Category: Uncategorized

It looks like the Taliban has some competition:

Seoul has an uneasy feeling about plans by South Korean Christians to hold a “peace rally” in Afghanistan `s capital, Kabul, next weekend.
The Foreign Ministry said yesterday it had dispatched a team to the Central Asian country to help if trouble breaks out between the group and Afghan Muslims or insurgents.
The Institute of Asian Culture and Development, a Christian group in Korea, has been warned repeatedly since January about the potential for violence in a Muslim country still wracked by war and terrorism. Last month, the administration issued a statement in the names of several government agencies, including the Justice Ministry, urging prospective participants to rethink and stay away from the event.
Responding to the latest warning, issued yesterday, the institute protested that the event was a peaceful one involving only cultural activities and volunteer work, not proselytizing.

Sure they are not there not there to proselytize, they are probably just there to check out the donkey markets, gardening outlet stores, shopping, beaches and skiing because we all know how boring Seoul can be.  What amazes me more than anything are the numbers of Koreans that are in Afghanistan right now:

Reportedly, about 1,000 Koreans have already gone to Afghanistan for the event. That country’s Ministry of Culture had approved the plans, but changed its mind after approaches from the Korean government.
The Afghan ministry said it has told the institute that the event cannot be held; security officials in Kabul have reinforced that warning, saying they could not guarantee the security of the participants.

1,000 Koreans in Afghanistan?  You can make two combat battalions out of them.  Heck, maybe they part of the new NATO led force there?

Nathan over at Seoul Hero posted a rant about the amount of K-blogs with word kimchi in it.  Just to poke fun at him I mentioned that there are a lot of blogs with Seoul in it’s name as well.  The Big Hominid agrees and posted this hilarious post and the amount of blogs with Seoul in it’s title.  There are a lot of blogs with Korea in it’s title as well including mine so maybe I should change my blog title too.  Anyone have any suggestions?

I don’t know about you, but trips to Thailand to train doesn’t sound to bad to me:

Six A-10 fighters deployed at Osan Air Base in Gyeonggi Province recently moved to Thailand for training before returning to their base in Korea, a source with the USFK said. USFK pilots have gone to U.S. air bases in Alaska, Thailand and Japan for training before, but the duration and frequency of training outside Korea is growing due to controversy over the bomber range, he added. A total of 20 A-10 jets nicknamed ¿Tank Killer¿ are deployed in Korea.

Sources also said U.S. pilots have increasingly sought to avoid postings with the USFK since August, when the old Maehyang-ni bomber range was shut down after years of complaints from locals. Performance in aerial bombing drills has a direct impact on the promotion of pilots.

It costs plenty of time and money for USFK pilots to train elsewhere, a military official here said, and this could eventually lead to questions being asked in the U.S. press or the Congress. That in turn could mean the U.S. Air Force moves elsewhere, the official said. Rumsfeld, in the 37th Security Consultative Meeting last October in Seoul, already indicated that could happen if Korea is unwilling to provide adequate training facilities for its pilots.

I guess it does make sense that training scores do reflect on their officer evaluation reports.  However, the ball is clearly on the Korean’s side of the court to do something about this bombing range fiasco.  Of all things in the US-ROK alliance that the Koreans cannot afford to lose is the US Air Force and yet here they are jerking around the Air Force.  It is really unbelievable.

No surprise here:

The DPRK on Friday blasted a planned military drill by the US and South Korea, demanding that the two countries cancel the plan.

“This is an extremely dangerous (case of) playing with fire, intended to ignite a war against the DPRK,” said a spokesman of the Korean National Peace Committee (KNPC), quoted by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

“This is a dangerous development indicating their intention to further strain the situation on the Korean Peninsula,” the spokesman added.

“The U.S. and South Korean authorities should immediately cancel their plan for the reckless joint military exercises as they will only push the situation on the Korean Peninsula to (an) extreme level of tension,” he said.

The exercise, known as Ulji Focus Lens 2006, is scheduled to take place from Aug. 21 until Sept. 1, involving 8,000 U.S. troops and an undisclosed number of South Korean soldiers.

It will be one of the two large-scale U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises to be held this year.

The U.S.-South Korea Combined Forces Command described the exercise features computer-simulated war games conducted at command posts and will not include field maneuvers.

