The 2nd Infantry Division has a new Command Sergeant Major to help lead the move to Camp Humphreys:
Second Infantry Division Command Sgt. Maj. Edward Mitchell passes the unit colors to Maj. Gen. Scott McKean at Camp Casey, South Korea, Friday, Dec. 1, 2017. MARCUS FICHTL/STARS AND STRIPES
The 2nd Infantry Division has a new senior enlisted adviser to help oversee its move from camps near the Demilitarized Zone to a state-of-the-art base south of Seoul.
Division Command Sgt. Maj. Phil Barretto took responsibility from Command Sgt. Maj. Edward Mitchell on Friday during a ceremony at Camp Casey.
“[Barretto’s] fired up and ready to go,” said Maj. Gen. Scott McKean, the division’s commander.
Barretto, former commandant for the Noncommissioned Officer Academy at Fort Drum, N.Y., arrives on the peninsula with 26 years of experience that includes previous tours to Korea and deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. [Stars & Stripes]
At least this scumbag is out of society for the rest of his life:
Kenneth Franklin Gadson was given life in prison for the slaying of 20-year-old Okinawan office worker Rina Shimabukuro, Friday, Dec. 1, 2017.
The former U.S. base worker accused of raping and killing a 20-year-old Okinawan woman last year was sentenced to life in prison with hard labor after being convicted of her murder Friday at Naha District Court.
A panel of three judges and six jurors found Kenneth Franklin Gadson, 33, guilty of murder, rape resulting in death and the illegal disposal of a body in the slaying of Uruma office worker Rina Shimabukuro. He will spend the rest of his life behind bars at Yokosuka Prison in Kurihama, barring a successful appeal.
“The life of the victim — who had just celebrated her adulthood — was suddenly taken and her body was abandoned in the bushes,” chief judge Toshihiro Shibata said when reading the verdict.
“Her body was not found until it was reduced to bone; her sorrow is immeasurable … even giving consideration to the fact that the body was found by the concession of the defendant and he had no previous criminal record, there is no reason to find a lighter sentence than life imprisonment,” he added. [Stars & Stripes]
President Moon Jae-in shakes hands with a group of South Korean and U.S. soldiers guarding the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom, called the Joint Security Area (JSA), at the presidential office in Seoul on Dec. 1, 2017. Moon invited them to praise them for their shrewd response to a North Korean soldier’s defection to South Korea via the inter-Korean border inside the JSA on Nov. 13. (Yonhap)
I agree that a complete naval blockade should be one of the last options tried once all others have been exhausted because it is pretty much an act of war:
South Korea and the United States have not discussed any military options, including a naval blockade, against North Korea, an official from South Korea’s presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said Friday.
The remarks came hours after President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Donald Trump held their second telephone conversation in just two days to discuss ways to rein in North Korea’s evolving missile technologies.
“The issue of a naval blockade was never mentioned in the phone call with President Trump,” the official told reporters, while speaking on condition of anonymity.
The possibility of a naval blockade surfaced immediately after North Korea launched a believed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in the wee hours of Wednesday, ending its 75-day hiatus in provocations. [Yonhap]
The Stars & Stripes has a good read about the actions the American medical evacuation team took to save the life of the North Korean soldier who defected across the Joint Security Area and was shot five times by his comrades:
From left to right, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Nathan Gumm, pilot; Chief Warrant Officer 2 Eric Tirro, co-pilot; Spc. Carroll Moore, crew chief; Sgt. 1st Class Gopal Singh, flight medic; and Pfc. Karina Lopez, radio operator, pose at Camp Humphreys, South Korea, Thursday, Nov. 30, 2017. MARCUS FICHTL/STARS AND STRIPES
The crew had just returned to Camp Casey, a base near the heavily fortified frontier that divides the peninsula, after a more than three-hour training mission when radio operator Pfc. Karina Lopez told them to stand by for a real mission.
After initial confusion about whether the team was needed, Lopez got the call at 4:04 p.m., about an hour after events had begun to unfold, and the team took off five minutes later.
“That’s when I started … calling the hospital, trying to figure out which hospital they were going to take him to,” said the 20-year-old from Raleigh, N.C.
