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By now most of you have probably heard about the South Korean defector to North Korea who used to work for the US Army.

North Korea’s official KCNA news agency said Kim Ki-ho, 59, had worked for the U.S. Army’s 6th Ordnance Battalion as a quality assurance specialist at Camp Long, near Wonju, but defected recently to North Korea. The news agency gave no details as to when or how he reportedly defected.

It said Kim “made the bold decision to come over to the northern half of Korea … unable to put up any longer with the disgraceful South Korean society, disillusioned with it where the nation’s dignity, sovereignty and human rights are violated at the hand of the U.S.”

However, I am going to do some speculation here on the motives of why he may have defected. Recently a requirement has been changed that USFK employees that reach the age of 60 years old must retire and they are replaced with younger workers. This guy was 59 years old and approaching the retirement age. Maybe the guy was being forced out of his job at a time when he still had financial debts that needed to be paid and he could not find another job because someone who is 59 years old does not easily find work in this country. So he went over the edge and decided to defect.

Like I said this is complete speculation on my part and maybe this guy was just nuts or one of the North Korean sleeper agents that according to GI urban legend work on all of our military camps here.

Never the less, it would be interesting to see what the investigation turns up on why somebody who worked for 20 years on a US facility decided to defect. I doubt we’ll ever hear about the results though becuase they will probably be classified.

The comments about human rights violations though I found humorous in light of my previous posting about North Korean gulags. I guess a drunk GI getting in trouble with South Korean authorities every 6 months and going to jail is a bigger human rights violation than killing babies in front of their mothers in gulag camps. I guess Mr. Kim Ki-ho, who has knowledge of South Korean prosperity, will have his chance to find out because he will definitely be put into one these camps to be re-educated.

I have successfully been able to teach a few Koreans I know the rules of American football. Though they found the game strange at first they soon actually enjoyed watching football with me and I have in fact successfully converted three people to be Denver Broncos fans. However, watching college football today has really taught me the limits of my ability to teach American football.

Try to explain the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) formula to a Korean. Many Americans much less Koreans can’t figure this thing out. After a long explanation my Korean friend was still confused about the whole thing and wondered why we don’t just have a playoff system? I ended the conversation there because trying to explain the politics and rationale for not having a playoff system would be more difficult then explaining the system itself.

A number of Korean bloggers have been advocating donating money to help the relief efforts in south Asia after the recent tsunami has now killed at least 150,000 people. This number is probably going to continue to rise substantially. The people in south Asia are in desperate need and the American government has now allocated $350 million dollars to help the disaster relief. However, if you want to donate money to help the relief effort, first you should read this article coming out the New York press about fraudulent charities.

While the federal government has made attempts to crack down on charity fraud since September 11, 2001 – the Patriot Act increased the penalty of impersonating a Red Cross member to five years from one – and Internet users have become more savvy, phony charities are trying harder than ever to swindle donors on the Internet.

“It doesn’t surprise me that folks are taking advantage of this tragedy,” said the director of the National Fraud Information Center in Washington, D.C., Susan Grant. “You always see these kinds of things after disasters.”

It is pretty sickening that somebody would establish a false relief site for their own personal profit, but it does not suprise me. We all saw this same thing happen after 9-11 with charities pocketing huge sums of money from donors and spending half the money on the victims and half on “administrative costs.”

That is why I’m a big believer in sending aid such as food and clothes instead of cash. It is to tempting for some people to handle large sums of money. People are less likely to conduct fraudelent activity if no cash is involved. Just do your research before you donate to ensure the aid you are giving is getting to the people who need it.

Korea is located near an active earthquake zone with nearby Japan the source of many earthquakes. With the recent events in South Asia it made me wonder if Korea is vulnerable to a tsunami and if the government could warn its citizens of a tsunami in enough time for an evacution to take place before it would strike. Just imagine the devestation a tsunami would have in a city like Pusan if no warning was given to the people there.

Here are a couple of great graphics that show how tsunamis are formed.

Could Korea be hit by one of these tidal waves? With a little research I found out that Korea has actually been hit by two tsunami in recent history. One in 1983 and another in 1993. This site offers an in depth analysis of the tsunami that struck the eastern coast of Korea near the ports of Samchuk and Imwon.

Tsunamis generated by earthquakes along the Japanese coast on the possible boundary between the Eurasian and the North American plates have caused significant damages to the Japanese and Russian coasts, and damage to the Korean coast as well. For example, at noon on the 26th May 1983, a huge earthquake occurred in the northern coast of Akita and the accompanying tsunami attacked the eastern coast of Korea, after propagating over the in the Japan (East) Sea. Especially at the Imwon port, the most significant damage; two persons killed and twenty houses damaged, was reported.

With Korea regularly vulnerable to tidal waves, does the government have a system in place to warn citizens of potential danger? Judging by the reaction to the 1993 tsunami it appears Korea does have a good early warning system in place.

In the case of 1993 Okushiri Tsunami , the JMA (Japan Meteorological Agency) processed data in the very quick way and issued tsunami warning within 5 minutes after the quake. However, it was just the propagation time of the first wave to southern tip of Okushiri Island and to Ota Bay on southwestern Hokkaido that left no time for evacuation and for any other preparedness measures.

