This photo published in the North’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-un delivering a congratulatory address during a national meeting of veterans in Pyongyang on July 25, 2015. (Yonhap)
It must have been a good exercise to warrant this much attention from the North Koreans:
North Korea leveled a verbal attack on the United States Saturday for South Korean artillery drills near the disputed border in the Yellow Sea.
In a statement, the Panmunjom mission of the Korean People’s Army claimed that the U.S. is behind the “military provocations,” as it seeks to maintain the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de-facto sea border between the two Koreas.
“The U.S. is hurling the puppet forces into ceaseless arms build-up and military provocations in the above-said waters in a sinister bid to preserve the illegal ‘northern limit line’, to begin with,” an unnamed spokesman said, according to Korean Central News Agency.
The NLL was drawn by the U.S.-led U.N. forces at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War but the North has refused to acknowledge it.
It’s a “foolish intention to preserve the waning justification” for the U.N. Command, the North’s military said.
“These reckless military provocations of the U.S. will only precipitate its doomsday,” read the statement. [Yonhap]
The unemployment and under-employment of young people in South Korea continues to get worse, but I have to wonder how much this has to do with jobs that younng Koreans will no longer do:
The number of young people out of work has reached a record high in the first half of this year.
Statistics Korea said on Sunday that 410-thousand people in their 20s were unemployed in the January-June period, which is the largest first-half figure since 2000 when the nation began to compile related data.
The number of unemployed young people, which posted 308-thousand in 2013 and 380-thousand last year, surpassed the 400-thousand mark this year.
Analysts attribute the rise to the sluggish economy and aftereffects of increased employment last year.
Statistics Korea said that one out of three people aged between 15 and 29 are hired for temporary or part-time posts as their first jobs. [KBS World Radio]
1967 was the first year that US troops were allowed to be tried in a Korean court under the newly signed US-ROK Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). Prior to the SOFA, US troops caught committing crimes in South Korea were tried in US military court martial. The first US servicemember tried in a Korean court was US Air Force Staff Sergent Billy Cox who was convicted in a taxi cab related incident. However, the first servicemember tried in the death of a Korean national was US Army Specialist John Vaughn.
Vaughn was a 20 year old Specialist from Douglasville, Georgia assigned to E Battery, 4th Missile Battalion, 44th Artillery outside of Kunsan where he served as a unit medic. Vaughn was accused of throwing a block of wood from the back of a moving vehicle and fatally killing 59 year old Dok-sin Yi who was a fish peddler riding a bicycle that the truck passed. What is especially interesting about this trial is not only is it the first trial of a US servicemember accused of killing a Korean national handled in a Korean court, but also the incident happened while on duty. What this means is that USFK voluntarily gave up jurisdiction for this case since any crime committed on duty is supposed to be handled by the US military. Considering how South Korea was in the midst of an attempted insurgency operation by North Korea at the time maybe the USFK leadership felt that even a case like this one that should have been tried by a court martial would be best to have in a Korean court to avoid any political repercussions?
Whatever the reasons, Vaughn found himself on trial in a Korean court and it may have actually worked out to his advantage. Vaughn claimed he accidentally dropped the wood from the truck that struck and killed Mr. Yi. The Korean Judge said that the prosecutors could not prove that Vaughn intentionally dropped the piece of wood from the truck that struck Mr. Yi. Due to this fact the judge convicted Vaughn of manslaughter and fined him 30,000 won which in 1967 was worth about $110. In addition to the $110 that Vaughn had to pay, USFK already paid the victim’s family $2,200 as well in compensation for the accident. Overall I would have to think that Specialist Vaughn must have felt pretty lucky to not have been convicted of more serious charges and only had to pay a $110 fine even if the death of Mr. Yi was an accident.
Note:You can read more GI Flashbacks articles by clicking on the below link:
Picture of USFK soldiers training at the guerilla warfare school from the April 11, 1968 Stars & Stripes. Does anyone think that maybe USFK should get back to its roots and reintroduce a guerilla warfare school in Korea?
It appears that Kim Jong-un’s plane may have crashed near Wonsan, but Kim was not on the plane which makes me wonder who was?
Cessna 172 Skyhawk, the type of plane that flies Kim Jong-un around North Korea.
A small North Korean plane, the same type of plane used by leader Kim Jong-un, has crashed, an official said Thursday.
The Cessna went down near the eastern port city of Wonsan, home to Kim’s special villa, on July 15, said the South Korean official familiar with the issue.
The crash was confirmed with intelligence assets of South Korea and the U.S., she said, without elaborating on the assets or the Cessna model.
She did not provide any further details of whether there were any casualties of those who were on board the doomed flight.
Kim was apparently not on board the ill-fated plane. On July 15, North Korea’s state television aired footage of Kim taking photos with participants of an ambassadors meeting in Pyongyang.
On Sunday, Kim cast a ballot in the elections to select deputies to local assemblies, which were held for the first time in four years, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
North Korea’s state media remained silent on the accident. [Yonhap]
It seems to me that until the Treasury Department sanctions financial institutions who are doing business with North Korea, these warnings mean little:
Voice of America (VOA) reported on Tuesday that the U.S. government has warned U.S. financial institutions not to get involved in North Korean illicit activities.
VOA said that an advisory from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network urged financial institutions to follow guidelines that limit their direct exposure to transactions related to the North’s proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
The measure comes after the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering under the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reaffirmed its earlier decision to put North Korea on its watch list.
The U.S. issued similar advisories in March and November of last year and in March of this year. [KBS World Radio]
When the Treasury Department sanctioned the Macao based Banco Delta Asia bank, this was the only time in recent years when the US got the Kim regime’s attention. The then Bush administration of course squandered the leverage on a nuclear deal that saw the Treasury Department return all of North Korea’s frozen money. Once the money was returned they proceeded to begin cheating on the nuclear deal.
Photograph of Colonel William S. Mullins from the 8th Army’s Surgeon Generals Office delivering toys and clothes to Korean orphans from the November 27, 1967 Stars and Stripes.
