Category: Uncategorized

This is all so predictable:

The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog has clarified how to monitor the shutdown of North Korea’s nuclear facility and it is now up to Pyongyang and its five negotiating partners to decide on a date, an official said on Saturday.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) official Olli Heinonen said negotiations in North Korea had achieved an understanding on how to monitor the sealing and shutdown of the Yongbyon facility.

But he stressed the timing of the long-negotiated shutdown needed consultation between North Korea and other countries in six-party talks to iron out the details.

“The next logical step is that they talk with each other and agree on technical arrangements. The IAEA doesn’t have any role on that,” Heinonen, IAEA Nuclear Safeguards Director told reporters in Beijing after several days of talks in Pyongyang.

What is so interesting about this is that there is already a date set for the reactor shutdown that was agreed upon in the February 13th agreement between the US and North Korea. In the deal North Korea agreed to shutdown their reactor 60 days from signing the deal. April 13th came and passed with no signs of North Korea shutting down their reactor without receiving first $25 million dollars in money frozen by the US Treasury Department in a Macau bank due to the money being obtained through counterfeiting and money laundering. The return of the money was never in the original agreement and was something North Korea added after signing the February 13th deal.

The US government desperate to cut a deal with Kim Jong-il bent over backwards to return Kim Jong-il’s ill gotten money, but no banks wanted to do business with North Korea; that is how dirty his money is. The US government was so desperate they asked the US Wachovia bank to launder North Korea’s money for him. Unsurprisingly Wachovia declined. So the US government was left to use the US Federal Reserve to launder his money through a Russia based bank. Even with the Federal Reserve laundering the money the Russian bank was still very hesitant about accepting the deal. Incredibly the US government went through all this hassle to launder money for Kim Jong-il and circumvent US counterfeiting laws in order to meet a demand by North Korea that was not even in the original deal. Even more incredible is the fact that the US government agreed to these demands due to a vague promise from North Korea to use the money to buy humanitarian aid. The odds of Kim Jong-il using this money to buy humanitarian aid is about equal with the odds of him dismantling his nuclear program, which is none.

It didn’t take a prophet to know that when this agreement was signed in February, Kim Jong-il had no intention of keeping it. At some point when Kim Jong-il cannot get any more concessions from the US and other six party talk members he will then shut down his reactor. This current ploy for more six party talks is just a tool for further delay and to test the waters to see how desperate the US is to get him to comply. The North Koreans know the US government is desperate for a deal and will thus demand a premium price for any concessions on their part. To the North Koreans shutting down the reactor is not a big deal because they can always kick out the IAEA inspectors and restart the reactor any time they want. They have already done it once before.

Now getting them to dismantle their nuclear program is going to be the impossible part of the February 13th deal. It is unlikely North Korea will admit to their secret uranium program as well as it is totally unlikely they will actually dismantle the nuclear weapons they currently possess. A second goal of the North Korean strategy for using the six party talks is to buy time. The more the North Koreans delay the more time they buy for their scientists and researchers to further develop their infant nuclear program and improve the capabilities of their tactical ballistic missile program. In just the past few month the North Koreans have been conducting regular missile tests of their newly developed missiles. Once the North Koreans have developed their nuclear and missile programs to a level they feel would ensure the regime’s survival from external attack they will then begin to implement the policy of Strategic Disengagement.

So why is the US government so desperate to keep this deal at all costs? The reason is to keep the myth of “progress” alive. The Bush administration is desperate for a non-military foreign policy success in order to bolster their diplomacy credentials once the eventual showdown with Iran over their nuclear program materializes. So in order to keep the myth of a “diplomacy success” alive, the Bush administration is willing to appease the North Koreans and mortgage the North Korean problem for the next US presidential administration to handle. It is 1994 all over again and this time Jimmy Carter wasn’t even needed.

However, the big difference from 1994 is that when North Korea decides to act up again under the next US presidential administration to test and see what they can get out of them, they will be playing with a much stronger hand with possession of nuclear weapons and a tactical ballistic missile program to deliver them. The payoff next time for appeasement will come at a much higher cost.

