Category: Uncategorized

South Korea edged Mexico 2-1 yesterday in the World Baseball:

Lee Seung-yeop smacked a two-run homer, Seo Jae-weong allowed just a run over the first 5 1/3 innings and Park Chan-ho closed out the tension-packed ninth inning, as South Korea defeated Mexico 2-1 in its World Baseball Classic second round opener in Anaheim, Calif., Sunday.

Korea is using the same formula in this round of the WBC that proved effective in the first round, great pitching, all the offensive provided Lee, Seung-yeop, and the game being closed out by Park Chan-ho.

Korea will try to use this formula again when they face the United States in their next game. The US beat Japan 4-3 in order to face South Korea:

Alex Rodriguez hit a bases-loaded, two-out single in the ninth to give the United States a 4-3 victory over Japan on Sunday in the opener of Round 2 in the inaugural World Baseball Classic after the losers appeared to be deprived of the go-ahead run.

However, the game wasn’t without controversy:

It looked as though Japan broke a 3-3 tie against Joe Nathan in the eighth when Akinori Iwamura flied to left with one out and the bases loaded. Tsuyoshi Nishioka beat Randy Winn’s throw home, and second base umpire Brian Knight ruled safe when Team USA appealed the play. But plate umpire Bob Davidson overruled the call following a brief discussion with the other umpires.

This win has got many Korean netizens in an uproar of CIA black helicopter conspiracy theories. The comments sections of the blogger formerly known as the Marmot provides translations of some of the choic quotes:

‘yangkees… no surprise’,

‘if Japan can be victimized like that, Korea watch out too’,

‘why is a US umpire umpiring in a US game?’,

‘it’s yangkees’ party so you didn’t have to watch what the result was going to be,
remember that they did the same thing to us not too long ago?’,

‘the umpire was also the extra US player’, ‘the umpire made the mistake, but I welcome the loss by Japan’,

‘the US was going to win no matter what, they’d call a hit by Japan, an out, they’d call a homerun a foul’.

“Conscienceless bastards…I’m sick of them!”

“I couldn’t be feeling better…because Japan lost and the U.S. is getting cursed!”

“The Yankee bastards are dirtier and crueler than the Jap bastards.”

“Yankees and the monkeys are all the same”

Just wait for the hatefest if the US team beats South Korea in the next game.

It looks like there is one less area of prostitution in Seoul:

The largest red-light district in Seoul near the Chongnyangni train station is expected to be closed down next year following the city’s urban redevelopment project.

Seoul City Monday announced a plan to expand a road in Chongnyangni, eastern Seoul, which passes through a concentration of brothels.

The city said it expects to spend about 13.2 billion won ($13.5 million) to purchase the land for the road expansion. The city has already spent 4.8 billion won to buy land owned by the state-run Korea Railroad, which is at the edge of the area slated for redevelopment.

The construction is scheduled to start late June and be completed by December next year.

One down about 100 more to go in Seoul. I like how prostitution is illegal in Korea but reports of brothels are common knowledge in the local papers.

Unfortunately, this type of activity goes on more than you would think:

The officials also said they want to question the four U.S. soldiers whose APO mailing addresses were used by the men in arranging to have the BB guns shipped to South Korea.

According to Im, the pair brought into South Korea 25 mock weapons in nine shipments since September. The shipments had a total value of about $30,000.

Prior Posting: Carter Enters the Nuclear Crisis

______________________________________________________

On June 15, 1994, former President Carter and his wife Rosalyn crossed the DMZ at Panmunjom and were escorted to Pyongyang to meet Kim Il Sung in Carter’s effort to stop the march to war on the Korean peninsula. It is important to keep in mind that Carter’s trip was that of a private citizen and not endorsed by the US government.

However, this mattered little to Kim Il Sung who saw Carter as a negotiator for the US government since he was at the time the highest ranking US official to ever visit North Korea. Kim Il Sung explained to Carter that North Korea only wanted to make energy not nuclear weapons. This explanation however, doesn’t explain why they were removing uranium for enrichment, but he insisted North Korea only wanted energy and was willing to give up his current nuclear program in exchange for the international community building him light water nuclear reactors that put out more energy and do not leave by products that can be used in nuclear weapons. Kim was also concerned about the placement of US nuclear weapons in South Korea.

Carter assured Kim that there was no US nuclear weapons on the peninsula or surrounding waters and that he would return to Washington and support Kim’s idea of constructing light water nuclear reactors. In exchange Kim agreed to freezing North Korea’s current nuclear activities and allow IAEA nuclear inspectors to return. Carter also agreed to prevent any attempts at implementing UN economic sanctions on the North Koreans. The North Koreans made it quite clear that sanctions meant war and Carter believed they were serious.

While the negotiations with Carter were going on, the White House was preparing their own policy concerning North Korea. This policy meeting included Secretary of State Christopher, Secretary of Defense Perry, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Shalikashvili, CIA Director Woolsey, and UN Ambassador Albright. President Clinton had already given the group the go ahead for UN sanctions on North Korea which in turn caused the group to begin exploring defense options for Korea since the sanctions may lead to war.

Two options were being explored. One was to dispatch a large force to defend South Korea with, but that would have meant that the military would have had to call up reserve units which would have tipped their hand to the North Koreans and alarmed the US public. The second option which they were working on was to create a quiet build up of a smaller force composed of one additional carrier group, warships, planes, and 10,000 additional soldiers.

Before they could complete the details for the build up, the phone rang and Carter was on the other end. He announced to the group that he had convinced the North Koreans to freeze their nuclear program in exchange for continued talks between the US and North Korea over the construction of light water nuclear reactors. Carter also mentioned that he was soon going live with a CNN team that had been allowed into North Korea with the news.

