President Park Geun-hye (front) waves to newly commissioned officers during a joint officer commissioning ceremony for South Korea’s army, air force and naval academies at Gyeryongdae, South Korea’s main military compound, in the city of Gyeryong, central South Korea, on March 4, 2016. (Yonhap)
This is a tough issue to take sides on because the South Korean defamation laws do make it harder for people to lie about people especially politicians, but it does limit freedom of speech. However, in such a wired country like South Korea lies spread and are believed very fast. The perfect example was the 2008 Mad Cow Crisis which was based on lies and ushered in laws directing people to use their real name on the Internet. It is definitely a delicate balancing act the South Korean government is playing with this issue:
Park Sung-su, a political activist, protesting in front of the Supreme Court in Seoul, South Korea, last month. The sign, in Korean, reads, “Bite it off, you dogs of power.” Mr. Park was freed in December after being jailed on charges of defaming the president.
In late 2014, months after 304 people died in the sinking of a South Korean ferry, a leaflet began circulating with a scurrilous rumor about President Park Geun-hye: that she had failed to respond swiftly to the disaster that day because she was having a romantic encounter with a former aide.
Was Ms. Park, the flier asked, now cracking down on her critics in an attempt to keep that scandal from coming to light?
For Park Sung-su, an antigovernment campaigner who had distributed the leaflet — and who is not related to the president (Park is a common surname here) — the consequences soon followed. He was arrested and later sentenced to a year in prison, on charges of defaming the president and staging illegal protests against his prosecutors. He was freed in December after eight months, when a court suspended his sentence.
No evidence supporting the rumor has been produced, and prosecutors said they had investigated and found it groundless. But however dubious the leaflet might have been, opponents of the government say Mr. Park became another victim of the very thing he was denouncing: the government’s use of defamation and other laws to silence its critics, which rights advocates say is on the rise.
Last year, the United Nations Human Rights Committee warned against South Korea’s “increasing use of criminal defamation laws to prosecute persons who criticize government action.” Freedom House, a rights group based in Washington, criticized “the increased intimidation of political opponents” under Ms. Park, who took office in 2013.
“The government is especially sensitive about defending the personal reputation of the president,” said Park Kyung-sin, a professor of law at Korea University who has researched the issue.
The Constitution guarantees freedom of expression. But defamation laws here carry penalties that include prison — up to three years for comments that are true and up to seven for statements considered false — if they are deemed not in the public interest. Critics say the distinction is vague and opens the door to abuse by prosecutors.
The government’s use of the laws against critics predates Ms. Park’s presidency. During the five-year tenure of her predecessor, Lee Myung-bak, 30 such cases were filed, 24 of them criminal and six civil, according to People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, an influential South Korean civic group. But under Ms. Park, the trend increased considerably, with 22 cases filed in her first two and a half years in office, the group said. Of those, 18 were criminal prosecutions.
“They don’t seem to care whether they win these cases,” the group said in a recent report, noting that the officials often lose in court. “The real purpose is to create a chilling effect among people criticizing and scrutinizing the government.” [New York Times]
Over the next few weeks there will be more military traffic and personnel in South Korea as part of the Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercises that begin this week:
South Korea and the United States will launch their largest-ever joint exercise this week to warn North Korea against further provocations, a South Korean military official said Sunday.
The Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercises running from Monday through April 30 will be the largest in scale since Pyongyang’s torpedo attack on the South Korean corvette Cheonan in 2010, which is what triggered these annual drills, the official said on the condition of anonymity.
This year’s exercise will involve more than 300,000 South Korean and 15,000 U.S. troops and simulate previously unattempted strategies.
The Key Resolve portion of the exercise will include OPLAN 5015, which aims to remove the North’s weapons of mass destruction and prepare the allied troops for a pre-emptive strike in the event of a North Korean attack.
“The OPLAN 5015 was included in the Ulchi-Freedom Guardian (UFG) exercise last year, but this is the first time for it to be carried out in a Key Resolve exercise,” another South Korean military official said. [Yonhap]
Family members of the 46 South Korean sailors killed in a North Korean torpedo attack in March 2010 offer a silent tribute at the National Cemetery in Daejeon, central South Korea, on March 5, 2016. (Yonhap)
For those that have read my posting about the Hero of the Korean War, Lieutenant James P. Carne and his men of the Gloucestershire Battalion during the Korean War, you may be interested in seeing what the battle site looks like today. Fortunately the area that the battle took place has turned into the nicest memorial of any other Korean War battle field I have seen yet. The memorial is located below the large Kamaksan mountain and just outside the village of Jokseong on Highway 56:
It takes less than hour to drive to the site from both Dongducheon and Uijongbu on Highway 56.
The memorial is easy to spot due to this large sign on the side of the highway:
Besides the sign the prominent flags also give away the fact that this area is a Korean War memorial site. The flags were backdropped by Gloster Hill which is where the Gloucestershire Regiment made their final last stand during the Battle of the Imjim:
I have been to the site three times and each time the site has been well maintained and very clean which is not always the case with other Korean War memorial sites I have been to. The memorial is divided in half with a park on one side of the river and the actual memorial on the other. The park is actually a popular picnic area for Korean locals. There are even restaurants and cafes adjacent to the park for visitors to use.
To reach the actual memorial you have to cross over the creek with the use of this bridge:
The bridge is specially decorated with British flags:
Seeing so many British flags just seems so odd considering you are in Korea, but their are many more Union Jacks on display here than Taegukis. Near the bridge is also a plaque and map describing to visitors the Battle of the Imjim:
Just across the bridge and at the base of Hill 235 is this memorial carved in the rock face:
Here is how the memorial looks up close:
Here is a close up look at the inscriptions on the plaques:
Conclusion
The site may be easy to find, but it can be a bit difficult to get to if you don’t have transportation. Buses from Dongducheon run to Joeksong regularly and from Joeksong the site is only a short cab drive away. This is how I first visited the site but I had to walk back to Joeksong afterwards to catch the bus again. I later led a group of Soldiers to the site for a leader development session that I did. This battle has a lot of interesting lessons learned and leadership examples that make for a great professional development opportunity. Ultimately I recommend this memorial to anyone with an interest in Korean War history.
Something I have been saying should be done for a long time is to seize ships caught violating UN sanctions and then sell them off to pay reparations to the families of people kidnapped or killed in provocations or terrorism launched by the Kim regime in the past. The cost of having to replace seized ships would definitely hurt the Kim regime’s bottom line while serving as a deterrent to third countries trying to smuggle goods into North Korea:
The Philippines will impound a suspected North Korean cargo ship docked at a port northwest of Manila and eventually deport its North Korean crewmen in compliance with tough new U.N. Security Council sanctions on Pyongyang over its latest nuclear test and rocket launch, officials said Saturday.
Presidential Communications Undersecretary Manolo Quezon III said the U.N. sanctions would be applied to the MV Jin Teng, which arrived Thursday at Subic Bay, a former U.S. naval base that’s now a key commercial port. The ship has 21 North Korean crewmen.
“Our obligation is essentially to impound the vessel and not allow it to leave port and that the crew must eventually be deported,” Quezon said in a radio interview.
The 4,355-ton vessel is among 31 ships listed as being North Korean owned and that should be held under an “assets freeze” order, Philippine Foreign Assistant Secretary Gary Domingo said. [Associated Press]
South Korea has set 2016 national budget at 386.7 trillion won, up 3 percent from 375.4 trillion won in 2015. The defense budget was increased by 4 percent to improve the country’s military readiness. [Yonhap]