Like I said before, it didn’t take long for doping allegations to come up against the Tour de France winner Floyd Landis.  What I don’t understand is why the doping allegations are made public before ever being proven?

Who would of thought a Tae Kwon Do match would break out at a soccer game?:

The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) will today investigate ugly scenes involving North Korean players after they lost their Women’s Asian Cup semi-final in Adelaide last night.

Trouble erupted deep in stoppage time when North Korean players thought they had equalised against China but the goal was disallowed for an off-side infringement.

Play continued but at the final whistle, and as the Chinese started to celebrate their 1-0 win, frustrations among the North Koreans boiled over with four or five surrounding Italian referee Anna De Toni and one appearing to push her.

Television footage also showed a player seemingly aiming a kick which missed De Toni as she and her assistants were escorted from the ground by security guards.

Korean players were also seen throwing plastic bottles which had been thrown onto the ground.

Maybe they thought it was an Aussie rules match?

Update:  Marmot has more on the Cat Fight Down Under.

UPDATE:  The jury has found the private not guilty of rape:

A military jury early Friday morning found Pvt. Darren W. Williams not guilty of raping and sodomizing a woman last August in his barracks room at Camp Humphreys.

But the jury found Williams guilty of disobeying a direct and lawful order. He had pleaded guilty to wrongfully leaving the post after his off-post pass privileges were revoked when he became a suspect.

The soldier has a psychologist to thank for saving him from jail:

Army Maj. Matthew Cody, a forensic psychiatrist assigned to Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii, said he conducted two psychiatric evaluation sessions with the woman. Cody testified she also told him that on the day of her visit she put on fishnet-thong panties and wore no bra because she thought that would increase her appeal to Williams.

Cody said the woman told him she performed a sex act on Williams and that they had intercourse for what she thought could have been about an hour. Afterward, the woman did not want to go home, Cody said she told him, mainly because she feared her father would be angry she’d visited Williams against parental instruction.

The woman said that after they had sex, Williams called her ¿stupid,¿ which hurt her feelings and made her want ¿payback,¿ Cody testified the woman told him.

The psychiatrist said he asked her if she wanted payback for any other reasons. ¿I was waiting for her to say, `Rape!¿¿ Cody testified, but the woman said no, there were no other reasons.

Cody also disputed testimony Wednesday from Air Force Maj. Jennifer Chow, a psychiatrist testifying for the prosecution, that the woman had mental problems that made her unable to handle decisions about whether to consent to sex, and that she had developed post-traumatic-stress disorder after the incident.

Both Chow and Cody testified the woman has a low IQ of about 75.

Pretty convincing testimony and this is what I assume turned the jury towards the defendant’s favor in this case.  However, he is still in some deep trouble with the violations of direct orders given to him by his command, which will probably end it up in a Field Grade Article 15 against the soldier.  Depending on his past performance history the command may be able to chapter him out of the army if he has had past discipline problems.  However, this guy ought to just consider himself very lucky that a Field Grade is all he is probably going to end up with.

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This is why you don’t have sex in the barracks:

Lawyers at Camp Humphreys made opening arguments Tuesday in the jury trial of a soldier charged with raping and sodomizing a woman in his barracks room last August.

Pvt. Darren W. Williams, a cook with the Army¿s 249th Military Police Detachment, pleaded not guilty to rape, forcible sodomy and disobeying orders of a superior commissioned officer, prosecutors said. But he pleaded guilty to wrongfully leaving the post after his off-post pass privileges were revoked when he was a suspect in the case.

Prosecutor Capt. Yong J. Lee portrayed Williams as a ¿predator¿ who took advantage of a mentally handicapped woman in her early 20s.

The defense countered that the woman had consensual sex with the soldier, then ¿cried rape¿ to deflect her parents¿ wrath.

Apparently this girl may be autistic which the defense of course disputes.  Here is why these rape allegations are not always cut and dry:

Defense lawyer Capt. Jack Ko told the jury the case was one of a woman ¿who made a decision to have sex with someone her parents disapproved of¿ ¿ but ¿cried rape¿ when she realized MPs would tell her parents of her visit to Williams¿ barracks.

Ko told the jury the woman became acquainted with Williams when she reached him while attempting to phone her boyfriend.

Ko said that during further phone contact, the woman told Williams of her sexual preferences and pressed him to let her visit him at Camp Humphreys.

