Category: Uncategorized

Here is a pretty funny AAFES story for everyone.  I wonder if this could happen in Korea?

It looks like the Arirang taxi drivers may have really overplayed their hand with their recent strike:

Army and Air Force Exchange Services officials are considering opening on-base taxi service to competition in the wake of a recent taxi strike, an AAFES general manager said Thursday at a Camp Casey town hall meeting.

The idea still is in its infancy and is being evaluated with several options to improve taxi service, said Betty O¿Brien, Area II general manager.

¿We¿re looking at a second company on installation for competition,¿ O¿Brien told a soldier in the audience who voiced unhappiness with the current service. The new service would apply to both Area I and Area II bases, O¿Brien later said.

If the cab drivers thought they weren’t making enough money before imagine the income hit they are going to take if they face competition on post.

For those with non-command sponsored families in Korea this is a big deal:

The inventory of Army housing dictates how many families receive ¿command-sponsored¿ status, Jolissaint said. The number today is about 1,500, he said. Yet several thousand more ¿noncommand-sponsored¿ families are also are living in South Korea.

They paid their own travel costs and live on the economy without benefit of ¿with-dependents¿ housing or cost-of-living allowances. Some feel they can cope financially because of an extra $300 a month in Assignment Incentive Pay paid in Korea to members who extend their tours another year. After Iraq or Afghanistan, any more time away from family is a harder sell.

¿In olden days, if you weren¿t command-sponsored, you couldn¿t get a ration card,¿ said Jolissaint. ¿You couldn¿t access other services on post. Now we are treating these folks as if they are command-sponsored. They get their ID cards. They can come on post. They can use the PX. They can use the commissary. They have access to all services. They just can¿t get housing on post, and there¿s the Tricare Prime issue.¿

In April 2005, William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, clarified in a memo to the services that department policy bans enrollment of noncommand-sponsored dependents in Tricare Prime programs overseas. Winkenwerder wrote that, except in a few select circumstances, only active-duty family members who are ¿command sponsored,¿ as defined by travel orders, ¿shall be eligible¿ for Tricare Overseas Program (TOP) Prime or the Tricare Global Remote Overseas (TGRO) program.

Basically if your family is not command sponsored you cannot get timely access to military health care facilities and then when you go to health care provided by the local Korean health care providers instead, you have to pay additional and up front fees that Tri-care will not cover.  Hopefully General Bell is serious about addressing this issue because the numbers of non-command sponsored families in Korea are increasing.  The simple solution to this will be the camp consolidation at Camp Humphrey if that ever does happen, but in the mean time hopefully a short term fix can be worked out.

Could it be that the old guard of Korea’s security sees that the hand over of war time command is actually the end of the US-ROK alliance as we know it?:

A group of senior military experts including 13 former defense ministers have urged Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung to stop seeking the return of wartime operational control from the U.S. The meeting came at Yoon’s invitation on Wednesday.

It is rare for the contents of such a meeting to be made public, especially when it focuses on a call to end a core government project.

The group included Lee Sang-hoon and other former defense ministers as well as retired Gen. Paik Sun-yup and former vice defense minister Lee Jung-rin. They said now is not the time to reclaim wartime operational control of troops but rather the moment to strengthen the Korea-U.S. alliance.

The old guard of Korea understands what a strong alliance with America has brought the country since the devastation of the Korean War.  I have met Gen. Paik Sun-yup on a couple of occassions and he is one of the greatest heroes of the Korean War generation and is one of the strongest US-ROK allaince supporters out there.  So it isn’t surprising that he and his colleagues are against what the Roh administration in one presidential term has done to the US-ROK alliance that they spent decades creating and strengthening.

However, the damage has already been done and the “writing is on the wall” that the US-ROK alliance is in the midst of some massive changes possibly this year.  The old guard is in the middle of damage control right now, but it may be to little to late, but I have to give them credit for trying with comments like this:

Former defense minister Kim Sung-eun added Korea does not have the military intelligence power to exercise operational control on its own and needs U.S. support. Other former defense chiefs were unanimous in demanding to know why the government is going the way it is when the reverse course, of strengthening the alliance with the U.S, is the need of the hour. After the meeting, Lee said he told Yoon, “I’ve sought a meeting with Gen. Burwell Bell, the commander of the U.S. Forces Korea. If I meet him, I’ll suggest that he ignores what the South Korean government says.”

I think if the recent uni-lateral hand over of USFK camps to the Korean government is any indication, General Bell is already ignoring them.

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.