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Interestingly enough while passing through the nice and quiet city of Sangju located in Kyeongsangbuk-do province I noticed a really nice Confucian looking building.

Upon exploration of the site, I was surprised to learn that the building was built in memory of a battle that took place here in April 1592 against the invading Japanese forces led by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi was looking to conquer Korea in a bid to build his own wealth and power in order to make a stronger case to be declared Shogun of all of Japan by the Japanese emperor. The city of Sangju takes pride in the fact that this city was the first location in Korea where the citizens took up arms and joined forces with the Korean government army to fight the Japanese invaders.

Unfortunately the Korean army and the volunteers from Sangju were surprised by a Japanese attack and proceeded to be slaughtered by the overwhelming Japanese invaders. The battle took place in the vicinity of the Pukchon River and the foothills of Chasan Mountain where the present memorial is located. Though the Battle of Sangju was a rout by the Japanese forces it was a rallying cry and the beginning of a prolonged effort by the Korean Army and it’s citizens to fight the Japanese. They formed guerrilla groups and proceeded to attack and harrass the Japanese forces. This is the closest historical battle in Korea I have seen that can almost be described as a Korean “Alamo”.

With help from China and the many naval engagements won by legendary Korean General Yi Sun-shin and his turtle boats, the Koreans were able to finally expel the Japanese invaders in December of 1592. The country was devestated by the invasion with many cultural relics lost, buildings and homes burned, kidnappings of artisans, and a host of other tradgedies. Hideyoshi lost many men and money in his Korean venture and actually tried to attack Korea again in 1597 where he was soundly defeated by the combined Korean and Ming Chinese forces. Though Korea experienced much devestation the Koreans remained free from the Japanese and it all began here in the city of Sangju. I guess that is something to be proud of.

Kaeseong just to the Northwest of the JSA will soon open to tourism from the South according to the Joong Ang.

Gaeseong isn’t all about factories and stainless steel pots. Behind its fledgling inter-Korean capitalism, this cityhas a rich cultural heritage, and a plan to make the most of this potential tourist attraction is in the works.
Details have yet to be firmed up, but South Korean citizens will be able to travel to Gaeseong starting early this year, according to a staffer at Hyundai Asan, which handles the inter-Korean tourism programs in the North.

The capital of the Goryeo Dynasty from 918 to 1392, Gaeseong has historical sites that include royal tombs, traditional houses and a museum, among other attractions. The tourism plan focuses on Gaeseong’s history, but Hyundai Asan plans to add a bit of modern atmosphere with a 375,000-square-yard complex including an amusement park, a golf course and a park called the Hill of Peace.
Once tour programs begin, the Korea National Tourism Organization expects Gaeseong to draw 440,000 visitors a year. This city seems poised to become the North’s number-two tourist attraction, behind Mount Geumgang.

I’m not sure how popular this tour will be because Kaeseong is no where near as beautiful as the Kumgangsan area of North Korea. Just go to the JSA and look North at the barren and deforested mountains to confirm this. So if somebody wanted to spend money to see North Korea I am sure they would pick Kumgangsan over Kaeseong. However, with it’s close proximity to Seoul, Kaeseong may be able to attract some day trippers from Seoul trying to experience the novelty of going to North Korea if the price is cheap enough to go there. For some reason golfing in Kaeseong just doesn’t appeal to me.

Interesting article in the Korea Times from an American married to a North Korean.

I am a U.S. citizen who is married to a North Korean Defector. Perhaps the only one. I met my wife in China and assisted her in getting to a third country to surrender at a South Korean Embassy. This was not easy and was very costly. When we finally got to the third country safely and went to the South Korean Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in order for her to surrender, she was rejected. The consul there told us to go to the U.S. Embassy. Only after repeated threats by myself and friends, who were newspaper reporters, was she given a Korean visa in order for her to go to Korea and surrender.
In talking to other defectors, they also give similar stories of getting into South Korean missions in China only to be tossed out and told to go to another country.

Marc Simkins Seoul, Korea

Interesting, he is the only American I have ever heard of married to a North Korean. Anyone else hear of any other similar stories?

Details of the USFK deployment to assist Tsunami disaster areas has now been made public.