This is actually quite incredible, the Korean Prime Minister has attended the memorial yesterday of the six sailors murdered by the North Koreans during the West Sea Naval Battle five years ago:

Navy sailors who survived a sea battle with North Korea’s navy on June 29, 2002 pay tribute yesterday at a memorial service in Pyeongtaek, South Chungcheong, to six fellow sailors who died. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo attended, the most senior government official ever to do so at the annual event.

President Roh is still missing in action of course, but I do have to give recognition to Prime Minister Han for attending the ceremony.  He is fairly new to the job having taken over the Prime Minister job just three months ago.  Before that he was a finance minister.  It is good to see that at least one person in the ruling government has not forgotten the six sailors who were murdered while serving their country. 

I posted before about a Korean-American hero in Iraq and now Wangkon has a great write up on a Korean-American hero in Afghanistan.

I never knew Inchon Airport had this much stuff in it. 

President Bush last year began efforts to encourage nations allied with the US like South Korea to join NATO.  Now the US Congress is making the same efforts to expand NATO globally:

NATO should seriously consider expanding into a global alliance including democratic countries such as Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Israel, a senior member of Congress said on Friday.

Rep. Tom Lantos, a California Democrat, noted some non-member countries have carried big responsibilities as partners with the 26-nation North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

This is just another example of how little the US government understands the Korean peninsula just like the CSIS report released last month suggests.

Why would Korea want to join NATO in the first place?  What benefits would Korea get out of it that it isn’t already getting from the US-ROK Alliance?  NATO membership would just mean more global responsibilities for South Korea, would piss off China, the lunatic left in South Kora, backed by their North Korean puppet masters would come out in full force against it, and NATO membership would give no financial benefits to the country.

Journalist Norimitsu Onishi has been very diligent in featuring articles about North Korean defectors in the New York Times.  Today his latest article has been published which portrays another example of the alienation North Korean defectors feel once they arrive in South Korea:

“Everything’s about money here,” he said, dragging on a Dunhill Slim, a popular cigarette here. “You go to work in the morning — you can’t even take phone calls on your cell at work — then you go home and go to sleep. In North Korea, there is a fence around people to control them. But it’s very collective, so people help one another out. In that system, people do find ways to have meaningful relations with one another.”

As with many North Koreans, Mr. Lee’s nostalgia about the North increased in direct proportion with his sense of alienation in the South. At a small noodle shop, he asked the owner to turn on the fan but got only a puzzled look because he referred to it with a word used only in the North.  <…>

“It was so hard to get here,” he said. “Before, I thought that once I got to South Korea, everything would be all right. But now I know that I’ve just opened the front gate and come in. The journey’s just begun.”

South Korea currently has over 10,000 North Korean defectors living in the country and the alienation of North Koreans in South Korean society is a common problem for them.  Can you imagine what it will be like for South Korea if it has to absorb 23 million North Koreans if the North was to collapse if the country has a hard time absorbing 10,000 defectors?

Despite this fact it seems little attention is made into developing successful programs to help North Korean defectors learn job skills and educate themselves.  They are treated as nothing more than another 3D worker in Korea.  Treating 23 million North Koreans one day as nothing more than 3D workers will lead to disastrous consequences.

Seriously I may need to start a category dedicated to the numerous leftist plants and fraudulent claims of being in the military because here is another one that has been exposed by Greyhawk this time.

Our leftist plant in question is Private Marc Train. After deserting his unit before deploying to Iraq he has become the anti-war movement’s latest hero. Our newest anti-war hero in all of his published accounts pretty much covers every leftist talking point since the war began. I don’t think he left anything out at all. This guy has even gone further then other leftist plants and converted to Islam as well (see comments section of Milblogs post here).

The only problem with the anti-war movement’s latest hero, as Greyhawk very clearly pointed out, is that Private Train was already part of the leftist anti-war movement before he even enlisted. Guess who he was affiliated with? Well our friends from Appeal for Redress who I and other exposed before. You can read my two postings here and here on Appeal for Redress and their Amnesty International plants, George Soros connection, and their promotion by the largest liberal public relations firm in the country, Fenton Communications.

Oh by the way the Appeal for Courage site which was set up to counter the Appeal for Redress site 6 months after Redress was launched. Despite its late start the site overtook Redress’ petition signatures in just a few short weeks and has continued its surge past Appeal for Redress which as of this writing has 3,214 signatures compared to Redress’ 2003 signatures. Yet Redress continues to make headlines while Appeal for Courage makes none. I guess it helps to have big liberal money and Fenton Communications on your side to make media news but it definitely hasn’t helped them gain signatures.

