elections by pulling out the good old Korean nationalism card. He makes it sound like if you favor the US policy you are against the Korean people. Will people keep falling for this crap?

However his remarks about some Koreans being more pro-American than Americans reminded me of a Polish military friend of mine I trained with in the states. He told me the biggest surprise he had coming to America was learning how much Americans hate their own country and how much the Polish love America. With such a comfortable life in America he was shocked by the anti-Americanism. He thinks the Polish love America more than many Americans. Keep in mind this was before the 2004 Presidential election when the Democrats were on TV every day complaining about how bad America was which he watched every day. So this may have influenced his opinion. Who knows, maybe we can exchange some of the anti-American Americans for pro-American Koreans and Poles?

I have been sitting here scanning the headlines from the past few weeks and have decided I really haven’t missed much. People are still fighting over two rocks and textbooks read by .1% of Japanese students. However, Korea is taking a back seat to the foolishness of this whole mess and letting the Chinese make fools of themselves instead. The Chinese government allowed the protestors to vandalize Japanese restaurants which some were owned by Chinese to begin with and then allowed them to throw eggs and rocks at the Japanese consulate in Shanghai. Amazing that a country that is hosting the Olympics in a few years has allowed state authorized vandalism. Well at least they are not cutting off their fingers or setting themselves on fire yet.

Then a couple of traffic incidents in one weekend put USFK drivers back on the map. A E7 was arrested for drunk driving after hitting a civilian. This idiot will get prosecuted in the Korean court system and face Korean punishment. So we shouldn’t hear anything about the unfair SOFA. On top of that, this E7’s military career is pretty much through as the Army has little to no tolerance for drunk driving, especially in Korea.

Then there is the other soldier that alledgedly caused a pile up on the Banpo bridge after making an illegal U-turn. I will hold judgement on this because often USFK personnel get blamed for accidents that were not their fault. I have seen this happen over and over again. The most outrageous example I can think of is when an NCO I know was attacked by what we call a “terminator” truck in GI lingo here. The “terminator” was pissed off that he got cut off by the USFK vehicle trying to make a turn so he passed the vehicle later down the road and pull in front of it. He then put the truck in reverse and smashed the front of the USFK vehicle with has back bumper and then called the police and said he had been rear ended. The NCO’s driver was ticketed for causing the accident by the Korean police. When the USFK MPs came and investigated the scene they found the truck driver responsible for the accident. The MPs
even found a witness to confirm the US soldiers story because the MPs always travel in pairs with a KATUSA for incidents like this and the KNPs still would not change the ticket.

So we will probably never know the truth about what happened on the Banpo bridge but I am suspicious to say the least. I have read some blogs suggesting that USFK drivers are out of control but fail to realize that not all the accidents that are reported to be the fault of the USFK driver really are. Then every time there is an incident it makes the front headlines of the paper. Imagine if every Korean traffic accident was featured on the front page of the paper. So if anyone thinks getting rid of USFK drivers is going to prevent traffic accidents that is about as realistic as those who believe the USFK drivers are responsible for all the air pollution in Seoul.

The crackdown on black marketing in Area 1 I found humorous.

Military officials are targeting a black-market scheme that involves spouses of U.S. soldiers and civilians buying duty-free food at commissaries in Area I and II for resale to South Korean restaurants, according to ration control officials.

“It has gotten so bad we can’t even go in to the commissary to buy meat,” she said. “The black marketers know what days the meat is delivered. They come in and buy it all up. You can’t go in and buy a roast because all the meat is taken.”

This woman is right. Meat and other products that sell well on the black market get gobbled up quickly in the commissary. What I find humorous about this is how out in the open the black marketing is. I go to the commissary and just stand there and look around. You will see a soldier with bottles of women shampoo, spam, and a pot roast at the checkout line. I just wonder why is this guy buying this stuff? Probably because some girl down in the ville asked him to buy it for her. Then you will see the Korean nationals with popular black market items all in their carts too. If you want to know what the popular items are just go to the 2nd Market in Dongducheon or the market in Uijoengbu not to far from the train station to see all the commissary items for sale. Hopefully USFK is serious about cracking down on these people because it wouldn’t be to hard to do.

