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I met a really interesting KATUSA a few days ago. For those who don’t know what a KATUSA is, he is a Korean Augmentee to the United States Army. They are Republic of Korea soldiers that serve along side of American soldiers in regular US Army units but are supervised by the ROK Army. Only male soldiers are authorized to serve as a KATUSA.

Anyway, I was talking to this KATUSA about where he was from and he told me he was from Minnesota. I was a little surprised and ask if he had family there or had just visited Minnesota but he said he was born and raised there. He then told me his dad is a Korean citizen and his mom is an American thus giving him dual citizenship. He could of avoided ROK Army service by staying in America or just giving up his Korean citizenship. However, he did not want to give up his Korean citizenship and his dad was adamant about him doing his military service so he agreed to join up. This is the first American KATUSA I have ever met. I wonder how many more are out there?

The latest Asia by Blog is available over at Simon’s World, so make sure you check it out. Also the latest and greatest Ulsan Pear is out with plenty of great articles worth reading.

I’m sure no one is to shocked that Koreans are discriminated against in Japan. One Korean citizen Chong Hyang-gyun in particular has led a legal challenge to allow foreigners to take a civil service examination to allow foreigners to hold higher government positions. Here are the details from the Japan Times.

Chong Hyang Gyun has just written herself into the history books, but not for the reason she wanted.

Makoto Teranaka, secretary general of Amnesty International, Japan, says that Japan, as a signatory to the U.N. International Convention on Eliminating Racial Discrimination, has a duty to protect all residents from discrimination.

However, strangely enough Chong was not even born in Korea. Here are some details on Chong from the Japundit.

Some aspects of Chong’s story raise a few questions. She was born in Iwate Prefecture to a Korean father and Japanese mother. I have not seen detailed information on her background, but it is probably safe to assume that she has spent most, if not all, of her life in Japan. She is obviously a native speaker of Japanese. Most important, she is not being denied Japanese citizenship; her South Korean citizenship is an option she chose. Indeed, her brother took Japanese citizenship and works as a university lecturer. She could have followed her brother’s example and taken the promotion exam a decade ago.

In other words, she chose to become a citizen of a country she wasn’t born in and doesn’t live in because of something that happened to other people before she was born. So for Chong, it’s not about getting a promotion. It’s about being a crusader and drawing attention to her cause.

Apparently there is more to this story also. It appears possibly that the main reason the Japanese are denying her the ability to take the civil service examination may be due to national security reasons. Also from the Japundit.

Not all zainichi kankokujin are harmless women who just want to advance their career and boost their income. The largest and most powerful organization of Korean residents in Japan is Chongryun, or Chosen Soren in Japanese. There are an estimated 670,000 zainichi kankokujin in Japan, and of these about 150,000 are thought to be affiliated with the group, its schools, or its businesses.

While there is no potential danger in a public health nurse rising to a supervisory rank, it would be a different story if the Foreign Ministry or Self-Defense Forces were obligated by the Supreme Court to hire and promote someone loyal to North Korea.

If national security concerns are the real reasons than I can kind of understand the ruling but it seems they should just be choosy about what positions can or cannot take a the civil service examination. A nurse getting promoted is not a national security issue. However, getting promoted to a high level SDF position is a security issue. For example in the US, a foreigner cannot be the President but foreigners can hold other government positions. It seems like an arrangement like this would be a suitable compromise unless it is just simple racism at work.

Does anyone know if foreigners can hold government positions in Korea?

North Korea Zone provided a great link to a Times of London article about the slow demise of the Kim Jong Il regime. Here are some of the interesting points from the article if you haven’t heard about these incidents before:

Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s ambitious brother-in-law, was purged from party office after he tried to build up a military faction to put his own son in power. Mystery surrounds the fate of Vice-Marshal Jo Myong-rok, the soldier once sent as Kim’s emissary to meet Bill Clinton in the White House.

In a telltale measure, frontier guards ordered us to leave all mobile phones at the Chinese border post — rumour has it that the Ryongchon blast was triggered by a mobile phone.

