I hope everyone and their families have a great Christmas holiday this year. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Christmas then by re-reading Chickenhead’s hilarious Twas the Night Before Christmas on the DMZ which is a true holiday classic.
Members of a South Korean animal rights group perform in Insadong, central Seoul, on Dec. 24, 2017, to oppose the butchery of dogs and other animals. (Yonhap)
Is it just coincidence that Army starts winning football games after it allegedly drops standards for its football players?:
The Army football team and the United States Military Academy have come under fire for the second time in two weeks after another report by The Daily Beast was released Friday, accusing West Point of letting its “most high-profile players operate under a different set of rules than typical cadets.”
The report cites “failing classes, openly disregarding rules and avoiding discipline” among the academy’s football players. (…..)
The Daily Beast said it viewed internal e-mails stating football players frequently required special summer courses to maintain eligibility.
According to the report, 11 members of the football team attended a house party at an Airbnb rental in Garrison, leaving post without permission, and some had violated restrictions, the report says. The rental was vandalized, according to the report. Captains Ahmad Bradshaw and John Voit are listed in the report as attending the party.
The Daily Beast also reported that senior wide receiver Jeff Ejekam missed the first two games of the season stemming from an arrest in June for driving while impaired in North Carolina. Eight Army football players have been enrolled in the Academy Substance Abuse Program since August, the report says. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read more at the link, but if true I definitely do not agree that a cadet who gets a DUI should be allowed to remain at West Point considering how many active duty soldiers I have seen have their careers ended by a DUI.
Really nothing new here in the response from North Korea in regards to the latest round of UN sanctions passed against them:
BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) – The latest U.N. sanctions against North Korea are an act of war and tantamount to a complete economic blockade against it, North Korea’s foreign ministry said on Sunday, threatening to punish those who supported the measure.
The U.N. Security Council unanimously imposed new sanctions on North Korea on Friday for its recent intercontinental ballistic missile test, seeking to limit its access to refined petroleum products and crude oil and its earnings from workers abroad.
The U.N. resolution seeks to ban nearly 90 percent of refined petroleum exports to North Korea by capping them at 500,000 barrels a year and, in a last-minute change, demands the repatriation of North Koreans working abroad within 24 months, instead of 12 months as first proposed.
The U.S.-drafted resolution also caps crude oil supplies to North Korea at 4 million barrels a year and commits the Council to further reductions if it were to conduct another nuclear test or launch another ICBM.
In a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency, North Korea’s foreign ministry said the United States was terrified by its nuclear force and was getting “more and more frenzied in the moves to impose the harshest-ever sanctions and pressure on our country”.
The new resolution was tantamount to a complete economic blockade of North Korea, the ministry said.
“We define this ‘sanctions resolution’ rigged up by the U.S. and its followers as a grave infringement upon the sovereignty of our Republic, as an act of war violating peace and stability in the Korean peninsula and the region and categorically reject the ‘resolution’,” it said.
“There is no more fatal blunder than the miscalculation that the U.S. and its followers could check by already worn-out ‘sanctions’ the victorious advance of our people who have brilliantly accomplished the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force”, the ministry said. [Reuters]
The fire killed 29 people in Jecheon may have had such a high death toll because of a number of factors to include a broken emergency exit door:
This photo, provided by Fire Prevention News on Dec. 23, 2017, shows traces left by victims of a deadly blaze at a gym in Jecheon, some 170 kilometers southeast of Seoul, near the emergency exit on the second floor where 20 out of 29 dead were found. The fire took place at the eight-story sports center on Dec. 21. (Yonhap)
Witnesses also pointed to insufficient emergency exits and illegally parked cars that caused a delay in putting out the fire by blocking fire trucks’ access to the building.
The incident is invoking comparisons with a fire which erupted three years ago at an apartment in Uijeongbu, Gyeonggi Province. The building also contained the flammable material and was constructed in a similar style.
Police will also look into whether the building was properly managed, including the maintenance of sprinklers and other fire prevention facilities. Some reportedly testified that the exit door of the sauna, located on the second and third floors, had been broken. Twenty of the 29 people who died were using the facility when the fire erupted. [Korea Times]
I have personally seen fire exits chained before in Korean buildings so the fact that the exit door from the sauna was not working and no one bothered to repair it is not surprising to me. Additionally it has been discovered that the building’s design and materials used caused it to be an increased fire hazard.