However, the biggest story talked about in the field was the Air Force security personnel in Osan accused of “shaking down” bar owners for money and sexual favors. Alledgedly the security personnel responsible for patroling the clubs in Osan threatened to put the clubs “off limits” if they did not give them what they wanted. An “off limits” club pretty much puts an end to the club due to the clubs being geared towards the US military. Currently one airman is in the Camp Humphrey’s military prison due to this issue. What I find suspicious about this is that the security personnel cannot put a club “off limits” only the base commander can and the club owners know this. There is probably more to this story but either way it is going to be a black eye for the Air Force because there was probably something unprofessional going on.

Like the military needed any more bad publicity. Anyway I’m still glad to be back.

I’m back from doing Army stuff. Going to the field always brings back the appreciation for little things in life like being able to take a shower, sleeping in a bed, having heat, being able to order a pizza, taking a crap on a toilet, having access to a telephone, watching TV, etc. This last training exercise was just over two weeks which compared to other things I have done isn’t long at all.

During a National Training Center (NTC) rotation in the US you go to Ft. Irwin, CA and train in the desert there for one whole month. You live in either a tent or vehicle, in my case a Bradley tank, the whole time. And oh by the way it is 115 degrees out. I spent one month in the field here in Korea during an ARTEP and Foal Eagle exercise 4 years ago. Many of the army schools include over a month in the field also.

During the war and the aftermath of it in Iraq, I lived in a Bradley for two months before moving into old Saddam Fedayeen barracks on an Iraqi military base that had no air conditioning so we just slept outside anyway because it was cooler. We had to dig holes in the desert to take a crap and that was only after we safely probed the area for land mines. Fortunately none of us had diarhea yet. That came later from drinking the Tigris River water. Some of us actually had our own folding chair with a hole cut out of the seat to use to take a crap with. Nothing funnier than seeing a bunch of GI’s squatting out in the desert next to each other taking a crap reading a two week old Stars and Stripes newspaper. We took showers from a 5 gallon water can with water purified from the Tigris River and baby wipes. Food was prepackaged Army Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) for the first two months until the chow halls got up and running. Plus we were up on guard, patrols, or missions for 36 hours and off for 12 hours every day. There are no days off in Iraq. Plus the temperature would regularly hit 120 degrees. Than let’s not forget there are those guys there that want to kill us to.

So spending a couple weeks in Korea in the cold and rain is really no problem by comparison so I can’t complain. But I and others older guys that have been around the block a little bit always get a kick out of the new privates or even NCO’s that have never done anything in their career, complain about being out in the field, how bad the food is, or how cold they are.

You can’t teach experience so that is why it is so important that Army units regularly go to the field so soldiers can get experience practicing their field craft skills, develop confidence in their equipment, and they can also develop that mental edge it takes to endure long periods of time when things just suck. And yes believe it or not, in the Army many times you find yourself in a situation where things just suck. Like we say in the Army, it is important to learn to suck it up and drive on.

So I will suck it up and drive on with blogging soon once I get caught up with work. Work back in the rear doesn’t stop just because you go to the field. It just piles up instead.

I’ll be out in the field for the next two weeks. More bloggin when I get back.

According to the Joong Ang Ilbo the ROK Army may begin a withdrawal of forces later this year from Iraq:

South Korean military leaders in Iraq have recommended that Seoul consider gradually reducing its forces in the north of the country, starting late this summer, sources in the government and Uri Party said yesterday. The Korean military has concluded that Iraqis will be capable of assuming a larger security role as early as August.

The sources said the Roh administration has seized on the suggestion as a way to express dissatisfaction over what it views as U.S. favoritism for Japan.

What I find interesting about this is that the ROK Army isn’t providing any security in Iraq. In fact in the relatively safe Northern Iraqi Kurdistan, the Kurdish Peshmerga are providing security for the ROK Army. That is why there has been no deaths of any ROK Army personnel during the deployment. In fact the greatest accomplishment for the ROK Army was the introduction of modern bathroom culture and toilet paper. Korea is able to do so much more in Iraq but chooses not to. Many nations with smaller populations than Korea’s fought in the Korean War and gave up their lives for Korea. Here is a listing of deaths from foreign countries during the Korean War:

US – 33,629
UK – 1,078
Turkey – 717
Canada – 310
Australia – 339
France – 290
Greece – 169
Columbia – 140
Ethiopia – 120
Neth. – 111
Thailand – 114
Belgium – 100
Phillipines – 92

It’s a good thing for Korea that a country like Ethiopia did more for freedom in this country than what Korea is willing to do in Iraq.

