I posted before about a Korean-American hero in Iraq and now Wangkon has a great write up on a Korean-American hero in Afghanistan.

Today is the fifth anniversary of the 2002 West Sea Naval Battle which means for the ruling Korean government and their leftist allies it is, Hide Your Head in the Sand Day. For those of you not familiar with the West Sea Naval Battle let me recap it for you.

On June 29, 2002, one day before the closing ceremony of the World Cup the North Koreans tried to draw attention from all the glory South Korea had been receiving from their amazing World Cup performance that year by prevoking a naval battle in the West Sea. The North Koreans planned for and executed a premeditated ambush of a South Korean patrol boat. In the ensueing clash six sailors were killed and 18 more were wounded.

This tragedy of the murdered sailors was bad enough for those left behind, but to make matters worse for the victims and their families, the South Korean government did everything possible to keep the grieving families quiet because they did not want to upset the Sunshine Policy with North Korea. So while politicians in the Korean government encouraged anti-Americanism in the aftermath of the US Army armored vehicle accident that killed two Korean school girls earlier in June 2002, the Korean government in turn did nothing to address the premeditated murder of six ROK sailors by the North Koreans.

The government even told the families to be quiet about the incident and sent no flag officers to attend a memorial ceremony or even offer any condolescences. USFK however did send representatives to the ceremony and USFK Commander General LaPorte offered the families his condolescences.

One wife of a deceased sailor was so fed up with Korea, that she left Korea for good and went to the United States. This is what she said before boarding the plane:

“If the indifference and inhospitality shown to those soldiers who were killed or wounded protecting the nation continue, what soldier will lay down his life in the battlefield?”

Here’s a quote from one of the fathers of one of the murdered sailors that really struck a cord with me:

The father said, “My son is buried in the National Cemetery. But I’m going to take my son’s remains to my family burial site in my hometown.” Having watched the situation develop, he thought his son who was killed by North Korean soldiers was considered nothing more than a criminal.

Some parents said that they are more scared of people who consider the U.S. a bigger enemy than North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, who killed their son. We lose courage to defend the country, when we hear that a wife whose husband fell in the battle is preparing to leave this country. Reading a condolence letter from the USFK commander to mark the second anniversary, the wife said, “The Americans remember my husband and his brothers-in-arms better than Koreans… Frankly, I hate Korea.”

“Frankly, I hate Korea”, no those are not the words of a disgruntled expat or GI saying that, that is a Korean woman who had enough of the actions of the Korean government and left the country.  She is not alone in her criticism of the Korean government over what happened in 2002.

The Chosun Ilbo newspaper last year published a series of interviews from some of the sailors injured in the 2002 attack and here are excerpts of what they had to say:

Another naval gunner, Kim Taek-jung, 25, has given up his dream of becoming a civil engineer and is preparing for the civil service exam instead. “Because civil engineering requires active work at the site, I’ve made a realistic decision to become a public servant, I still have four or five pieces of shrapnel in my body,” Kim said. “One night I remembered the faces of my six dead comrades, but I couldn’t recall the name of one of them, so I sobbed all night.”

Although they suffer from sleepless nights and nightmares, those without external injuries are not entitled to benefits as “persons of merit.” Ko Kyug-rak, 25, also a naval gunner, said, “For over a year after the incident I was unable to sleep more than three hours a night.” Aboard the patrol boat that turned into a sea of flame, Ko saw his peers burned and their heads blown away and lost some of his hearing. But when he went to a military hospital to claim benefit, Ko was given cool treatment. “A doctor ignored the psychological problems and only asked me to show any external wounds,” he said. “If benefits for persons of merit are granted for this level of injuries, the doctor said, it would have an adverse effect on the state budget.”

Another wounded veteran, Kim Myun-joo, 26, has applied for meritorious benefit twice, but in vain. “I’m just sad because I feel like that post-traumatic stress disorder and efforts to safeguard the country are being neglected,” he said

Of the six victims this paper interviewed, three have office jobs and three are students, all trying hard to make a future for themselves despite the difficulties. What they want from the country is just one thing: that it remembers that many young people were killed or wounded while safeguarding the country on June 29, 2002. “I just wish they remembered the battle once a year, even if they don’t pay much attention. Nothing else,” said Lee Jae-yong, 25.

President Roh has never attended a memorial ceremony for the murdered sailors and I seriously doubt he will attend this one either.  Really only the ROK Navy to their credit and USFK memorialize the event every year. The South Korean ruling party politicians hide their heads in the sand every June 29th because this incident is perfect example of the failure of the Sunshine Policy. The South Korean government gives massive amounts of aid to North Korea and what do they do? They murder Korean sailors.  You give them more massive aid and what do they do? They fire a tactical ballistic missiles which further raised tensions in the region.  You give them even more massive aid and what do they do? They build and test nuclear weapons.