Showing the jury the woman¿s garments, Ko said that on Aug. 27, she ¿prettied herself up,¿ donned thong panties, a pink-and-white flowered tank top and pink skirt and traveled by bus to see Williams.

Once in his room, Ko told jurors, she kissed him, said she wanted to perform a sex act and had consensual intercourse.

Any of you all soldier out there with girlfriends, this is a perfect example of why you don’t bring them in the barracks and for women, why shouldn’t go to the barracks.  Even if the defense claims are true, it is hard to disprove the prosecutions arguements when the assault happened in a barracks room.  If the soldier had her agree to go to a hotel room instead and then she cried rape afterwards than the defense would have a stronger case to defend the soldier.  We will see what happens, but from what I read it doesn’t look good for the soldier.

I wonder if it is at least as good as Google Earth?:

South Korea sent a satellite into space on Friday primarily for geographical surveys but also for possibly spying on North Korea, which raised regional security concerns by launching missiles earlier this month.

The 900-kg (2000 lb) Arirang-2 satellite, launched in Russia, can take high-resolution pictures of the earth’s surface, a government agency said. Experts said it would be the country’s most advanced surveillance satellite.

“The high-definition MSC (multi-spectral camera) will be able to give real-time visual data on North Korea’s missile launch preparations or military activities, which would be otherwise unavailable,” South Korea’s Overseas Information Service said.

At present, South Korea mostly relies on U.S. spy satellites and planes for aerial reconnaissance of North Korea.

Japundit has an interesting video up of former Korean President Kim Dae-jung not allowing the Japanese Emperor and his wife to pass by him during the 2002 World Cup that is worth viewing.  For those of us who have lived in Korea before this should be familiar.

How long have I been saying this?  Michelle Wie should win a women’s tour event and at least become one of the best female golfers in the world before trying out PGA tour events.  Well now it appears some people are actually beginning to agree with me:

The ever-fickle media seem to be turning their back on the teenage golfer Michelle Wie. To take reports in the international press these days, Michelle Wie is nothing but hype. On top of a string of disappointing finishes, the decisive turn in press sentiment may have been her withdrawal from the John Deere Classic PGA event that opened on July 15. Why, oh why has the press turned against its erstwhile darling?

It was Golf World Columnist Jaime Diaz who threw the first stone. Ahead of the opening of the John Deere Classic, Diaz said in a column provocatively titled, “Wie shouldn’t compete on PGA tour,” “Unless she makes the cut, this week’s John Deere Classic should be the last time Michelle Wie accepts a sponsor’s exemption to play in a PGA Tour event until she becomes the best woman golfer in the world.” Other golfers on the same circuit were also quoted as making unkind comments.

It is not just the media but even some women golfers that are fed up with the Wie phenomenom:

Jeff Gove offered some advice: “She’s got to learn to play faster and be a little more respectful of the other players, things of that nature.” Wie was up on the chopping block at the HSBC Women’s World Match Play Championship early this month. A bewildered Pak Se-ri said at the time, “I tried to talk to her a few times, but she wouldn’t even give me a response.” The LA Times says Wie found herself going head-to-head with the men because PGA officials, her parents and the press pushed her to do so.

How could she turn her back on and ignore a fellow Korean?  I thought she was “definitely Korean”, well at least according to her dad she is.

Michelle Wie has been playing in these PGA tour events in order to build her brand name image and make money from it.  However, she is doing this at the expense of all the much better LPGA golfers out there which is effecting the image of the LPGA and their players as them being below Wie and a lesser league even though many of the golfers in the LPGA are better than her.  If Michelle Wie consistently played LPGA events and lost which she probably would her name brand image would sink dramatically but the quality of the image of the LPGA would improve because it would show how much better the other female golfers are compared to Wie.  However, by consistently playing in PGA events and losing it gives her some kind of creditbility in order to make money and that is what it is all about.

Michelle Wie is young and has unlimited potential and will have plenty of opportunity to challenge the PGA in the future, but she should at least become a serious contender before challenging the PGA.  How would the LPGA feel if golfers that couldn’t make it in the PGA joined the LPGA?  It would decrease the quality of play of the league and that is what Michelle Wie is doing compared to when a serious female golfer like Annika Sorenstam plays in PGA events.  Even a minor leaguer in baseball can strike out a big leaguer every once in a while but are they really ready for the big leagues?