Singh and his teammates had only basic information that somebody had suffered a gunshot wound to the torso at the Joint Security Area. But that was enough for concern.
“I was in Iraq and Afghanistan … that’s what you expect there,” said Gumm, the 37-year-old pilot. “Here you’d expect a concussion or the other types of missions that we’ve had, not a gunshot wound to the torso. So it was surprising.”
It took about seven minutes to get to Camp Bonifas, the base near the JSA, where more than a dozen people met them carrying the wounded soldier on a stretcher in a chaotic scene.
“We had to kick some people out of the helicopter,” said crew chief Spc. Carroll Moore, 25, of Lenoir, N.C., adding there was only room for two escorts from the security battalion.
Singh, 39, of San Antonio, said he immediately spotted signs that a lung was in danger of collapsing so he did a needle chest decompression, with a 3.5-inch needle. He also worked to stop the blood from hemorrhaging.
The defector, who was in and out of consciousness, asked for water at one point, but Singh said he couldn’t have any because of the nature of his wounds. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read the whole article at the link, but great job by everyone involved to save this defectors life.
A 55-year-old woman surnamed Lee and her son were both arrested on Thursday for burying her friend alive on her husband’s farm. The two face charges of murder and abandoning a corpse, while Lee’s husband has since committed suicide after police came to search his property.
On July 14, Lee called up her 49-year-old friend for a drive in Seongnam, Gyeonggi. They were longtime friends, having met at a social club in Seongnam over a decade ago. Lee’s 25-year-old son drove while Lee handed her friend a cup of coffee laced with sleeping pills. The mother-and-son pair drove to the farm of Lee’s husband in Cheorwon County, Gangwon, where they buried her friend alive.
Police began investigating the disappearance on Aug. 10, leaving open the possibility that the friend was being held against her will, given the inactivity they saw on her phone and bank account.
In September, police received reports that Lee had met the victim before her disappearance, and were able to confirm that Lee’s son had rented a car and driven to Cheorwon. Last Friday, the court issued an arrest warrant for Lee and Park on suspicion of holding the victim in confinement. Police arrested the two on Nov. 28.
The same day, police went to search the property of Lee’s husband. Though the 62-year-old husband was not regarded as a suspect, he hung himself in a storage room when they arrived, after excusing himself to the bathroom.
Lee and her son confessed to the crime late Tuesday. “She made me look like a thief,” Lee said.
In June last year, the victim had asked Lee to bring her some belongings from the home she was sharing with her abusive partner. But after the victim’s partner reported Lee to the police for larceny, the victim did not defend Lee. Lee was subsequently convicted and fined. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read the rest at the link, but hopefully the mother and son spend a long time in prison because that is a horrible way to die.
This photo, released by the Navy on Nov. 29, 2017, shows South Korea’s ship-to-surface missile Haesong-II being fired from the Aegis ship. South Korea’s military conducted a live-fire missile training on the same day near the eastern sea border with North Korea minutes after its ballistic missile launch. (Yonhap)
It looks like the newspaper delivery boy is on the verge of becoming obsolete:
A drone operated by Korea Post takes off from a port in Goheung, South Jeolla, to deliver mail and packages to the residents of Deungnyang Island, which is about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) off the coast. [KOREA POST]Jang In-kil, the lone mailman on Deungnyang Island off the coast of South Jeolla, travels to a port in Goheung, some 40 minutes away from the island, by boat at 8 a.m. every day to pick up mail and packages for the residents of the island. By the time Jang returns with the mail, it’s already 3 p.m., which means it takes over eight hours every day for him to collect the mail for his neighbors on the island.
That eight-hour trip may be shortened to just one hour, thanks to a new delivery service by government-operated drones.
Korea Post, the national postal service provider, on Tuesday started a trial run of its delivery drone on Jang’s daily route. The drone flew the 3.8-kilometer (2.4-mile) trip from the port in Goheung to a community center on the island in just 10 minutes, half an hour less than the time Jang had to spend on the sea every day. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but I wonder if South Korea will have the same regulatory issues preventing drone delivery that Amazon is experiencing in the US?
