The beautiful Korean island of Cheju is attempting to become yet another UNESCO recognized site in Korea:
 An inspection team from the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on Monday (Oct. 16) began assessing natural rarities on Korea’s southern island of Jeju, following a local request to give them World Heritage status, officials said.
The Jeju provincial government filed an application to the U.N. cultural body in January to have its scenic rarities registered.
The designation will be decided when UNESCO holds a general meeting in July next year, based on a report from its advisory body, the World Heritage Convention, that is conducting the inspection.
The week-long assessment led by Paul Richard Dingwall will focus on whether the recommended sites have value for global recognition and have been well-preserved and whether the local government is capable of looking after them, the government officials said. The candidate areas are a preservation area of Mount Halla, five lava caves and Seongsan Ilchulbong, a small rocky mountain peak overlooking the harbor which is famous for its rare plants and view of the sunrise.
The Jeju government plans to spend about 4 billion won ($4 million) this year for the World Heritage project. The funds will go toward organizing a committee of experts and officials to set up protective measures for the natural rarities and organize publicity campaigns at home and abroad.
I for one hope the island receives the designation which means the island will have to receive increased government funding to protect the natural environment and cultural properties of the island. Protecting the environment is not something that Koreans are well known for.
I wonder if the UNESCO ranking will stop the wrath of the picnickers? At another UNESCO listed place the Suwon Fortress, one time I saw someone had left their picnic garbage right there on UNESCO listed cultural property.
The Gas Can
On one occasion I had to drive my M113 ambulance to Bravo
Company, 2/72 Armor, to support them for some operation. I had a
KATUSA as my TC and was following a jeep that was my ground guide.
We approached a village with a small bridge that spanned a creek and
since the APC was too heavy for the bridge, had to find a place to ford the
stream. I went past the fording spot, stopped, backed up and then did a
hard right turn to re-orient the APC to the ford. When I did that, one of the
track sprockets bent and the track broke. As I was sitting there trying to
figure out what to do next, I heard a scraping sound coming from the back
of the APC. I jumped out of the driver’s hatch and looked to my rear and
saw two slicky boys running away with my gas can! They had cut the
straps on the can and hauled ass, with each one holding one side of the
can handle.
Sheets
One of my collateral duties was to occasionally pull laundry duty.
Part of laundry duty was to sit in the back of the deuce and a half with an
ax handle as the laundry was transported to 2nd S&T (I think). My job was
to discourage any slickyboys from reaching into the truck and taking any
laundry. On one occasion I actually had to slam a slickyboy when he
jumped on the side of the truck and began to cut through the canvas with a
knife. He got the knife blade through the canvas then… Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
KAPOW!
THE ABOVE TWO STORIES WERE SUBMITTED BY:
                                    Sp 4 Rich Hernandez
                                    Medic
                                    HQ Co, 2/72nd Armor
                                   Korea, 1967/68
This slicky boy story was from Korea, A Tour of Duty.
 If you have your own slicky boy story to share e-mail me your story at gikoreaonline@yahoo.com and I will be happy to post it.
Has the Department of Defense finally made up their minds on this:
First it was required, then it was optional, and now it’s required again — for some.
The Defense Department has made anthrax vaccinations mandatory for U.S. troops and emergency-essential DOD civilians and contractors serving in the U.S. Central Command Area of Responsibility and on the Korean peninsula for 15 days or more, a top Defense health official said Monday.
Currently, the Defense Department is not considering expanding the mandatory vaccination program to troops outside those areas, said Dr. William Winkenwerder, assistant secretary of defense of health affairs.
Several hundred thousand U.S. troops are expected to receive the vaccine under the mandatory program, which is expected to resume within the next 30 to 60 days, Winkenwerder told reporters on Monday.
I started taking anthrax injections in 2000 when I went to Korea and I received up to four out of the six required shots before the DOD ran out of vaccine. So I eventually went back to the states and there the program restarted again before my division deployed to Kuwait to fight in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. I had to restart from shot number one again due to the time in between my first injections in Korea. Once again I made it up to four shots again when the court ruling came out that the DOD could not give anthrax shots anymore. So here I am again looking at having to take anthrax shots again in the future and I will probably have to start all over again from shot number one.
On a positive note I have had eight anthrax injections total and still no ill effects, yet. I hope I didn’t just jinx myself.
First the news agencies were reporting from anonymous souces that the initial intelligence results from the North Korean nuclear test indicated it was not a nuclear test:
U.S. intelligence agencies say, based on preliminary indications, that North Korea did not produce its first nuclear blast yesterday.
U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that seismic readings show that the conventional high explosives used to create a chain reaction in a plutonium-based device went off, but that the blast’s readings were shy of a typical nuclear detonation.
“We’re still evaluating the data, and as more data comes in, we hope to develop a clearer picture,” said one official familiar with intelligence reports.
Now the news agencies are reporting once again through unnamed sources that it was a successful nuclear test:
A preliminary analysis of air samples from North Korea shows “radioactive debris consistent with a North Korea nuclear test,” according to a statement from the office of the top U.S. intelligence official.
The statement, from the office of Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, was sent to Capitol Hill but not released publicly. CNN obtained it from a congressional source.
I have a word of advice for the news agencies, how about they wait for official word from the US government agencies involved with the data analysis instead of publishing incomplete analysis based on unnamed souces as fact. My second concern is all these leaks from sensitive government agencies. If a journalist can get sensitive information from government agencies why couldn’t foreign intelligence agencies just as easily do so as well. Why aren’t these leakers found and prosecuted?