I will have to mark February 16th on my calendar to see if Kim shows himself. It was also interesting to read about the Christian underground:

Word has spread like wildfire of the Christian underground that helps fugitives to reach South Korea. People who lived in silent fear now dare to speak about escape. The regime has almost given up trying to stop them going, although it can savagely punish those caught and sent back.

“They know there is a Christian network to put them in contact with the underground, to break into embassies in Beijing or to get into Vietnam. They know, but you have to pay a lot of money to middlemen who have the Christian contacts.”

Makes me wonder what contacts this Christian underground has with Evangelical Republicans? I wonder if this is coordinated at any political level? If so, who would of thought missionaries would be the ultimate answer to ending North Korea? What I found really enlightening was how Kim Jong Il was really betting on a John Kerry victory in the Presidential election:

Bush’s re-election dealt a blow to Kim, 62, who had gambled on a win by John Kerry, the Democratic candidate. Kim used a strategy of divide and delay to drag out nuclear talks with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea through 2004.

Kim lost his bet and now faces four more years of Bush, who says that he “loathes” the North Korean leader and has vowed to strip him of atomic weapons.

And the Democrats wonder why they lost the last election. In this day an age a perception of weaknesses is not something voters really like. However, make sure you read the complete article. It continues to look like this is going to be an interesting year for North Korea watchers.

Gail Kim a Korean-Canadian wrestler was recently in Seoul competing in a wrestling event here at the Olympic Stadium complex. While in Korea she took some time out to talk to Ahn, Jung-hyun on the Arirang TV talk show, Heart to Heart. Yes, I know Heart to Heart is the lamest talk show ever but they do occasionally have interesting guests such as Gail Kim.

It was an insightful interview for those who are fans of Gail Kim. She is the daughter of Korean immigrants and is from Toronto, Canada. She actually got into the wrestling profession by attending a women’s wrestling college in Ontario. I didn’t even know there was wrestling colleges but I guess there are. She even said that Korea has a women’s wrestling college. After attending the college she worked her way up through the different wrestling conferences until she finally got her big shot in 2003 by being invited to fight in her first WWE match. She won that match against the defending champion and was crowned the WWE women’s wrestling champion.

She also commented that she believed Japanese female wrestlers were more athletic while the US women wrestler are becoming more and more concerned about looks rather than ability. No big suprise there in today’s day and age. She made sure to point out that she is no sex object but an athlete. Fortunately she has the looks going for her so she does not have to worry about unemployment because of that.

When asked if wrestling is fake she just commented that it is physically real and commented no further about it. This was also her first time back to Korea in 16 years. I found that a little surprising for someone with family and cultural ties with Korea. Plus she said she still speaks Korean with her parents.

She was surprised to learn that she was, before her wrestling match in Korea, the most searched name by Korean internet users.

Finally what many of you may be wondering is if she has a boyfriend. The answer is no because she says she travels to much. So for you interested in Gail Kim it is never to late to join a wrestling school, get accepted to the WWE, and get body slammed by 300 pound monsters to impress Gail Kim. I think it would be easier to just find a Korean woman here in Korea granted she would not have breast implants.

It appears that 2ID is about to wage a war on smokers according to Warrior News.

CAMP RED CLOUD — Army officials announced Monday the formation of a special task force to eliminate the use of tobacco products on Uijeongbu Enclave installations.

Osan Air Base recently adopted a similar policy; however the garrison’s move is a first for U.S. Army installations on the peninsula.

All hell is going to break lose if smoking is outlawed on Army installations. There are just so many people that smoke in the Army. Imagine all these people going cold turkey all the sudden. I will be stuck with pissed off people with the shakes all day now instead of irritated people who miss their families and want to go home.

I don’t smoke or use any tobacco products and really think it is a bad habit just like alcohol. However, I believe soldiers should have the right to smoke which is a legal activity just like alcohol. My biggest gripe with smokers are the cigarrette butts they leave lieing around and how some people sham out of work by taking smoke breaks all the time. Division should create a policy that addresses those two problems instead of just banning smoking all together.

If the army is able to ban tobacco what is to stop the army from banning alcohol? They are both health risks, correct? Does anyone from Osan AFB know what the policy down there is for smokers? People will long forget about the curfew controversy if this becomes reality. Once again, only in 2ID. You gotta love it.

