A ceremony to decommission the 2,400-ton rescue ship Pyeongtaek is held at the military port of Jinhae, 410 kilometers southeast of Seoul, on Dec. 28, 2016. The ship served for 20 years after the South Korean navy took it over from the U.S. navy in 1997. The ship was mobilized into preventing the spread of a massive oil leak from a freighter on waters off the western county island of Taean in 2007 and salvaging the naval ship the Cheonan sunken by a North Korean torpedo attack in 2010. The ship will be delivered to its sister city of Pyeongtaek, 70 kilometers southwest of Seoul, for security exhibition. (Yonhap)
High profile North Korean defector Thae Yong-ho has an interesting interview with Yonhap News where he describes what it is like to be an overseas diplomat for North Korea:
Five years into North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s reign this past summer, Thae Yong-ho, a senior North Korean diplomat, concluded that he had had enough of the iron fist rule of the three Kim generations.
Despite the Kim regime’s notorious restrictions on the inflow of outside news, he, like other North Korean elites, was aware of the wide disparity between how North Korea looked from the inside and out.
The disparity was felt more acutely for Thae who, as a diplomat, was allowed free access to the Internet, a privilege given exceptionally to diplomats who have to fend off any external criticism of the communist regime.
“The first thing North Korean diplomats based overseas do at work is open the homepage of (South Korea’s) Yonhap News Agency whose North Korea section compiles all the local and foreign news involving North Korea. Even what I said today will be read by every North Korean diplomat who is outside of the country,” Thae said at a press meeting on Tuesday.
The Internet also connected him to the vast pool of South Korean media content involving fellow North Koreans who risked their lives to escape the socialist country and have successfully settled down in the South.
The 1950-53 Korean War divided the Koreas into two ideologically different countries and the rivalry has continued to today, with more than 30,000 North Koreans defecting to South Korea between the early 1960s until recently. Only a small number of South Koreans have deserted their country to become North Korean.
“I got to know the superiority of democracy and witnessed the democratization (of other countries) from the Internet, and realized that the North Korean regime has no future,” he said, recalling how he finally made the decision to desert.
“As the Kim Jong-un regime took power, I had a slight hope that he would make a rational, reasonable regime because he must be well aware of how the world runs after he studied overseas for a long time,” Thae said. But Kim turned out even more merciless than his father and late leader Kim Jong-il, he said, citing the shocking public execution of the leader’s once-powerful uncle Jang Song-thaek in 2013 as one of the moments of awakening that eventually solidified his decision to defect. [Yonhap]
You can read the rest at the link to include the fact that an ambassador makes about $900 – $1,100 a month which requires them to conduct outside activities to earn money to survive as well as to send foreign currency back to the Kim regime. As I read the article I wonder what illegal activities he was part of in the UK? I would think that whatever schemes the embassy in the UK had going on Thae has already briefed intelligence agencies on to get them shut down.
For anyone thinking of ringing in the New Year in downtown Seoul just be warned that there will be a huge crowd of protesters to contend with. If you are in the US military I highly recommend keeping away from these protest activities:
The last anti-Park Geun-hye rally of the year will be held today, overlapping with New Year’s Eve celebrations, according to rally organizers.
“We expect to break through the 10 million people mark in the accumulated number of protesters in the 10th weekly rally on Saturday,” said a spokesman for rally organizers, which are comprised of some 1,500 civic groups. “The rally will seek to not only send the old year out, but send Park out as well, and let the new year in.”
According to rally organizers, some 8.9 million have gathered throughout the country in the weekly rallies from Oct. 29, the first.
A New Year’s Eve concert for protesters is planned from 8 p.m., with singers including Jeon In-kwon and Shin Dae-chul. Shin is the son of popular Korean singer Shin Joong-hyun, called the godfather of Korean rock ‘n’ roll. Shin took issue with the fact that his father’s song “Beautiful Rivers and Mountains” was often sung by Park’s supporters in rallies.
“These Park supporters have no right to sing [my father’s] song,” Shin posted on Facebook this month. “The anti-Park rally organizers had better recruit me. I will sing it right for them all.”
President Park, impeached by the National Assembly earlier this month, faces the judgment of the Constitutional Court over a corruption and abuse of power scandal.
The candlelight vigils are held to urge Park to quit even before the verdict by the court. Protesters have said they will rally until Park is completely removed from office.
After the performances, protesters will march toward the Blue House, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Constitutional Court. Marching toward a point some 100 meters (328 feet) from the Blue House will be permitted from 1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., according to the Seoul Administrative Court.
Marching to some 100 meters from the Prime Minister’s Office, and some 200 meters from the Constitutional Court will be allowed until 10:30 p.m.
Protesters will likely join the crowd in front of the Bosingak Belfry in Jongno District to celebrate the bell-ringing ceremony at midnight. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Installing this statue outside the Japanese consulate in Busan seems needlessly provocative to me. If these activist groups are so concerned about sexual slavery then they should be putting up statues in front of the Chinese embassy in Seoul in protest of the modern day sexual slavery of North Korean women in China:
Members of a civic group confront police on the sidewalk near the Japanese Consulate in South Korea’s largest port city of Busan on Dec. 28, 2016, after attempting to install a statue symbolizing victims of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery. (Yonhap)
Dozens of members from a civic group without authorization attempted to install a statue of a girl symbolizing the victims of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery in South Korea’s largest port city of Busan, but the attempt was foiled due to opposition from officials and police.