The Korean government has learned nothing five years after the West Sea Naval Battle because they have increased the aid shipments this year to North Korea to a record of over one billion dollars while simultaneously refusing to fully fund the US-ROK alliance.  Is it any wonder why North Korea is always so billigerent when they know they can continue to get away with it?

The Korean government is either in total denial about the nature of the North Korean regime or they just simply don’t care.  The first responsibility of any government should always be to protect their citizens.  The West Sea Naval Battle is just one example that the Korean government could care less what the North Koreans do to South Korean citizens.  Hundreds of South Korean citizens have been abducted by North Korean commandoes and agents over the years from South Korea.  A South Korean wife of one of the abductees had to mount her own personal operation to free her husband from enslavement in North Korea while the South Korean government did nothing.  Even sadder are the hundreds of South Korean POWs which still remain in North Korea against their will. If the South Korean government could care less about the welfare of servicemembers serving their country now, is it any surprise they could care less about the welfare of South Korean POWs kept in North Korea in violation of the armistice agreement signed decades ago.

Certainly the Korean government has learned nothing and if the same type of incident were to happen again the reaction of the Korean government will likely be the same, which is pretend nothing happened.  Unfortunately for the sailors and their families involved in the 2002 West Sea Naval Battle, something did happen and the memory of their sacrifices should be recognized by their government and the public in general.

USFK Commander General Burwin Bell built a memorial on Yongsan Garrison in memory of ROK Army soldier, SGT Yoon Jang-ho who was killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan.  Maybe General Bell should also build a memorial to the sailors of the West Sea Naval Battle as well.

In the Chosun Ilbo today they have an interview with LOST actor Kim Yun-jin who answers a series of questions for the paper.  One of the questions and its answer caught my eye:

 In the first “Lost” advertising poster, the white actors were placed in the front and the actors of other races in the back row, right?

“I was so shocked, I couldn’t speak. I worked in Korea for about six years without being aware of the color of my skin, but I was stunned when it suddenly happened. After that, I object to whatever I feel is discrimination. If I accept it, there will be no change. When I speak out, the other side might think, ‘I never thought about it that way,’ and be more careful.”

It is times like these that I turn to the wisdom of the Party Pooper.  The overwhelming racism Kim feels is even more apparent after I read the answer to this question:

Money and fame follow from Hollywood. Do you earn a lot now?

“I earn a lot. I get US$100,000 per episode, and we shoot 24 episodes a year. ‘Lost’ is televised to 210 countries around the world.”

Yes, only in a racist country like America is a network willing to pay a supporting actress in their drama $100,000 an episode for a total $2.4 million bucks.  I want to be discriminated against like this.

I couldn’t find any similar comments from her in the US media so I have to wonder if Kim Yun-jin doing a Wie Byung-wook and telling the Korean media what they want to hear in order to promote herself and the Korean movie she is currently filming?

I suspected that something was up with this case when it took so long to file charges and now I know why:

A South Korean policewoman told court officials Tuesday that she remembers being attacked by one American soldier, but she doesn’t know whether the second soldier on trial for attempted rape was in the room during the incident.

Pfc. Mark Feldmann has testified he was outside trying to catch a taxi when his friend, Sgt. Anthony Q. Basel, tried to rape the off-duty policewoman in April.

Here is what I also found interesting in the article:

Restaurant owner Cho Sung-Hwan, who found Basel trying to rape the woman, said he knows two men were in the bathroom but he couldn’t remember where the second man was standing because he was stunned and embarrassed by the incident.

Cho said he heard the woman’s screams from his first-floor restaurant and he tried to open the locked bathroom door, which was normally unlocked. He ran down five or six stairs to his restaurant, grabbed the key, then ran back to the restroom and unlocked the door. He saw Basel on top of the woman, then ran back and asked one of his customers for help.

As they went back to the bathroom, Cho said, two foreign men passed them on the stairway.

He called police and reported that two men had left. The next day, Cho told investigators that there was one man in the bathroom. A day or two later, he told them he saw a second man in the bathroom.

The police must have knew they had a weak case against Feldmann and needed the extra time before arresting the two soldiers in order to gather evidence against him and conveniently enough the restaurant owner changes his story and says there was two GIs in the restroom.  It is times like this where it is useful to recall the words of Korea based American lawyer Brendon Carr:

Beyond language difficulties is the prospect that South Koreans who give testimony might feel it culturally acceptable to lie, especially if it will increase their chances of winning bigger damages, Carr said.