In the US military we constantly receive briefings on the importance of OPSEC and milbloggers even have to register their blogs with their chain of command when deployed because of this. Yet the most damaging OPSEC violations I continue to see are from the same people who started the crack down on milblogs, the Pentagon and other government agencies. This is a classic do as I say, don’t do as I do.
Here is an update on the NFL on AFN Prime issue:
Servicemembers and others living on base can once again watch NFL football games and other programs for free because of two new additions to the on-base free cable service.
The American Forces Network’s Xtra and Atlantic channels have been added to the free cable package, Morale, Welfare and Recreation cable television chief Ron Buss said Friday.
Many servicemembers expressed frustration when the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service removed NFL games from AFN’s Pacific Prime channel, the only free available channel both on and off post.
AFRTS says it removed the games because South Korean cable companies pirate AFN Pacific Prime and showing football games in a market in which the NFL wants to make its own inroads could jeopardize AFRTS’ broadcasting rights.
I can understand the spirit behind this proposal, but I have to wonder about the practicality:
Soon dog tags might tell battlefield physicians more than just name and blood type.
According to military medical researchers, within the next three years the tags could have every injury, every surgery, and every checkup of a servicemember’s life on there, too.
Military officials working on ways to get vital medical information downrange are working on new electronic dog tags containing troops’ complete medical history, along with that traditional social security number, service, blood type and religious information.
Already about 13,500 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are wearing electronic dog tags in addition to their standard-issue ones.
The experimental models are essentially reinforced memory sticks, which can plug into any laptop and display every injury, illness and medication troops are taking.
My biggest concern with these is how bulky they would be and how durable? Do soldiers have to take off their electronic dog tags before crossing water? Will the electronic dog tags survive the sweat of soldiers wearing body armor?
With the amount of crappy boy bands in Korea I guess it was only a matter of time before someone went insane:
The South Korean pop idol U-know, of the popular boy band TVXQ, has been hospitalized after sipping a glue-laden drink that a female “anti-fan” gave him on Saturday at the Korean Broadcasting System building in Yeouido, Seoul, police said. The 20-year-old woman turned herself in to police yesterday and was arrested on charges of injuring.
According to SM Entertainment, the singer’s agency, U-know, whose real name is Chung Yun-ho, received the orange juice with a note from the woman Saturday night as he headed for a waiting room during the filming of the KBS2 TV show, “Happy Sunday.” The note reportedly said, “Watch your mouth. There are many people changing their channel when TVXQ appears on TV. I want to kill you.”
He apparently did not read the note, sipped the juice and soon threw up because of its unusual taste. He was hospitalized and has recovered, according to the agency. He may go home today.
The suspect, identified only by her last name Koh, reportedly told police she was an “anti-fan”of TVXQ and felt the impulse to “mess with” U-know after hearing that he was at the broadcaster’s building.
Police said she bought the juice and glue at a nearby store in Yeouido and went into the building without being stopped by any security official.
Was she trying to glue his mouth shut perhaps?
I guess it was only a matter of time before these guys made an appearance:
A small group of anti-American activists rallied in central Seoul on Monday, voicing their objection to a U.N. resolution sanctioning North Korea for its claimed nuclear weapons test.
Last week, the 15-member U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution imposing stringent non-military sanctions on North Korea which claimed to have conducted a nuclear test in defiance of international warnings.
The U.N. resolution calls on its members not to make any weapons-related dealings with North Korea and orders all countries to freeze funds linked to the North’s weapons mass destruction programs.
Chanting anti-American slogans near the U.S. Embassy, about 30 protesters accused the U.N. of collaborating with Washington trying to smother the North’s communist regime.
“The U.S. sanctions and pressure on North Korea are the fundamental cause of North Korea’s nuclear test, and the U.N. resolution failed to mention even a bit of that truth,” Han Sang-ryeol, a representative of the group, said.
The protesters claims are groundless because the US financial sanctions are because of North Korean counterfeiting and money laundering of US currency and are not related to the nuclear issue.  It is easy to criticize the US over the financial sanctions if it isn’t your currency being counterfeited. All the people that criticize the US for the financial sanctions act as if the US should just let the North Koreans counterfeit US currency so the Norks will play nice and be quiet. Screw them and I’m glad the US is standing up to the North Koreans and not letting them counterfeit US currency or blackmail the US with their antiquated nuclear program.
One Free Korea has a great round up of the winners and losers of the recent UN North Korean Sanctions. Here are two of the big winners:
John Bolton: Winner. I’d like to hear John Bolton’s critics deny that, as with Resolution 1695, he has wrung far more effectiveness from the U.N. than we had come to expect. Not only should we confirm this man, pronto, we should clone him. Madeleine Albright never got results like these. The United States: Winner. We got everything we really wanted here:
* help constricting Kim Jong Il’s financial arteries
* the right to search his ships and planes.
* an embargo on the purchase and sale of heavy weapons and WMD components.
* something to hurt Kim Jong Il and his loyalists — the ban on luxury goods.
* the real capacity to investigate, monitor, and enforce all of the above, including pursing them to Iran.
Make sure you read the rest of the winners and losers.
John Bolton has been an amazing UN ambassador and you would think his effectiveness would over ride the political partisanship that seeks to deny him of his confirmation. However, this same effectiveness will probably only make his political enemies even more determined to tear him down.
