Category: Uncategorized

Where is Amnesy International?  From the Chosun:

Police in Tianjin, China are indiscriminately taking fingerprints and blood samples from ethnic Koreans there to investigate the murder of a Korean student. Angry ethnic Koreans in the city said Tuesday that police started taking fingerprints and blood samples by visiting their homes and Korean companies there. A Korean running a company there who gave his name as Lee (50) said, “Two investigators with Chinese law enforcement came to our office today and sampled finger prints of all of 10 fingers and blood from four Korean workers and two ethnic Korean workers.”

Police target Korean men between 25 and 45 who have been living there, Korean residents said. Sampling is being carried out across the city. Police say they concluded the murder of a 20-year-old Korean woman who was studying there at an apartment in the Hexi District on Oct. 2 was committed by an acquaintance. An ethnic Korean identified as Lee (50) said, “Police consider every Korean adult man living here a suspect. This is a serious infringement on human rights, to indiscriminately take fingerprints and blood from foreigners.”

The usual human rights groups are probably to busy investigating more important things like false claims of Korans being flushed down the toilet at Gitmo to be bothered by such things as gulags in North Korea or an involuntary round up of Koreans in China.

Some bad autumn weather is hitting the east coast of Korea:

People in Gangwon Province on Monday (Oct. 23) suffered damage from unusually heavy fall rain and strong winds.

Heavy rain warnings and alerts were issued in the province. Hyangnobong Peak received 252 millimeters of rainfall, Misiryeong 260 millimeters, Sokcho 201 millimeters and Goseong 87 millimeters. The rainfall was the largest recorded for the latter part of October in the regions.

Winds with a speed of 20 meters per second also struck the region, and strong wind warnings were issued. Trees and signboards on many streets were blown down.

A dozen fishing vessels that were docked at harbors broke loose and many sank. Some houses and roads were inundated and seven elementary schools closed temporarily. About 13,000 households lost power.

It will be interesting to see if the North Koreans will use this flooding from this recent bad weather in order to get more free aid from the South Koreans.

Brian at Gangwon Notes has pictures up of the storm damage as well.

The DOW has past the 12,000 mark setting new all time highs despite the war in Iraq and the North Korean nuclear threat.  Now even more good news is coming out about the US economy:

The Labor Department Friday announced that the number of jobs increased between April 2005 and March 2006 not by 5.8 million but by 6.6 million.
…
The federal budget deficit has been cut in half in three years, three years faster than George W. Bush called for. Why? Tax receipts were up 5.5 percent in FY 2004, 14.5 percent in FY 2005, and 11.7 percent in FY 2006. That’s up 34.9 percent in three years. And that’s after the 2003 tax cuts.

So why isn’t anyone hearing about this?  Why is it only doom and gloom in the media?  Could it be because the media would rather show you footage of sniper attacks killing US servicemen in Iraq before the November election?

HT: CDR Salamander

I suspect the same is true in Korea as well:

But while reports of robberies by U.S. servicemembers may grab local headlines, cabbies say they have more problems with their countrymen, whether combative drunks or thieves. Most drivers interviewed recently by Stars and Stripes said they feel safer on the bases.

“If I work at night, I have to expect lots of scary situations,” said Yukio Kawamitsu, 56, as he waited for a fare recently on Camp Foster. “Japanese passengers, too, sometimes give us a hard time because many of them are drunk.

“In fact, when dealing with drunken customers, Americans are much easier because we cannot communicate fully. Some Japanese customers get really fussy, giving us hard time.”

(…)

“It’s much easier,” said Takemasa Chibana, who is with a taxi company that has base access. He said American riders are more polite and trips are shorter. “When I worked for an off-base company, I had to drive about 250 kilometers (about 155 miles) every day,” he said. “On base, I only have to drive half of it to earn about the same amount.

If you live in Kunsan they are looking for volunteers to help teach English:

“When I explain this to people on base, I tell them to think of ‘Good Morning Vietnam’ with Robin Williams, when he tries to teach them a song,” said Barrett, who works in the Logistical Readiness Squadron’s inventory section.

Unfortunately for Kunsan area schools, there aren’t enough Patrick Barretts to go around. There are 19 airmen volunteering their time every other Saturday, down from 63 when the program started in 2001.

Meanwhile, there are about 70 schools that would like a volunteer English teacher from the base, said Rosemary Song, Kunsan Air Base community relations director. Base officials usually make a push for volunteers during the summer and winter school breaks.

During those breaks, the base also supports English camps, where airmen immerse students in American culture. The children practice the language skills they learn in school, but also learn how to buy groceries and use the post office.

The winter camp is fully booked with volunteers, Song said; however, many more are wanted for Saturday mornings.

Now a days it seems like you can almost always count on “Low Quality Foreign English Teachers^TM” to take GI incidents out of the headlines:

A dozen Korean-American, American and Canadian English-language lecturers were under investigation for taking drugs on Monday.

Police said that they detected 12 English lecturers at private institutes, or “hagwons,’’ on suspicion of taking marijuana, Philopon or methamphetamine.

They arrested five Korean-Americans and two Americans, while charging without detention two Korean-Americans, a Korean-Canadian, a Canadian and an American.