The White House was well aware of North Korea’s desire for light water nuclear reactors in exchange for ending his nuclear program, but the White House did not want to give in to nuclear blackmail and set a dangerous precedent for the future. The White House was furious over Carter’s actions in securing this deal with Kim with one member of the meeting reportedly saying that Carter’s actions were “near traitorous”.

Kim Il Sung had played a brilliant hand. He knew the White House was not going to give him what he wanted so he looked for someone that would and that person was Carter. He easily convinced Carter to agree with the deal and Kim had the country’s lone international media outlet, a CNN crew conveniently waiting for him to announce the news after the meeting giving the White House little time to react to the news.

Next Posting: The White House’s Reaction

A reporter from the Chosun Ilbo was allowed a tour of the Guantanomo Bay prison facility in Cuba where many suspected terrorists are imprisoned. There is a lot of poor journalism in the Korean media and this is one of the best examples. For starters lets begin with this:

The camp is for obscure reasons outside U.S. jurisdiction, so not even American courts can guarantee their treatment. This is a blind spot of human rights, a black hole of international law. Flushing the Koran down the toilet is just one example of the kind of abusive treatment of detainees that has occurred here. There is no shortage of reports and condemnation from the press and international human rights organizations that have said the same torture and abuses that took place in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison are rampant in Guantanamo.

Of course it was proven months ago that the Koran was not flushed down the toilet but when you have an agenda why bother reporting the facts?

Maybe the reporter would have preferred if the US military treated these detainees like the terrorists treat US prisoners.

It only gets better:

While looking around the exercise yard, we heard a noise of someone beating the bars of their window. Inmates clung to the bars and were shouting something. A member of a Turkish TV crew translated: “They are cheating you. They are lying. Don’t believe them.”

The U.S. forces cautioned us not to be fooled by their tactics. They called it rule no. 1 in the official Al-Qaeda handbook: deny everything and shout that you have been tortured if you are caught. Still, the authorities’ own statistics show that dozens of prisoners have attempted suicide, and as many as 131 went on hunger strike last September, some of them refusing food for the last six months. According to the New York Times, the soldiers force-feed them by pushing a hose though their noses, often causing severe pain.

Yes that is rule number one in the terrorist playbook because idiot reporters from newspapers like the Chosun will believe them and publish garbage like this article.

As far a force feeding inmates would the reporters prefer the guards allow the prisoners to starve to death then? That is what he is implying with his statements.

This is how he sums up this garbage article:

We cannot know whether the inmates are terrorists threatening world peace and U.S. security or whether they are “innocent farmers” or simply citizens of foreign countries taken there without evidence. The international community is calling on the U.S. to release them and close the camp, but Washington insists that it cannot let them go until the war on terror is over.

“Innocent farmers?” Interesting because I don’t see countries like South Korea beating down the door of of Gitmo wanting to give asylum to all these “innocent farmers”.

Slobodan Milosevic has been found dead in his jail cell.

Is this trip further evidence that the US financial sanctions are having an effect on North Korea?:

The weekly said no date has been revealed for a visit. It said the planned trip “reflects Kim’s willingness to break the impasse of long isolation in the global diplomatic arena with the help of Indonesia, one of a handful of nations in diplomatic relations with the country and a leading force in the Nonaligned Movement.” Kim has been to Indonesia before, accompanying his father, former leader Kim Il-sung, in 1965.

Pyongyang reportedly asked the special envoy to deliver a message to Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono expressing hope that Jakarta will serve as a mediator in the six-party talks.

Meanwhile, President Yudhoyono will visit both Koreas next month to discuss ways of resolving the North Korean nuclear impasse and ease tension on the Korean Peninsula.

This trip is unusual for Kim Jong Il especially since he is doing it in a hope to restart the nuclear talks. Maybe now it has donned on Kim that the US is serious about sanctions and not giving him anything in return for ending his nuclear program.

Are there really women this stupid out there?:

Prosecutors have indicted an unemployed man for sexually harassing women who were lured by an advertisement for lucrative part-time work he put on an online job site.

The man allegedly advertised online promising women W70,000 for working for three hours at a trade firm doing business with Japan. He took women who responded to the advertisement to a hotel and performed various sexual acts, explaining they should know how to entertain his Japanese clients before starting their jobs, prosecutors said.

The man backed the pretence by showing the women medical websites and using pseudo-scientific terms like G-spot. When victims became to be suspicious, he would abruptly end the session saying this concluded training for the day.

I’m curious to what the job advertisement said. I bet it wasn’t for secretarial work.

Even at 70 years old this guy still scares me, but he makes a good point here:

“I don’t think that impressions which really are funny go against my interests,” he admits. “On the contrary, they show that people are interested in me and love to see me. The TV shows mean that there are now many young people who are eager to take pictures of me with their digital cameras or cell phones. But sometimes, I see these pathetic attempts to make people laugh by using English words only elementary schoolchildren would use, and I do wish that TV writers and producers would make more of an effort.”

It seems like this story pops up every year. Who really cares any more?:

The United States and South Korea plan to conduct annual joint military exercises this month, the U.S. military command said Friday.

The exercises, dubbed RSOI and Foal Eagle, will involve 20,000 American troops and an undisclosed number of South Korean soldiers and will run for a week starting March 25, said Kim Yong-kyu, a spokesman for the U.S. military command in Seoul.

U.S. officials have said the exercises, involving land, sea and air forces, are designed to improve U.S. and South Korean forces’ defense capabilities.

North Korea routinely condemns joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea, calling them preparations to invade the communist state.