I’m not saying the ROK Army should even take any casualties in Iraq. I’m just advocating that Korea should do more than give people toilets. Build a highway, bridge, governmental buildings, or even a dam. These are all things Koreans excel at building.

Here are some statements from the Uri party I found interesting:

“The United States has chosen Japan as its proxy to control the growing Chinese influence in the region,” a top Uri Party official said. “The United States has given full support to Japan, including Tokyo’s bid to become a UN Security Council member. That is the background of why Tokyo is pushing its territorial claims over Dokdo against Seoul, and why Washington is silent about it.” Uri representative Woo Won-shik said, “We have nothing to gain by deploying the troops in Iraq for a long time. I support the reduction.”

“To show that South Korea-U.S. relations are not unilateral, we should withdraw, or at least reduce the forces,” Uri Representative Im Jong-in said.

I’m confused, it sounds like Representative Woo wants Korea to be the US’s proxy in Asia and not Japan? Then to say that the US supports Japan’s claim on Dokto because the government chooses to keep quiet about it is absurd. Has it ever occurred to this guy maybe the US government doesn’t care about Dokto? Just like more and more Americans are beginning to care less about Korea?

It pains me to say this because I really like Korea, but why shouldn’t the US show more support for Japan in the region instead of Korea? The Japanese government has been a steadfast ally of the US compared to the constant bickering with the South Korean government over everything from the 2ID redeployment, the Yongsan garrison move, North Korea, missile defense, and now the ROK Army deployment. So if the ROK Army begins withdrawing from Iraq then so be it. I guess the Iraqis will just have to learn to use toilet paper on their own.

Here is a really funny North Korean propaganda video. Via the Japundit.

The “Great Dokto Crisis of March 2005” continues to be blown way out of proportion. The Dokto issue has now been featured in the NY Times. The NY Times overall takes the Korean side of this issue by bringing up Japan’s past war time atrocities and relating those to the current Japanese government.

For older South Koreans, like Mr. Heo, the bitterness of the past resurfaced. His father had told him of working in a stable where he watched Japanese soldiers eat.

The dispute comes as Japan, urged on by the United States, has been building up its military and taking a hard line against China and North Korea. A nationalism not previously seen in postwar Japan has emerged, with Mr. Koizumi unapologetically praying at Yasukuni Shrine, where 14 Class A war criminals are enshrined, and with teachers in Tokyo being punished for not forcing their students to stand and sing the national anthem during graduation ceremonies. It was also disclosed recently that senior members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party pressed the public broadcaster, NHK, to soften a 2001 documentary on Japan’s wartime sex slaves.

The NY Times seems to also think that the “Great Dokto Crisis” will cause Korea to unite with North Korea and China to oppose Japan:

“Japan should understand that its actions regarding Tokdo have regional repercussions,” said Park Cheol Hee, a specialist on Japanese politics and diplomacy at Seoul National University, in an interview on Monday. “If South Korean-Japan relations become twisted, the result will be that South Korea and North Korea will become united against Japan. And as China and Korea share the same historical perspective toward Japan, the unintended consequence will bring China and the Korean peninsula against Japan.”

The NY Times article concludes with this:

“I strongly urge the Japanese foreign office and Japanese government to take a much more independent and much more positive policy toward Asia,” Makoto Taniguchi, a former Japanese ambassador to the United Nations who now teaches at universities in Japan and China, told reporters in Tokyo last week. “Otherwise, there is no future for Japan. Japan will be totally neglected in Asia, and, in the future, if Japan’s position and economic power go down, what is its use to the U.S.?”

Some how I don’t think the “Great Dokto Crisis” will cause Japan to lose political, cultural, or economic influence over the long run. I think if Japan is smart about this, which is debatable since they caused this crisis to begin with; that they should just keep their mouths shut and the Koreans will naturally forget about it and the special interest groups will move on to bashing English teachers or GI’s to get people pissed off again.

I do have to say that we, the army, have gone almost a year now since the “Great Shinchon Stabbing” and nobody talks about that any more. Unfortunately we are due for somebody to do something stupid again. It seems like every year around this time somebody does something stupid that gets people pissed off at the army over the summer and then everyone forgets about it come fall time. Hopefully this year we can break that trend. However, with 32,000 USFK forces on the peninsula going out more because of the warm weather, odds are somebody will do something stupid. I just hope Koreans don’t set themselves on fire or chop their fingers off over it.