The deployment will consist of three groups. One company of 125 men and eight CH-47 Chinook helicopters would be temporarily transferred from 8th U.S. Army’s 2nd Battalion, 52nd Aviation Regiment, 17th Aviation Brigade, while 200 men and officers from the 18th Medical Command will await the order to move out. Moreover, 48 men from the 554th RED HORSE (Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron, Engineer) squadron, based at Osan Air Base, are scheduled to inspect runways in Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

None of these units are from 2ID. They are all located on camps south of 2ID. So I won’t being going any where but I would love an opportunity to be part of something like this. Apparently USFK is handling this deployment much better then the 2nd Brigade deployment this past summer where no consulation was done with Korean authorities.

USFK spokeswoman Col. MaryAnn Cumming said Thursday that the decision to send the troops was made following close consultations with the Korean government, and that the date of their departure has yet to be decided.

I look at this as a great opportunity for Korea to deploy troops in conjunction with the USFK deployment. This would be a great thing for the alliance and a chance for Korea to demonstrate international leadership. It is also a chance for Korea to upstage their arch-rivals, Japan. Japan would be hard pressed to send soldiers due to their past brutal occupation of many areas in Southeast Asia. Korea is looked upon favorably in the area and their assistance would be greatly welcomed. Plus the ROK Army is more than capable of executing this mission. I doubt they will do it, but it would be a big step to repairing the battered alliance. Then again some people don’t want to repair the alliance.

According to a English language professor, Lee Jae-ho Korean-English dictionares are substandard and need revising:

In his book entitled, “A Criticism of English-Korean Dictionaries,” an elder English literature scholar at Sungkyunkwan University, emeritus professor Lee Jae-ho, pointed an accusatory finger at the shortcomings of the nation’s publications in this area, which he said were riddled with holes and inaccuracies. Many important terms are missing in the entries, and explanations often don’t use pure Korean expressions, he noted.

Most dictionaries do not contain media terms that have now gained common currency, such as “free trade agreement” (FTA) or “libero,” a volleyball term, he said. This is a lamentable state of affairs in a country where 12 million people pour time and money into studying English each year, even spending W5 trillion in private tutoring.

There are many times I have used my dictionary to communicate here in Korea and I am always able to get my point across but there has been times when I have been told that a phrase or word described in the dictionary would be better said in a different manner. Mostly I it is because the dictionaries tend to use the polite Korean words and phrases instead of the more common phrases.

Fortunately in Korea, there is always a scapegoat and bad dictionaries are no different:

The problem is said to stem from our paraphrasing of English-Japanese dictinaries that were published earlier in Japan. Given all the current talk of celebrations to mark the 60th anniversary of the country’s liberation from Japan’s colonial rule, and our ensuing cultural independence, now is clearly the time to amend this historical hiccough.

Japanese colonialism 60 years ago is responsible for Korea’s bad dictionaries? Hasn’t Korea had 60 years to fix this alledged problem? Whose fault is that?

There has been rumors going around about USFK aiding in disaster relief and now it appears to be true with the deployment of USFK helicopters. It makes me wonder if any further deployments will be needed such as engineers or water purification teams? It would be great to do an operation like this in conjunction with the ROK Army. (hint, hint Korea)

Koeran government announced today that South Korea will not accept mass defectors any more into the country.

Unification Minister Chung Dong-young declared Tuesday that Seoul will stop allowing large groups of North Korean defectors to enter South Korea, saying that government has no desire to undermine the communist country’s leadership.

“The North’s conception that we are trying to shake the Pyongyang regime by bringing defectors to Seoul is quite different from our policy,” Chung said during an MBC radio interview. “We disapprove of the mass defections. There will be no more large-scale arrivals of defectors in Seoul.”

South Korea is hoping that by making it as difficult as possible for the defectors to come to South Korea and that they will not bother to leave North Korea in the first place if they are not guaranteed asylum in the South. What the South Korean government is forgetting is that these people are still going to defect because life in China is still better than in North Korea. China cannot crack down to hard on the defectors because they have the Olympics coming up in 2008 and do not want to do anything to tarnish those games. So the defectors are going to keep pouring into China for a better life as long as the Chinese doesn’t crack down severely on them.