Then to make matters the firefighters appeared to be totally unprepared to deal with such a large fire:
The burned building and its surroundings are covered in soot. / Yonhap
Firefighters have been criticized for not acting fast enough to save the 29 people killed in a fire that engulfed an eight-story commercial building in Jecheon on Thursday.
Witnesses said firefighters did not break the windows of the North Chungcheong Province building to allow people to escape but only used their hoses from the outside.
A victim’s husband, in his late 50s, cried that his wife struggled to break out of the building for so long that when he reached her body she no longer had fingerprints. The heartbroken man blamed firefighters for not breaking the windows to let people out.
Firefighters from the Chungbuk Fire Service Headquarters entered the second floor, where 20 of the deaths occurred, 40 minutes after arriving. Many of the victims were in the women’s sauna room in a public bathhouse.
City fire emergency service Chief Lee Sang-min said firefighters could not promptly reach the second floor because cars parked around the building were on fire and there was a danger of gas explosions.
Rescuers also were criticized for the delay in positioning a ladder platform fire engine. If it were not for a private firm sending a ladder truck, there might have been more deaths, reports said.
The fire engine was delayed about 30 minutes and saved only one person trapped high in the building while the private truck saved three on the eighth floor.
Lee said the ladder platform arrived late because of parked cars at the site. [Korea Times]
That is pretty sad when a private company was able to get a ladder truck to rescue people before the fire department and saved more lives.
So I wonder if the Korean left will blame President Moon for the slow rescue response, lax safety standards, and demand that he should have personally been on site to direct the rescue like they did to former President Park after the Sewol Ferry Boat sinking? Of course they won’t because the criticism was all politically motivated. There was nothing President Park could have done to rescue the people on the Sewol just like there was nothing President Moon could do to rescue people at this fire. I suspect we will hear little else about this fire and the lax safety culture in Korea will continue which there is a lot of blame to go around for that.
President Moon Jae-in made a surprise trip to the site of a tragic fire in the small southeastern city of Jecheon Friday.
I tend to agree with this analysis from Carl Schuster from Hawaii Pacific University:
But if U.S. forces were to enter North Korea, how China responds will depend largely on why, said Carl Schuster, a retired Navy captain who now lectures at Hawaii Pacific University.
“Let’s say North Korea does something stupid like launches a missile that lands in South Korea or hits a U.S. base, or North Korea suddenly fires some artillery rounds across the DMZ and Seoul, if North Korea does that, China will have no problem with us pounding North Korea’s government into the dirt,” he said.
But there is a difference between aerial strikes and troops on the ground, and how the Chinese regime will respond to either is uncertain. At the very least, Beijing will seek international pressure to stop a U.S. offensive.
But while crossing the 38th parallel may be tolerated under some circumstances, taking the North Korean capital will not be, he said.
“If it looks like we are going to go north of Pyongyang, in their minds, that will be a red line.”
China may tolerate U.S. forces crossing the border to crush the North Korean army, he said, but he expects Beijing would send forces to occupy Pyongyang. North Korea’s capital will remain a no-go zone, he said.
“If North Korea initiates the conflict, China will watch it closely, prepare for North Korea’s defeat, but they won’t intervene if we don’t go to far.” [The Epoch Times]
You can read much more at the link, but I have always believed there is a strong possibility the Chinese would move in and occupy Pyongyang if they feared the US or ROK were going to occupy North Korea. This would not be a repeat though of the massive Chinese intervention into the Korean War where they played a significant combat role. Instead I believe the Chinese will rapidly, but openly move into Pyongyang under the guise of being peacekeepers.
If the US or the ROK were to attack the Chinese troops they would be initiating combat against peacekeepers. I think this will likely prevent any action against the Chinese troops and give Beijing a strong negotiating hand to settle the conflict in a way favorable to Chinese interests.
Only in Korea does the holiday season mean that once again we get to see the annual pictures of half naked Marines frolicking in the snow:
U.S. and South Korean Marines get airborne during a short workout at Pyeongchang, South Korea, Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2017. MARCUS FICHTL/STARS AND STRIPES
About 400 U.S. and South Korean Marines took a break from honing their winter-warfare skills Tuesday for some friendly competition in the city that will host the upcoming Winter Olympics.
After doffing their shirts and yelling half-naked in the snow, the allies teamed up to battle each other in chicken fights, relay races and a free-for-all wrestling match.
It was a bit of levity to wrap up a tense year on the Korean Peninsula that saw more than 20 North Korean ballistic-missile tests, two underground nuclear blasts and an ongoing bitter war of words between Washington and Pyongyang. [Stars & Stripes]
