Category: Uncategorized

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.

The popularity of suicide pacts in Japan makes me wonder if it will make the cultural transfer to Korea:

Internet suicide pacts have occurred since at least the late 1990s and have been reported everywhere from Guam to the Netherlands. But in Japan, where the suicide rate is among the industrialized world’s highest, officials are worried about a recent spate of such deaths.

A record 91 people died in 34 Internet-linked suicide cases in Japan in 2005, up from 55 people in 19 cases in 2004, the National Police Agency reported last month. The number of Internet suicide pacts has almost tripled from 2003, when the agency began keeping records.

Earlier this week, a man and two women in their 20s and 30s were found dead in Aomori, 360 miles northeast of Tokyo. The three also died by inhaling charcoal fumes in a car, and police suspected suicide.

“Depressed, young people and the Internet — it’s a very dangerous mix,” said Mafumi Usui, a psychology professor at Niigata Seiryo University.

The number of desertions from the military since 9/11 has dropped significantly:

Desertion numbers have dropped since 9/11. The Army, Navy and Air Force reported 7,978 desertions in 2001, compared with 3,456 in 2005. The Marine Corps showed 1,603 Marines in desertion status in 2001. That had declined by 148 in 2005.

Opposition to the war prompts a small fraction of desertions, says Army spokeswoman Maj. Elizabeth Robbins. “People always desert, and most do it because they don’t adapt well to the military,” she says. The vast majority of desertions happen inside the USA, Robbins says. There is only one known case of desertion in Iraq.

This is good news right? So how does the USA Today newspaper headline this story:

8,000 desert during Iraq war

As far as people deserting or going AWOL the two cases that I have seen happen since 9/11 were both because the soldiers were scared to deploy to a war zone, but both came back after a little while and one got chaptered the other deployed. So even the number of 8,000 deserters during the Iraq War is not factual because of that 8,000 many of them came back and ended up deploying any way.

With media like this is it any wonder the mission in Iraq has lost pubic support.

From Reuters:

Stewardesses on South Korea’s bullet trains shout slogans after they occupied the Korea Railroad Corp’s Seoul office building March 9, 2006. About 350 attendants of South Korea’s bullet train KTX occupied the office building on Thursday in a protest about job security, back wages and better working conditions, local media reported.

Could be anymore obvious that there is a big disconnect somewhere between the US and Korea?:

Gen. Bell testified that the United Nations Command, meaning control over the UN forces that nominally remain engaged in the Korean War, will be developed into a “standing multi-national alliance.” Korea, by contrast, had been under the impression that the UNC would be either scrapped or seriously curtailed once the armistice that still officially prevails on the peninsula is being replaced with a peace treaty. “Since he is concurrently the UNC commander, Gen. Bell seems to have been talking about his personal ideas,” Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung said. “I will ask him about the details when he comes back.” There can be no clearer indication that nothing about the UNC’s future was discussed while Bell was here.

Then there was the question of a dock for nuclear-propelled aircraft carriers. Bell testified that a Korean Navy base to be completed in June includes such a dock, but Yoon rushed to point out that it had “not been built with the U.S. in mind.”

Fallon also expressed hope for “a substantial increase in tripartite military cooperation among the U.S., Japan and South Korea” after citing changes in the security environment including China’s military modernization. That could be another headache for Seoul, which has made it clear it will not join the U.S. and Japan in encircling China.

In short, two U.S. Forces commanders testify before the U.S. Senate, and the Korean defense minister either disowns any knowledge of what they are talking about or denies it. That gives us the measure of the state the alliance has got into.

I think it is becoming more and more obvious that General Bell was brought to Korea for a reason and it is not to go around saying “geotshi kapshida”.

Prior Posting: Jimmy Carter’s Interference in US Presidential Policy

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In addition to developing nuclear weapons the North Koreans were in the process of a slow but steady build up of forces on the Demilitarized Zone over the past decade. In 1994 the North Koreans had 65% of their military positioned on the DMZ compared to just 45% a decade earlier. The build up included massive amounts of artillery to include 2,400 multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) and 8,400 artillery pieces. These weapons could pound the South Korean metropolis of Seoul with 5,000 rounds of artillery every 12 hours. This is why the North Korean referred to turning Seoul into a “Sea of Fire” during this nuclear crisis.

They had been building up to the moment for years and the time had come to push the international envelope. With the end of the Soviet Union and communism in China, North Korea was not getting the free aid and good trade deals that they were used to getting from the former communist block countries. With little economic might to fall back on, playing the nuclear card seemed like a good way to get international aid and North Korea was ready to play it.

Washington began a diplomatic approach to solve the crisis but was simultaneously preparing the military option. Apache attack helicopters and PATRIOT missiles were moved into Korea for the first time along with additional Abrams and Bradley tanks. Even with these reinforcements, 52,000 US casualties and 490,000 ROK Army casualties were expected in just the first 90 days if war broke out. The economic damage would total more than one trillion US dollars. The stakes were very high and any mis-step could lead to war.

Next Posting: Carter Enters the Nuclear Crisis

Here are some interesting comments that new USFK commander General B.B. Bell made during a recent US Senate hearing concerning the status of USFK:

Noting that Seoul is seeking to regain wartime control of its military forces, the U.S. general forecast that if that happened, U.S. forces here would play what he called a “supporting role” in defending South Korea. He said he believed the South Korean military was capable of taking on an independent combat command and said, “In the future, to support the Republic of Korea where our ally is exercising independent combat command, I envision U.S. military contributions to the alliance to be air- and naval-centric.”

Washington and Seoul recently reached an agreement on “strategic flexibility” of U.S. forces stationed on the Korean peninsula – envisioning their use elsewhere in the region – and the comments could suggest further cuts in U.S. Army forces here, with Korea’s ground forces carrying the burden of land combat.

In other words US ground forces are needed else where and cutting troops in Korea lessens the US footprint on the peninsula while simultaneously freeing up troops for the Global War on Terror.

Asked by a senator whether any thought had been given to shifting more responsibility to the international community in defending South Korea, General Bell said that in addition to the bilateral U.S.-Korea security treaty, the United Nations Command here could be a basis for a larger role for other nations. In theory, he said, the UN Command’s purpose was to prepare the 15 nations represented in the command to recommit their troops if necessary.

“While I can’t speak for all those nations, certainly in terms of what they might or might not commit, what I can inform you of is that the framework to discuss a potential broader commitment is resonant, and that could certainly be undertaken,” he said.

This is something I always find interesting about Korea. You have elements of Korean society and the media eager to condemn the US and USFK and then tout praises for countries like France. Yet when push comes to shove on the Korean peninsula and North Korea provokes a second Korean War does anyone think that countries like France, Germany, Belgium, etc. will lift a finger to defend South Korea?

No matter how estranged relations are between the US and South Korea, the US will defend South Korea in some capacity if attacked. Who else can Korea count on to help defend them if attacked? If a second Korean War broke out possibly England and Australia would commit troops and ironically maybe even Korea’s region rival Japan would assist in some capacity. Europe on the hand, can not even be counted on to conduct peacekeeping operations in Africa, why would anyone expect them to help defend Korea?

You can read more here and here.