That makes me wonder next, how much the US government is going to get involved now in relocating defectors to the US with the passage of the North Korean Human Rights Act? With the hope of relocating to the US the desperate North Korean defectors will probably increase their rate of defection from the North. What would be the North Korean response to this? They would claim the US is kidnapping their citizens but besides empty threats there is really nothing else they could do. Better yet would be the South Korean reaction. President Roh would be in a really tough spot if he comes out against the US providing asylum to North Korean defectors. It would be really ironic for a former human rights lawyer to advocate to deny North Korean defectors basic human rights by relocating to the US. Never the less, it is going to be interesting to see how this plays out if the US begins to allow refugees to relocate state side. It will definitely be an interesting year for North Korea watchers like myself.

In an interesting piece of news the Korean government has awarded a pig farmer $38,000 for damages to his pigs from noise pollution from the new KTX bullet train.Lee filed a complaint claiming noise from the bullet train led to miscarriages and stillbirths among his stock.

Lee, who raises hogs at a farm located some 65 meters from the high-speed train’s track in Maesong-myon, Kyonggi Province, demanded the rail authority pay 860 million won in compensation.

“Experts say hogs raised in a quiet location could have suffered stress from sudden noise, and such loud noise can be more than 20 percent responsible for problems that include miscarriages and stillbirth. Thus we acknowledge the link between the noise and the damage,” the commission said.

I hope no other pig farmers read this because it will probably give them ideas. Tanks and bradleys are extremely loud, especially in a convoy driving down the road. In 2ID land there are a number of pig farms we drive by that I can think of off the top of my head. I can’t imagine the bullet train is that much louder than a tank. So hopefully they don’t get any ideas because that is all we need up here is pig farmers protesting.

The Asia Times has a great article this week about the North Korean defector issue. This article gave me some new perspective on the defector issue and why the Uri Party is pushing so hard to get rid of these defectors and keep Kim Jong Il in power.

More than 6,000 North Koreans have arrived in South Korea since the end of the Korean War in 1953. In, 2004, however, 1,890 defected to the South, an increase of 50% increase over 2003.

South Korea has always been bound to accept those from the North who do make it to Seoul. However, in defiance of the constitution, and humanity, Roh’s government is beginning to close the door, indicating that those who have “criminal records” in North Korea or China may not be accepted. That’s right. Those who have run afoul of the despots in the North no longer are welcome in South Korea. Indeed, Vice Unification Minister Lee Bong-jo further suggested that those found to have committed crimes in North Korea could be tried in South Korea, a legal procedure only possible if the judiciary asserts South Korean jurisdiction over all of North Korea.

Can you believe that the South Korean government may actually try to prosecute defectors who committed crimes in North Korea? How do you prosecute someone for the crime of maybe stealing food to feed his family dying of starvation or somebody who may have done such a horrible crime as talk bad about Kim Jong Il. I know nobody in the Uri Party would ever talk bad about Kim Jong Il, but talking bad about him in North Korea puts you in the gulag. So if the South tries these “criminals” and convicts them what then? Jail in South Korea would still be better than starving in the North, unless the South hands them back over to the North. Fortunately the defectors would have some legal recourse to try.

North Koreans who do make it to South Korea could well challenge these latest measures constitutionally. After all, South Korea cannot legally bar North Koreans – legally defined as Korean citizens – from entering the South, especially since the government is asserting its legal jurisdiction over North Korea by offering to locally adjudicate the cases of those who upset the North’s Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il. Of course, if South Korea’s criminal code extends to those accused of crimes in the North, what of the South Korean labor laws and human-rights code?

Obviously the South Koreans care very little about labor laws and human rights if they are trying to get rid of these refugees to begin with. Plus there is this information about the Kaesong project to consider:

South Korean manufacturers can hardly contain their excitement these days at the prospect of using North Korea labor at a mere $57.50 per month ($7.50 of that reportedly goes to the Dear Leader’s cognac fund) – the negotiated rate at the recently opened Gaeseong Industrial Complex in North Korea. Gaeseong, a symbol of Korean economic brotherhood, is just across the border in the North, where South Korean firms have established light manufacturing firms using North Korean labor. But since these workers are legally “South Koreans”, as specified by the ROK constitution covering the entire peninsula with extended legal jurisdiction, then would it not be illegal to pay them salaries amounting to less than a tenth the nationally defined minimum wage?

Will the South Korean government next shift its sights to the constitution, amending the document in order to legally recognize North Korea as an independent state and its citizens as foreigners in South Korea?