So everyone can now add Marc Train to the infamous leftist list that includes the names like Hutto, Burnett, Key, Massey, Macbeth, Randall, etc. etc. The politicization of the military continues.

The MP involved in the assault of Uijongbu taxi driver last March is now on trial and the typical Korean court room theatrics are taking place:

An exasperated prosecutor repeatedly raised his voice at the elderly victim, Yoon Boon-ha, while questioning how Pvt. Michael Curtis Adams, 21, beat him and then stole his taxi.

Yoon wrote in a statement to police that Adams punched him, but didn’t write that Adams struck him with a 16-ounce bottle.

Yoon told the three-judge panel Tuesday that he felt the bottle strike his right eye but never saw the bottle.

Yoon said he was agitated while making his police statement.

The MP denies using a beer bottle in his crime and says he just punched him and stole the taxi.  It should be real easy to determine if the taxi cab driver was hit with a beer bottle because I have seen people hit with beer bottles before and it is not pretty.  If the cab driver didn’t have any big lacerations then he wasn’t hit over the head with a beer bottle.  The cab driver is trying to get the soldier convicted for a using a weapon during the crime instead of just punching him and stealing the cab.  If he can convince the court a weapon was used against him then he can get a bigger compensation payment.  Look at what the cab driver is already demanding:

Adams now faces up to seven years in prison. A financial settlement could mitigate the sentence, but Yoon is asking for 50,000,000 won, or about $54,000. Such settlements are common in South Korean court, but Yoon’s asking price is far higher than most similar settlements.

I have never seen a settlement in a taxi cab related incident this high and it is highly unlikely the cab driver will receive that kind of money especially from a private.  The private in question seems to be a real winner:

Adams showed up in court Tuesday in a beige South Korean prison uniform and a new, spiky mohawk haircut.

The new look appeared to surprise court officials, who last saw him June 5 wearing a regulation military haircut and an Army combat uniform.

First of all he is an idiot for giving that kind of appearance in a Korean court room where a professional appearances go a long way.  Secondly his unit is still responsible for him and should be responsible for ensuring that he complies with military regulations by having an authorized military haircut, not a spiked mohawk.  He also should be wearing his Army Class A uniform and not prison garb in the courtroom.  He may be a dirtbag but he is still someones soldier that should be supervised to ensure he is doing everything possible to help his case, a mohawk is doing nothing to help his case.  His appearance in the courtroom is only making things worse than they already are for him.   

Blackfive has featured a Korean-American in his latest “Someone You Should Know” postings:

No one really knows how they will react under extreme stress until they are thrust into a situation in which they have no options but to do so. Some may collapse under the weight; others, however, rise up and meet the challenges set before them.

One Marine was confronted with a literal do-or-die situation when a roadside bomb rocked his amphibious assault vehicle north of Fallujah during combat operations, June 7.

Lance Cpl. Daniel Kim, 20, is a crew chief with A Company, 2nd Assault Amphibian Battalion, in charge of one of the three AAVs in his section. As Kim’s crew, including his section leader, Staff Sgt. Jeffrey S. Vogel, 29, of Boca Raton, Fla., executed their combat patrol, they came to a bridge overpass that was a known site for terrorists to emplace improvised explosive devices…

Click here to read the rest.  Great job by the young Marine.

The North Korean defectors that defected to Japan by the crossing the Sea of Japan Sea that Cannot Be Named have finally made their way to South Korea:

A couple and their two adult sons arrived at Seoul’s Incheon airport from Tokyo around noon (03:00 GMT) and were immediately taken by government officials to a shelter housing North Korean defectors, the witnesess said.

The family had earlier drifted to Japan after a week-long trip across the Sea of Japan (East Sea) in a wooden boat.

They initially wanted to go directly to South Korea, but changed their path due to the tight border control between the two countries.

They were held in an immigration detention facility in eastern Japan while Tokyo processed their requests to go on to South Korea.

I hope they find a better life in South Korea and they can put the poverty and deprivations of North Korea behind them.