The group tried to set up the statue on the sidewalk in front of the back door of the Japanese Consulate shortly after a weekly rally around 12:30 p.m. calling for the Japanese government to offer an apology and compensation for its wartime sexual enslavement of Asian women, many of whom were Korean.
As many as 150 activists from the group staged the rally to protest a Seoul-Tokyo landmark deal in December last year in which Tokyo apologized for its colonial-era atrocities and agreed to provide 1 billion yen (US$9.4 million) for the creation of a foundation aimed at supporting the victims, euphemistically called comfort women. [Yonhap]
Participants to the decade-long weekly protest calling for Japan’s apology for the Japanese army’s forcible sexual slavery of Korean women during World War II in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul march toward the foreign ministry while holding up the portraits of the deceased sexual slaves, called “comfort women,” on Dec. 28, 2016. They called for the nullification of the Korea-Japan agreement on comfort women signed last year. (Yonhap)
It looks like the US military may have its first execution in more than half a century:
A Kansas federal judge has lifted a stay of execution for a former soldier sentenced to death for two killings and a series of rapes, inching the man closer to becoming the military’s first death sentence carried out in more than a half century.
U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten last week sided with the U.S. government in denying a bid by former Fort Bragg, N.C., soldier Ronald A. Gray to block the military from pressing ahead with the execution by lethal injection.
Since a military court sentenced him to die in 1988, Gray has been held at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where the military carried out its last execution when it hanged Army Pvt. John Bennett in 1961 for raping and trying to kill an 11-year-old Austrian girl. [The Virginian Pilot]
It seems to me if the Foreign Ministry really wants to send a message about the behavior of the former diplomat they should send him packing back to Chile to face legal consequences there:
A screengrab from a Chilean TV program showing South Korean diplomat Park Jeong-hak attempting to kiss an actress disguised as a teenage girl.
South Korea’s foreign ministry referred a diplomat to the prosecution on Wednesday over sexually abusing a teenage girl in Chile, officials said.
The councilor, previously posted at the South Korean Embassy in Chile, is accused of committing a sexual offense against a 14-year-old girl in September while teaching her Korean.
Tipped off by the girl, a Chilean television channel filmed and broadcast the diplomat sexually harassing another woman earlier in the month who was acting as a teenage girl trying to receive Korean language lessons.
Holding a disciplinary committee on Tuesday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs dismissed the diplomat surnamed Park from public office.
“Today, the ministry reported Park to the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office and submitted evidence including an indictment bill filed by the victim’s family,” officials here said. [Yonhap]
Korean War Medal of Honor recipient Rudy Hernandez has unfortunately passed away at the age of 82 last week:
Master Sgt. James Proctor, with U.S. Army Forces Command G-6, speaks with Medal of Honor recipient Rudy Hernandez, during the Eighth Annual Warriors on the Water ice breaker at Sports USA on Fort Bragg, N.C., April 17, 2013.
Cpl. Rudy Hernandez cheated death on the battlefields of Korea 62 years ago. But the Medal of Honor recipient and Fayetteville resident couldn’t live forever. The 82-year-old Hernandez died early Saturday at Womack Army Medical Center, according to friends. [Fayetteville Observer]
Here is a summary from the article of Corporal Hernandez’s actions that day during the Korean War that led to him being recognized with a Medal of Honor after originally being pronounced dead at the scene of his combat actions:
Cpl. Hernandez was awarded the Medal of Honor in April 1952 by President Harry S. Truman in a ceremony held in the White House Rose Garden.
Following the award, Cpl. Hernandez became a counselor to wounded veterans of Korean and Vietnam wars, working for the Veterans Administration.
That work, as much as his actions in Korea, has become his lasting legacy, and in August, Fort Bragg’s Warrior Transition Battalion Complex was rededicated in his name.
It was just after 2 a.m. on May 31, 1951 when Cpl. Hernandez felt the warm trickle of blood from a shrapnel wound on his head.
Cpl. Hernandez and other soldiers of Company G, 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team were holed up in foxholes near the Korean town of Wontong-mi, during a North Korean assault.
From their hole, Cpl. Hernandez and another soldier watched as the enemy approached and the night erupted in artillery, mortar and machine-gun fire.
As the rest of his platoon retreated after nearly exhausting their ammunition, Cpl. Hernandez and his foxhole mate held their position and kept firing.
When he finally did leave his position, it wasn’t for retreat. Instead, Cpl. Hernandez charged the enemy armed only with a grenade and a rifle with a fixed bayonet.
His bravery single-handedly stopped the enemy advance and spurred his fellow soldiers to a counterattack.
According to the Medal of Honor citation, “The indomitable fighting spirit, outstanding courage and tenacious devotion to duty clearly demonstrated by Corporal Hernandez reflect the highest credit on himself, the infantry, and the United States Army.”
The morning after the attack, Cpl. Hernandez was pronounced dead after being found lying among the bodies of six North Korean soldiers who had been bayoneted to death.
When a soldier saw a slight movement of Cpl. Hernandez’s hand, medics began frantically trying to save his life.
A month later, Cpl. Hernandez would wake up in a South Korean hospital.
Eight weeks later, he was sent to a hospital in San Francisco where doctors replaced part of his skull.
Cpl. Hernandez couldn’t talk for months following his injuries and had to relearn to walk. Part of his body remained paralyzed for the rest of his life. [Fayetteville Observer]
