From the AFP:

A 27-year-old army lieutenant, identified only by his family name Oh, was found shot and dead inside the South Korean military camp in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil on Saturday, the ministry said in a statement.

He sustained a shot under his jaw at an army barber shop, with his own rifle and an empty cartridge found nearby, it said. There were no signs of him being attacked, it added.

The situation appears to likely be a suicide or an accidental discharge, but we won’t really know until a full investigation is conducted. 

Richardson over at DPRK Studies has a great write up about former US Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton’s new book “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the U.N. and Abroad”.  Here is the money quote from the write up:

First, the timetable of the Feb. 13 agreement is already shredded. President Bush said at the time of the deal: “Those who say that the North Koreans have got to prove themselves by actually following through on the deal are right, and I’m one.” Assistant Secretary of State Chris Hill, the deal’s U.S. architect and chief negotiator, said: “We need to avoid above all missing deadlines. It’s like a broken-window theory: one window is unrepaired, and before you know it you’ll have a lot of broken windows and nobody cares.”

Those statements were correct when made, and they are correct today. Sadly, however, they no longer seem to be “operative.”

Second, by making secret side deals with North Korea, the State Department has left itself vulnerable to future renegotiation efforts. This is the North’s classic style: Negotiate hard to reach an agreement, sign it, and then start renegotiating, not to mention violating the deal at will. America’s serial concessions on BDA simply confirm to Pyongyang that State is well into the “save the deal” mode, which bodes well for future North Korean efforts to recast it.

Bolton as usual is absolutely correct because North Korea is a broken window that no one cars about now.  The last part about negotiating could fit the South Korean government as well where the US continuously gets double crossed on agreements with the ROK government.

Make sure to go read the rest of the posting it is a good read.

I watched Spiderman 3 this weekend which continues to be the leading movie in Korean movie theatres.  In my opinion the movie was quite good, but not as good as the first two movies.  The special effects are in incredible as to be expected and all the main characters give strong performances, but the story line is what makes this the worst of three movies.  There are a variety of story line threads in the movie that just do not come together well in the end.  The story line thread involving Peter Parker turning into the dark Spiderman was just absolutely ridiculous and really took away from the movie. 

The movie has two new villains, the Sandman and Venom along with the old Hobgoblin villain from Spiderman 2.  The two new villains are very poorly developed, especially Venom, which can all be attributed to the poor story line.  One of the villains should have been left out for a future Spiderman movie which would have helped focus the story line.   All in all it is worth seeing just for the special effects alone, however I think Spiderman 2 is still the best Spiderman movie. 

UPDATE: Yonhap has an article on Katrin Fraser along with the Donga Ilbo. The Donga is reporting that Fraser will probaby have little influence with Korea policy it sounds like:

Meanwhile, the White House designated Katrin Fraser, a professional diplomat in her early 30s, as assistant for Korean and Japanese affairs to succeed the post left by Victor Cha, who has recently returned to Georgetown University. Fraser has worked on international organization affairs in the State Department, but since her career in security policy affairs isn’t extensive, it is likely that her role could be limited to executive support. On a Fulbright Association assistantship, she taught English for a year at Mokpo High School in 2000.

Just what the White House needs, a Low Quality Foreign English Teacher helping direct US-Korea relations. Maybe she can help negotiate a hagwon bill of rights for all the English teachers in Korea.

____________________________________________________________

If I only had a dollar for every time I have heard this excuse. With that any remaining hopes I held of an improved Korea policy coming any time soon has been dashed after reading this in the Chosun about the new Asia director for the National Security Council Katrin Fraser:

Fraser lived in Korea for two years. In a contribution to the spring 2002 edition of the Korean Society Quarterly, she said that the Bush administration’s misunderstanding of Korean culture fanned anti-American sentiment here since 2001. Fraser discusses President Bush’s State of the Union address of 2002 in which he famously called North Korea part of an “axis of evil.”

She says South Korea’s “swift and largely negative reaction” came from two factors. One was a gradual buildup of anti-U.S. sentiment due to Bush’s rejection of engagement with North Korea, and the other “cultural insensitivity on the part of the Bush administration.” By calling North Korea “evil,” Bush offended against Korean norms of relationship management and communication, which focus on face-saving and “kibun,” she said.

“If the president had demonstrated an awareness of the importance of maintaining kibun in relating to Koreans (North or South), perhaps the South Korean response to his statement would have been more muted,” she writes.

As far as “kibun” is concerned Robert over the Marmot’s Hole pretty much summed this up very well:

The difference is that over the last 10 years, South Koreans have moved away from viewing North Koreans as “horned communist devils” and more towards viewing them as part of the tribe, so to speak. The issue then becomes one not of the Bush administration failing to understand the Korean cultural concept of gibun, but rather one of it failing to understand — or care about — the a) changing nature of Korean nationalism and national identity and b) the priority Seoul placed on improving relations with the North.