The teachers, who are in their 20s and 30s, have worked as English lecturers at hagwons in Seoul and Kyonggi Province since early 2000 and habitually taken drugs at their residences, according to police.

The seven Korean-Americans, who emigrated to the U.S. when young, belonged to Korean-American crime rings there, such as Korean Play Boy. They were deprived of their permanent resident status by their host country for their involvement in drug trafficking, illegal gun possession and robbery, the police said.

After being expelled from the U.S., they got the jobs at the institutes with fake diplomas obtained through a broker.

Now a days it seems like you can almost always count on “Low Quality Foreign English Teachers^TM” to take GI incidents out of the headlines. 

What Yongsan busnapping?

By the way another quick observation, permanent residency card holders are not citizens thus they are not Korean-Americans as labeled in the article, they are in fact Koreans.

A whole lot more over at the Marmot’s Hole.

So will the Korean government dispatch troops to Lebanon?:

South Korea has finished a field survey of Lebanon before deciding whether to contribute troops to U.N. peacekeeping forces there, government officials said Monday.

“But we need more time to consult with the relevant authorities before deciding whether to send our troops to Lebanon,” said a government official, who was one of the four members of the survey team sent to the Middle Eastern country.

Let me translate this for those of you who don’t speak Korean BS.  What this government official is really trying to say is that the Korean government really doesn’t want to send troops there, but they probably will have to since Ban Ki-moon is going to be the UN Secretary General and they want to save face for him.  So what they are trying to find is a nice peaceful area, preferably one with great internet access for Starcraft gaming, where they can base some troops who will do nothing, but it will appear that the Koreans are doing something; much like all the other UN troops in Lebanon.

I have a great recommendation for the Korean government.  How about you load up the Zaytun unit from it’s comfortable confines in peaceful Kurdistan and have them set up shop in Lebanon?

2ID soldiers continue to aid the family of one of the girls killed in the 2002 accident:

Four years after a military vehicle killed two South Korean children, 2nd Infantry Division soldiers still are making amends.

About 25 soldiers from the 2nd Infantry Division’s G-9 Civil Military Operations section and 15 South Korean soldiers helped harvest the farm on Thursday of Shin Hyun-soo, the father of one of the dead children.

Soldiers arrived at 10 a.m. and harvested eggplant, soybeans and peppers on about 18,000 square feet of farmland.

The family still mourns the loss of their 13-year-old daughter, Shin Hyo-soon, who was killed with Shim Mi-sun by a U.S. Army 60-ton tracked bridge carrier while crossing a country road in Yangju.

And they have welcomed the soldiers’ help each year since the girls died.

The family members “were actually very warm,” Lt. Col. Todd Goehler said. “They greeted all of the soldiers and we had a good lunch with them.”

 What I find interesting is that with all the anti-US groups that love to use the deceased girls image during the protests, none of them bother to do anything to help the families of the deceased girls.  That is because the anti-US groups don’t care about the families they just want to use the girls images to promote their own anti-US agenda.

First of all, big hat tip to One Free Korea for providing the links to two interesting articles on North Korea.  The first article is about nationalism on the Korean peninsula:

Because nationalism is more of a collective belief than a particular policy, the positions adopted in its name can evolve, even rotate. Inter-Korean hostility subsided as a result of the “sunshine policy” initiated by former President Kim Dae-jung, who dropped the stance of utter hostility taken by the conservative generals who ruled South Korea from the 1960’s until the 1990’s. The same national pride that set North and South against each other can also create common ties. Now, instead of regarding the North as a violently psychotic regime, the southern attitude is more along the indulgent yet exasperated lines of “Oh, no, what’s our nutty brother done today?” Particularly among South Koreans with no memories of the Korean War — that’s now most of the country — yearnings for peace and good relations, as well as anti-Americanism, are stronger than the hostile anti-Communist intent of their fathers and grandfathers. And in the wake of Germany’s costly unification, policy makers in Seoul realize that the collapse of the North, which an older generation wished for, would create a high degree of political instability and an enormous financial burden that should perhaps be avoided. This helps explain why Seoul has limited its antinuclear criticism of the North, and why South Koreans aren’t rushing for bomb shelters quite yet.

Wacky nationalism is nothing new for those of us who have spent time in Korea, but it is a good article to read for those who don’t understand why South Korea takes such a soft approach towards North Korea.

The second article is on the increasingly falling information blockade over North Korea:

“Money now trumps ideology for an increasing number of North Koreans, and that has allowed this underground railroad to flourish,” said Peter M. Beck, the Northeast Asia project director in Seoul, South Korea, of the International Crisis Group, which has extensively researched the subject in several Asian countries and is publishing a report. “The biggest barrier to leaving North Korea is just money. If you have enough money, you can get out quite easily. It speaks to the marketization of North Korea, especially since economic reforms were implemented in 2002. Anything can be bought in the North now.”

“The state’s control is weakening at the periphery,” Mr. Beck said, explaining that most refugees came out of the North’s rural areas but few from around Pyongyang, where the state’s grip remained strong.

State control may be decreasing on the periphery, but before real change can come to North Korea, Kim Jong-il’s political base in Pyongyang also needs to have a collapse of the information blockade as well.  Will the new sanctions cause this to happen?  Time will tell.