Of course, to recognize North Korea and its citizens as foreign nationals would seem to fly in the face of unification efforts. But then again the policies of Roh’s administration are not designed to bring about the speedy unification of the two Koreas. In fact the effect has been quite the opposite. South Korea’s leadership does not want the expense and potential upheaval that unification would bring. Instead they are working with and funding the North Korean leadership in efforts to fortify the regime and prevent the consequences of regime collapse and unification.

Roh, a former human-rights lawyer, believes that thwarting the flow of hungry North Koreans is the next necessary step. Sealing the North Koreans within North Korea ensures a pliant, cheap labor source, a resource that many economists in South Korea have proclaimed will allow South Korea’s firms a cost advantage over even the poorest of the world’s workers. Chinese laborers on average receive almost twice the rate that South Korean firms will pay their North Korean brethren toiling for South Korean companies in the new industrial park.

I have never considered the angle of keeping North Korea a float to provide much cheaper labor than China for South Korean companies to make increased profits. If you don’t think this is true check out this quote:

Callous and indifferent, to be sure, but who can argue with the potential profits? As Lee Woo-chun, president of the South Korean engine component manufacturer Dosco Co, explained last year, “If I can get good workers, I would build factories anywhere, even if the country were ruled by a regime worse than that of Kim Jong-il.”

So basically the South is willing to keep Kim Jong Il in power as long as he turns his country into a giant sweat shop for South Korean companies. The key is to keep the starving people inside the sweat shop. Sweat shops don’t work to well if you don’t have anyone to work in them. If they can do this, South Korea wins because of the cheap labor and they do not have to worry about fronting a huge bill for reunification and Kim Jong Il wins because he is still in power making increased revenues. However, the same North Korean people will continue to lose, but who cares about them anyway when there is so much money to be made?

I was really suprised to see this article in the Korea Times. A Korean Law professor wrote an inspirational article thanking the US 1st Marine Division for their service during the Korean War.

The Changjin Lake Campaign was one of the most notable battles won by the U.S. military. The 1st U.S. Marine Division under the command of Major General Oliver Smith had fought in severe cold weather, successfully repelling the People’s Republic of China’s 9th Army that had 10-to-1 superiority to the U.S. Marines in manpower. If the U.S. marines couldn’t have defeated China’s 9th Army, the Red Army might have well pushed the U.S. 8th Army and ROK Army to the southern end of the Korean Peninsula. One can easily imagine how the Korean peninsula’s political map could have been shaped after such a major retreat of the Korean and U.S. Army. That means those brave young marines virtually saved Korea from falling into the bloody hands of the communist regime. The Changjin Lake Campaign is also meaningful as a major battle won by the U.S. armed forces fought in severe cold weather.

Bush’s mention made me feel mixed emotions. Korea dispatched a military unit to Iraq, but it is a non-combat duty force. While the U.S. marines are engaging in a fierce combat mission against radical militants in Fallujah and other places of Iraq, Korea’s non-combat soldiers are simply digging in. Of course, I do not argue that the Korean soldiers should engage in combat operations in Iraq. But, I would like to raise the following question. Do Korea’s politicians and people know that the U.S. marines who are conducting dangerous combat operations everyday in Iraq belong to the same marine division that saved Korea 50 years ago?

I would like to tell the Americans that in Korea there are still people like Yim who do not forget what the American marines did for a small poor country in Asia threatened by the communist aggression a half century ago. God bless the U.S 1st Marine Division!

The Chosun Reservoir Campaign may be the US Marines greatest battlefield moment. Maybe only the Iwo Jima landing could of topped the bravery and courage of the Marines during those dark days of the Korean War. This article reminds me that I will need to make a posting about this battle in the near future. It is really quite a remarkable battle that few Americans know much about much less Koreans.

However, I think the writer or the newspaper should of made note of the US 2nd Infantry Division, 2nd Brigade Combat Team which was located at Camp Hovey near the DMZ and is now deployed in the Ramadi area of Iraq and has so far sustained 35 KIA’s. The 2ID fought the entire length of the Korean War and has been deployed on the Korean DMZ for decades now helping the ROK Army keep the peace here. If Koreans every had any doubt if Americans are willing to die for the defense of Korea those 2ID soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq should be a good indication. How many other countries are willing to have their youth die for Korea? That should be the ultimate test of who your real friends are.