Tsunami Warning Center in Yuzhni-Sakhalinsk (Russia) issued warning within 20 min for the coast of Primorie, Sakhalin and South Kurile Island. The first wave came to Primorie in about 50 to 70 minutes with maximum observed run-up height of 4 meters.

The Korea Meteorological Administration issued a Tsunami Warning signal 33 minutes following the earthquake origin time putting into mobilization of 7,000 disaster personell. The waves propagated to Korea in approximately 100 min which allowed enough time for preparedness activities to be accomplished.

Korea does have an early warning system in place but the early warning system is dependent on how close the originating earthquake is to the coast line. In the case of the 1993 quake Korea was able to issue an advisory in 33 minutes and the wave struck over an hour later. This was enough time to evacuate the affected areas to prevent casualties.

It is probably safe to assume Korea has an even better system in place by now and should be able to serve up a public advisory in half the time. But it would not matter if the tsunami originated near the Korean coast line and struck the coast in under 15 minutes. This should be warning to people here in Korea that if they feel an earthquake they should immediately take tsunami precautions because the warning may not reach you in time. Judging by past events it is unfortunately a possibility.

Picture from the 1993 tsunami

My Christmas was quite outstanding with me getting a new computer for Christmas. This computer is 2.8 ghz Gateway computer with 512mb of ram, 80gb hard drive, 17 inch flat screen monitor, and a 128mb graphics card. What is really nice is that the computer and the monitor are combined in a very space efficient design that frees up a lot of desk space. You can also see my 160mb external hard drive adjacent to the computer. These external hard drives are awesome and definitely worth purchasing. All my files and games from my old computer I can continue to use by hooking this external hard drive to my new computer. A 160gb external hard drive will run you from $150-$180 depending on the brand.

The best thing about this new computer is that I picked it up for $843! My wife wanted to buy a computer for me for Christmas so we priced this same computer just two weeks ago at the Camp Casey PX and it was $1399. We almost bought the computer then but we decided to wait until we checked out Camp Stanley’s PX in Uijongbu. They had a special sale going on for the same computer for $843 last week. I asked the sales person if he was sure this was the correct price and he said yes. So that made our decision easy and we bought it. I have definitely learned through experience that if you shop around for major purchases at the PX’s here in Korea you can usually find some great deals. Shopping around this time save me over $550 this Christmas.

Look how thin the entire computer is.

The New York Times today is reporting that the Korean government has begun a crackdown on brokers for North Korean refugees. The government believes the brokers located in China are extorting money from the desperate North Korean refugees.

South Korea says it plans to crack down on people who demand money for organizing mass defections of North Koreans desperate to leave their country. But human rights groups worry that the move is aimed at appeasing North Korea and China – North Korea’s last major ally and the way-station for many North Korean intending to defect.

These so-called brokers – often ethnic Koreans in China, South Korean entrepreneurs or North Korean defectors in the South – select defectors from the tens of thousands of North Koreans who flee North Korea and hide in northeastern China. They then help the North Koreans to force their way into foreign embassies in Beijing and other Asian capitals, in the hopes that they will eventually be allowed to travel to South Korea.

Nearly 83 percent of the 1,850 North Koreans who reached South Korea this year came with the help of these brokers, who received an average of $3,800 per person, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said. As the trickle of defectors from North Korea has swelled into a torrent in recent years, the debate over the brokers has intensified.

They say that their motives are to promote human rights, helping people escape North Korea’s totalitarian government. But some critics say that they appear to be driven by profit rather than compassion. China calls them human traffickers and sentences them to prison, while North Korea accuses South Korea and the United States of kidnapping its people.

Some defectors have complained that the brokers charge too much for their services – and in some cases hold their families for ransom. Some of the brokers also abandon the escapees after being paid.

To stop the brokers the Korean government is planning on preventing the brokers from being allowed to leave Korea and also reduce the amount of relocation compensation that is paid to North Korean refugees from $26,600 per person to $9,500. Many brokers use the relocation money to pay for their fees. I cannot say I am an expert in regards to these brokers but I’m sure some of them probably are dirty, but for some reason I feel the Korean government is probably just using this as a convenient excuse to stop the flow of refugees from North Korea.

If the South Korean government cared for human rights at all, they would try to assist these people themselves. This would eliminate the need for brokers or NGO’s to fill this current need. I won’t hold my breath waiting for this to happen though. Plus reducing the relocation allowance will not stop people from wanting to come to South Korea. $9,500 is still going to sound like a fortune to someone who is starving.

I think the best way to get any action out of the Korean government would be to shame them into action. I hope people will keep publishing stories from the defectors. The Chosun Ilbo recently ran this story about some North Korean defectors trying to make their way to a Southeastern Asian country in order to get to South Korea. This group of North Koreans traveled 8000 kilometers over the course of a month to make it to the country which is presumably Vietnam to get passage to Korea. Isn’t something that countries like Mongolia and Vietnam are doing more for North Korean human rights than South Korea?