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Here is a good link for those who want to learn more about the history of St. Patrick’s Day:

St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated on March 17, his religious feast day and the anniversary of his death in the fifth century. The Irish have observed this day as a religious holiday for thousands of years.

On St. Patrick’s Day, which falls during the Christian season of Lent, Irish families would traditionally attend church in the morning and celebrate in the afternoon. Lenten prohibitions against the consumption of meat were waived and people would dance, drink, and feast—on the traditional meal of Irish bacon and cabbage.

The first St. Patrick’s Day parade took place not in Ireland, but in the United States. Irish soldiers serving in the English military marched through New York City on March 17, 1762. Along with their music, the parade helped the soldiers to reconnect with their Irish roots, as well as fellow Irishmen serving in the English army.

The Marmot has a good posting on the “Irish of Asia” the Koreans that is worth checking out as well.

From Yonhap:

South Korea on Thursday launched its fifth 4,000-ton-class destroyer with a radar-evading “stealth” function here amid a fanfare of trumpets and fireworks as sailors celebrated the new addition to their fleet.

The 4,200-ton ship, equipped with a range of sophisticated weapons systems, was set afloat in a shipyard on the country’s second-largest island, about 406 kilometers south of Seoul.

(…)

The new destroyer, which has camouflage and stealth coatings on its surface, is equipped with SM-II ship-to-air missiles, Harpoon
anti-ship missiles, RAM-guided supersonic missiles and other naval guns as well as two anti-submarine Super Lynx helicopters, according to Navy officials. It can sail at a maximum speed of 30 knots per hour.

Cool boat, but what would Korea use it for? To sneak up on Japanese fishermen?

This is interesting, that MGM is making it’s first overseas theme park in Busan, South Korea:

MGM and Busan City plan to jointly build the ‘MGM Studio Park’, with Busan City providing the land — one million square meters (10.76 million square feet) — and infrastructure, the company’s publicity agent said here Monday.

“It is MGM’s first overseas theme park and will be the model of a future theme park,” the agent said, adding that MGM film content and South Korean IT technology will be combined for the project.

The first phase will require some 600 million dollars by 2010, including the park, a hotel and other facilities, it said, adding that a memorandum of understanding on the deal would be signed here Wednesday.

The Busan film festivals combined with the recent successful APEC summit must have really caused some positive publicity for Busan to land this theme park. Good for Busan. I wonder if there will be any protests about this theme park due to the movie screen quota controversy?

Prior Posting: Carter’s Deal

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With Carter going live on CNN to announce this deal the White House felt they had to circle the wagons with Carter in order to appear to the American public that they were still in control of the situation. You have to remember that at the time the Clinton administration was looked at as foreign policy novices after the fiasco a year prior in Somalia. The administration would have looked really incompetent if they were seen as contradicting against what their perceived negotiator Carter was putting out to the American public on CNN.

Just like that Clinton’s policy making team went from drawing up war plans to defend Korea, to deciding how to implement the White House’s version of a nuclear freeze in order to make it look like that the White House was in fact calling the shots, not Carter or the North Koreans. On June 17th in Pyongyang, Carter received the administration’s version of a nuclear freeze which was slightly different from what he had agreed to with Kim Il-sung on a day prior. Carter objected to the new conditions because he felt it was unlikely that the North Koreans would agree to them. However, the North Koreans quickly agreed to the White House’s version of a freeze thus saving the White House some face and still giving the North Koreans what they wanted.

The fact that Carter was so concerned about the North Koreans not accepting the White House’s version of a freeze just goes to show how little Carter understood of North Korean negotiation tactics. The North Koreans have long been masters at appearing to be overly emotional and for lack of a better term creating an impression of being crazy and unpredictable. However, the North Koreans are in fact quite rational with set goals and objectives they want to achieve and only created the persona of unpredictability in order to convince peaceniks like Carter that they were serious about going to war at a moments notice if they didn’t get what they wanted.

In fact I find it unlikely that the North Koreans would have immediately went to war even if the White House was successful in implementing sanctions. The North Koreans knew all to well that war meant the end of their regime and their way of life because they knew they had no chance of winning a prolonged war with the US and South Korea. For people like North Korea’s ruling elite the only thing they worry about is keeping the money coming in to finance their lifestyles and war was not the way to do this, but the North Koreans had to convince Carter otherwise which they were successful in doing.

When Carter returned to Seoul, South Korean President Kim Young-sam was not very agreeable with Carter’s deal because once again he felt that the future of South Korea was being decided by foreign powers without the consultation of South Korea, which those that know a lot about Korean history can tell you is a point that runs deep in Korean society. One point that President Kim was excited about however, was that Kim Il Sung had told Carter during his trip that he would be willing to hold a summit with Kim Young-sam in the future. This never did come to fruition due to Kim Il Sung’s death months later.

When Carter was making plans to return to the US he wanted to head straight to the White House to consult the administration. However, the White House was still privately furious at Carter and did not want him to go to Washington. Later the administration relented and Carter flew to Washington and met the White House officials but President Clinton decided to go to Camp David and only spoke with Carter by telephone. I think it is safe to say that President Clinton was still pretty pissed off at Carter for undermining his White House policies.

I think Clinton knew Carter had set a dangerous precedent in regards to dealing with countries with weapons of mass destruction by appeasing the North Koreans and in effect causing the world’s most powerful nation, the United States, to bow down and give into the demands of one of the world’s poorest and most destitute nations all in the name of freezing a nuclear program. What signal would this send to the rest of the world’s dictators? If you want respect from the US, build WMD. It is that simple.

Carter could care less though because he felt he had finally made his long lost legacy by bringing peace to the Korean peninsula, however as history has shown which I’m sure President Clinton knew would, the 1994 Agreed Frame Work collapsed in 2002 when North Korea was discovered to be continuing on with a covert nuclear program despite the agreement to build the light water reactors.

The North Korean nuclear crisis continues to this day but has recently been overshadowed by the more clear and present danger Iran which is unsurprisingly playing the same cards that North Korea played so well in 1994 that they only want nuclear energy not weapons. Much like Clinton in 1994 President Bush is preparing to refer Iran to the UN for sanctions which Iran is implying would mean war as well.

Wouldn’t it be something if Carter popped up in Tehran trying to broker another similar peace deal with the mullahs especially when it was the Iranians who ended his presidency in disgrace by sacking the US Embassy and kidnapping it’s diplomats. However, with Carter there isn’t a dictator he doesn’t like as long as it serves his own personal ego to attain the legacy he will probably never receive.

I wonder if the Iranian’s have a hotel room already booked for him?

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

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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.