All over Korea you see Hof bars (I would use Hangul but my blog software won’t support it) that serve a variety of mainly Korean beers. I always thought the Korean word Hof was just another Korean word for beer along with maek-ju.

However, I learned something interesting today that the word Hof is actually the Koreanized version of the English word, Hope. During the Korean War many American soldiers while drinking beer at local establishments would toast before drinking with the word, Hope. The soldiers used the toast because they hoped the war would end and they could soon go home.

However, the Koreans that heard the toast of Hope, thought this was the English word for beer and the bar owners used this English word to name some of their drinking establishments after. From there the word just continued to spread to where today you have Hof bars all over Korea.

The Oranckay had a link to an interesting article in the St. Petersburg Times about the ROK Army’s deployment to Iraq.

Korea has just 3,600 soldiers in Iraq compared to 150,000 from the United States. Though they are based in the Kurdish-controlled north – by far the safest part of Iraq – the Koreans spend most of their time in an isolated, massively fortified compound.

The soldiers, some locals joke, are part of the “Coalition of the Sort of Willing.” Undaunted, the South Koreans point with pride to what they have accomplished since they began work here in November:

It is to bad the soldiers are confined to their compound. The Kurdish north is the most scenic area of Iraq and the people are extremely nice and welcoming. The ROK Army is doing what it can to assist the Kurds in the area.

A mobile clinic and base hospital that treat residents of nearby villages as well as those from Irbil, the Kurdish capital; an advanced training program for Kurdish doctors and nurses; a vocational school, still under construction, that will offer classes in computers, electronics and auto repair.

“They are very polite and good,” says Ako Abbas Nader, who has served as a translator for the past month. “They are working for us, and we will work for them.”

South Korea also has contributed an undisclosed sum for local road-paving projects. The work is done by Iraqi companies but supervised by Korean engineers.

The Koreans say they are contributing to the economy by hiring scores of Kurds as drivers, translators and the like. But in a region where no one speaks Korean, soldiers and locals use a complicated system to communicate. Typically, a Kurdish interpreter translates from Kurdish into English, and a Korean interpreter then translates from English into Korean.

It’s to bad that the US media is providing more information about the ROK Army’s deployment than the Korean media. Koreans should be proud of the contribution they are making to democracy in the region. However, they cannot show much pride if they don’t know what is going on with their own soldiers there.

Andrei Lankov North Korea Zone has written another interesting article, but this time it is for the Korea Times. This article is about the development of the Korean bus industry throughout the last century. What I found the most interesting about the article is this excerpt:

Initially the city-owned bus company had 10 vehicles. These were Japanese-made, each seating 12 passengers and painted black. The crew consisted of a driver and a female conductor. The idea of a female conductor was a novelty. It was believed that they were introduced in order to lure passengers from the competing tram company. Only good-looking girls needed apply.

The trick obviously worked: there were stories about students who fell for a bus girl and spent huge amounts of money on tickets just to ride and have an opportunity to look at her. The bus company presumably did not mind such fee-paying romances.

Isn’t interesting that even decades ago the Koreans used Show Girls to sell something? For those not familar with Korea, businesses here often use young, scantily clad, dancing girls to sell products out in the streets and also inside the stores. I’m sure the women long ago on these buses weren’t scantily clad, but it is interesting to see how this practice evolved over the years.

Saturday morning opened up with a needed snow storm. In the 2ID area we have had snow flurries so far this year but nothing significant. This weekend’s storm actually left about 3-4 inches of snow on the ground.

Once it stopped snowing my wife and I decided to hike up a nearby mountain. It seemed everyone else had the same idea because as soon as we stepped out of our apartment everyone else was heading for the mountain too.

Something I found interesting hiking up the mountain was seeing the impact the Korean drama Winter Sonata has had on the public. I saw a few couples reinacting scenes from the well known drama such as walking in each other footprints or trying to balance themselves on a log. You would have to see the drama to understand what I’m talking about.

On one slope of the mountain there was a really nice park where you could see older Koreans doing breathing and stretching exercises while the children were having a big snow ball fight with their parents while others played on the swings. All in all a really nice day to be in Korea.