Additionally, Ms. Fraser is highly misinformed if she thinks the anti-US movement was jump started due to President Bush’s labeling of North Korea as part of the access of evil. These people existed well before 2002:

The anti-US movement was quite active since the 1980’s, grew greatly in the 1990’s, and was jump started not due to President Bush, but rather due to former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung’s June 2000 Inter-Korean Summit. After the Inter-Korean Summit Korean nationalism was sky high and much of the general Korean public thought unification was near and that the US was now the problem preventing it. This has since proven to be absurd with the disclosure that Kim Dae-jung bought the summit along with the follow on Nobel Peace Prize with a $500 million dollar bribe to North Korea and the continuing defiance of the international community with North Korea ballistic missile and nuclear tests. However, after that summit the Korean mind set was clearly that the US was the problem now, not North Korea.

Without this mind set, “The Great Water Dumping Scandal of 2000” would not have created such a massive anti-US backlash. There was no “misunderstanding of Korean culture” from President Bush back in 2000 to cause such a large anti-US back lash to a minor and a highly hypocritical incident.

The same can be said for the 2000 Koon-ni Range protests as well. That range has been used by the US Air Force for decades, but suddenly in 2000 it becomes a national issue spreading anti-US hate. The protests at the range continued for years afterward with the Korean government giving the US Air Force no alternate range to use. The US Air Force had to in fact fly crews to Thailand to conduct training there because of the Koon-ni Range issue.

Perhaps Ms. Fraser can point out the “misunderstanding of Korean culture” to those of us that were here in 2000 who remember this hate so well.

Any bets how long this lasts?

Could this ever happen in the Army?

The Corps-wide drinking age has been lowered from 21 to 18 for Marines on liberty overseas and for leathernecks taking part in official on-base command functions — including the birthday ball.

The rule change was effective April 19, not long after Commandant Gen. James Conway and Sgt. Maj. John Estrada, then-sergeant major of the Marine Corps, returned from a visit to the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit in the Middle East.

[…]

“The minimum drinking age overseas will be based on the host nation’s drinking age … and on the local situation as determined by the local installation commander … but in no case shall it be below the age of 18,” the message states.

This decision only gets better, check this out:

(more…)

That Korea and Japan dislike each other, imagine that, I’m shocked:

According to a survey by Gallup Korea and the Japan Research Center, 20 percent of Koreans have friendly feelings towards Japan and 36 percent of Japanese felt the same towards Korea.

In a 2002 survey by the Chosun Ilbo and Mainichi Shimbun, 35 percent of Koreans and 69 percent of Japanese had friendly views of the other country.

When asked the reason for their antipathy, most Koreans cited the territorial dispute over the Dok-do Islets, while most Japanese said they’re turned off by anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea.

Here is something though that may surprise some:

When asked which country Korea should be close with, Koreans chose the U.S. (37 percent), North Korea (28 percent), China (20 percent), and Japan (5 percent). Japanese said Japan should be closest to the U.S. (42 percent), China (17 percent), South Korea (6 percent) and North Korea (3 percent).

It would have been a more interesting survey if they asked why they think they should be close to each of these countries. 

Seriously is anyone surprised by this?:

A police investigation has revealed that many winners of the Grand Art Exhibition of Korea, the country’s largest art contest, were chosen through bribery and corruption.

The shocking investigation involves 36 officials with the Korea Fine Arts Association (KFA), the country’s leading arts organization, 20 art professor judges, and other influential organizations and individuals.

Police on Wednesday asked for arrest warrants for nine people including Mr. Ha, the former director general of the KFA. Ha is accused of awarding prizes at the 25th Grand Art in 2006 in return for bribes from applicants and acquaintances. Forty-nine others including judges, KFA officials, and artists were booked without detention.

From this Milblogs post is an excellent link to an Atlantic Monthly article that is the best reporting I have seen yet on the reality of US military recruiting.  The article tends to confirm my thesis that  fatter, momma’s boys are being allowed in the military compared to past years, not an influx of gang bangers as some want to believe. 

For additional reading I direct everyone to my prior post that lays to rest the other myth that the Army is recruiting uneducated low lives and exploiting minorities as conventional wisdom suggests.  In fact military recruits are smarter, increasingly middle class, (even the numbers of wealthy enlisting is up) and the number of poor and minority recruits are dropping with more whites joining and the overall numbers are nearing the make up of the average US population.

Facts are hard for the demagouges, the race baiters, and class warfare specialists to accept, but longer the War on Terror goes on, more the demographic make up of the US military is becoming a direct reflection of American society itself.  

I think it is safe to say that the moral of this story is to not hire gangsters as your manager:

The manager of South Korean movie star Kwon Sang-Woo was sentenced to eight months in jail Wednesday for blackmailing his client, court officials said.

The defendant, a former gangster identified by his family name Paek, was found quilty of threatening Kwon with disclosures about his private life in an attempt to secure a lucrative business contract, they said.

Kwon, 30, who is gaining popularity in Japan and other Asian countries during the Korean pop culture boom, had also faced another case of intimidation.

In February prosecutors indicted Kim Tae-Chon, a gang leader already serving a prison term for bribery, for trying to force Kwon to attend a fans’ meeting in Japan organised by Kim’s friend.