"This culture," Carr said, "does not place the same value on truth or view the truth through the same prism that Americans do. There is very little social disapproval of making false official statements in order to achieve an objective for your friend or relative or for a tribemate."

"Once it breaks down to those Americans" versus us Koreans, many, many Koreans will perceive it as their duty to make sure that the Korean is the winner of the dispute. So there a lot of lying when witnesses come forward, Carr said.

This SGT Basel is a real dirt bag and will hopefully serve a long time in a Korean prison and PFC Feldmann is probably no saint himself, but I think he definitely has a legitimate case that he was not in the restroom.  It really doesn’t matter because he will be convicted of something because GIs always get convicted.  Korean courts aren’t about determining the truth and rendering justice, they are about validating perceptions and appeasing public sentiment.  The public sentiment says that Feldman is a GI bastard that needs to go to jail, thus he doesn’t stand a chance.  Just ask PFC Acosta.

Another sign of the unfairness of the SOFA Agreement from none other than the Hankyoreh.  You can read more here and here. The insignificant and bias story makes headlines at the Hanky, but any bets if Friday’s fifth anniversary of the 2002 West Sea Naval Battle makes headlines in the Hanky as well?

I never knew Inchon Airport had this much stuff in it. 

I’m sure by now everyone has heard that the Korean-American dry cleaner won his case against his dissatisfied customer suing him for $54 million dollars over a pair of pants.  I am happy the dry cleaner won his case, but here is something I found interesting in an interview of the dry cleaner Chung Jing-nam in the Chosun Ilbo:

Chung thanked Koreans who supported him, saying he might have given up without the Korean media’s interest and the support of the Korean-American community. The U.S. media welcomed the Washington court’s decision, but some did not rule out an appeal.

Just to let Mr. Chung know, it wasn’t just the Korean-American community and the Korean media behind you, every common sense loving American along with even the media were behind you.  The cases acquittal was posted on the front page of the CNN website.  In fact I haven’t heard of one person even supporting the dissatisfied customer’s case.  This was definitely a victory for common sense. 

It took a while, but Korean scientists have discovered that the Han River is polluted:

Non-point pollution refers to environmental deterioration of pollutants from urban residence, roads, farms and construction sites. It is created when rain falls or snow melts, with the runoff picking up and carrying topsoil, bacteria, fertilizers, pesticides, oil and many other toxic or harmful materials and depositing them into various water sources. It is so called because it is difficult to determine a single, polluting source. As land development accelerates and areas where water cannot permeate increases, such pollution is emerging as a new environmental challenge.

According to the Ministry of Environment, non-point pollution accounts for 30-35 percent of water pollution in South Korea; if environmental deterioration from decrepit sewage and untreated animal urine is included, the number could increase to 42-69 percent.

The team is led by Oh Jae-il, a professor majoring in Housing and Environmental Engineering, and conducted the research between 2004 and 2005, by analyzing the degree of pollution in runoff water collected from Yoenhyo Brigde, one of the bridges crossing the Han River.

Silly me, here was all this time thinking USFK was the reason the Han River was polluted.  What I want to know is when is someone going to study the effects of the sewage sucking trucks dumping their loads in the river?

This is a really odd story:

U.S. sailors helped rescue the crew of a North Korean-flagged ship on Monday, according to the Navy.

The incident occurred in the Arabian Sea when the ship reported it had engine problems, no food or water, and was in danger of sinking, a Navy news release said.

The USNS Kanawha and the French ship Dupleix helped evacuate the ship’s 16 crewmembers to safety, according to the release. None of the crew was a North Korean citizen.

The U.S. and French ships are part of Combined Task Force 150, which conducts maritime security operations in the Gulf of Oman, the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea, the North Arabian Sea and parts of the Indian Ocean.

I wish the article would detail who’s citizens were on the boat and what they were doing.  Any ship flagged by North Korea cannot be up to anything good.

I guess this helps explain the increase in the USFK drug abuse numbers:

Three illegal foreign nationals tried to sell methamphetamine to an undercover Army investigator and were arrested by South Korean police in Dongducheon last week, officials said Tuesday.

A Criminal Investigation Command special agent posed as a U.S. servicemember a few blocks from Camp Casey’s main gate during a June 19 joint sting operation with local police, a Yangju police official said Tuesday.

The investigator offered to buy a half-gram of methamphetamine for $500 from the three women in the Bosandong bar district known as “The Ville.”

They arrested three Philippines nationals, ages 21, 28 and 31, whose names were not immediately available. Each of the women was in the country illegally and has no relation to U.S. Forces Korea, officials said.  [Stars & Stripes]

The juicies in TDC have been taking drugs for years so the fact they are selling them isn’t surprising.  The fact they were in the country illegally as well isn’t surprising either.  You can read more over at Nomad.