I know I have some school teachers that read this blog so I am particularly interested in what they have to say about this LA Times article about teachers in a Los Angeles high school doing everything possible to ban a JROTC program at the school.  Is this acceptable behavior for teachers in America’s high schools today?:

Last year, Jesse, the 11th-grader, a master sergeant and JROTC flag detail commander, was the only student wearing a JROTC uniform in Martha Guerrero’s first-period world history class. He said that Guerrero, who often wears a "War is not the answer" T-shirt and has a flag of the revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara hanging in her classroom, sometimes asked him pointed questions in the middle of class.

"Jesse, are you going to go to Iraq and die?" she asked. "Why are you wearing a uniform? Aren’t you embarrassed?" Jesse said he felt singled out by the question and told his JROTC instructor about it.

A Che Guevara flag hanging in a high school classroom!?  The Pledge of Allegiance in the classroom is not okay, but it is okay to have a Che Guevara flag?  Attacking a student for wearing a JROTC uniform?  How is this woman still employed?

This is what another teacher was doing:

 Lopez, the social studies teacher, keeps a stack of glossy brochures propped on his chalkboard titled "Don’t Die in a Dead-End Job! Information for Young People Considering the Military" that show a soldier saluting flag-draped coffins. Prominent on his wall is a poster called "Ten Points to Consider Before You Sign a Military Enlistment Agreement."  "I want to see more Latinos go to college," Lopez said.

I got news for teacher Lopez, I am willing to bet that the US military is able to get a higher percentage of Latinos a college education than what their high school is able to do.  Is it any wonder why this high school can’t get many Latinos through college when they are indoctrinating them with the teachings of Che Guevara? 

How?  By banning Japanese cars of course:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has ordered most Japanese cars in the communist country seized in a sign of his growing discontent with Japan imposing severe sanctions after the North’s detonation of a nuclear bomb last October, informed sources said Monday.

"After he paid tribute to the Kumsusan Memorial Palace on Jan. 1, he saw a Japanese car that wasn’t working blocking the road and gave a National Defense Committee edict to seize Japanese cars," a source familiar with the North Korean situation said, asking to remain anonymous. North Korea’s founding leader Kim Il-sung’s embalmed body lies in the memorial in Pyongyang.

I’m willing to bet Hyundai’s ownership wishes they could do this in South Korea as well.  Notice the wording "most Japanese cars" which probably means all Japanese cars accept all those that Kim Jong-il and the rest of his mafia regime owns.

HT: Japan Probe

A Korean name changing law is allowing Koreans to illegally enter Japan:

A 44-year-old South Korean woman who was deported last spring for illegally entering the country was found to have reentered Japan twice in a year by changing her name, although the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law does not permit deportees to reenter Japan for five years, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.

The woman was issued a passport under the new name and came to Japan in August 2006, three months after she was deported, and again in January.

Because of a South Korean Supreme Court decision in November 2005 facilitating name changes, similar illegal entries into Japan by South Koreans reportedly have been increasing. Immigration authorities have strengthened their measures to halt illegal entries in the country through such ruses.

The Osaka Regional Immigration Bureau and the Osaka prefectural police said the woman, Choe Mi Gyon, was arrested in April last year, when she was working as a hostess in a bar in Kita Ward, Osaka, on suspicion of violating the immigration law as she had no passport. She was subsequently deported.

I bring this up because if Korea gets a visa waiver from the United States could Koreans deported from the US do the same thing to reenter the US?  It seems like an issue that could impact any visa waiver agreement between the US and Korea.  It seems it would be wise for the South Korean government to amend this law before it does become a visa waiver issue. 

From Yonhap:

The United States has strongly indicated that it will allow South Korea to get back the wartime command of its troops, currently held by the U.S., around 2010, a couple of years earlier than the deadline agreed on between the sides, a Defense Ministry official said Monday.

Seoul and Washington agreed during annual defense talks in Washington last October that the transition of wartime control of South Korean troops will take place sometime between Oct. 15, 2009 and March 15, 2012.

The timing was a compromise between South Korea and the U.S., as the former wanted a delayed transfer, citing a possible power vacuum, while the latter pushed ahead with an earlier transition as part of its flexible troop deployment in which U.S. troops in the Korean Peninsula are supposed to be mobilized easier than before for other conflict regions.

"The U.S. side informed us during the Security Policy Initiative meeting in Seoul (this month) that three years is enough from now on," the official said, asking not to be named.

This is an issue that General Bell has been pushing hard on, that the Korean government has been hoping the US government would forget about with the departure of Secretary Rumsfeld. It seems the new Secretary of Defense has now finally started to put some emphasis on USFK related issues with this announcement.  I had hoped that October 16, 2009 would be chosen for the handover but January 1, 2010 is just as good. 

It will be interesting to see the Korean government’s reaction on this considering President Roh said the ROK Army could take operational control now if needed. As I have speculated before, President Roh is trying to drag out the handover, so that when it is implemented, he will have left office and any economic and political repercussions from the handover he will have successfully avoided.

The funniest fight I ever saw in the ville has to be this alteracation that happened a few years back. Like the beginning to any good military story, “there I was” buying a kebab from the Turkish kebab stand at the Dongducheon ville. I’m pretty sure it was December, but it was winter and it was snowing very heavily that night. A number of Philippina juicy girls were out in front of their clubs checking out the falling snow. For many of them it was probably the first snow that they had ever seen. Anyway I’m standing there waiting for my kebab and suddenly from the corner of my eye I see this snowball fly through the air and smash a juicy girl in the back of the head standing in front of the New World Club. Absolutely a perfect shot.

Apparently some GI standing behind these other juicy girls who I think were standing in front of the Comet Club, threw the snowball that hit the juicy girl and fled, but the New World Club juicy girls thought the Comet Club juicy girls had thrown the snowball. Next thing you know there was a bunch of yelling in Tagalog and then the snowballs started flying. Before you know it there was a Braveheart charge from the New World juicies towards the snowball wielding Comet juicies.

Let me tell there are few funnier sights in the world than watching half naked juicy girls throwing snowballs and fighting in their super high heel shoes and slipping and falling all over the place on the ice. The ajummas eventually came out of their clubs and started yelling at the girls to go back into their clubs. The girls started going back into their clubs, but by this time a crowd had started to build to watch the fight. Some GIs started booing and then someone started throwing snowballs at the ajummas. The ajummas were pissed and started cursing and ran back into their clubs. That was by far the funniest fight I have ever seen.

The whole time I’m sure the guy that threw that first snowball was laughing his ass off even more than we were.

In another sign of rising militarism in Japan, the Japanese military has chosen a character to represent the SDF, Prince Pickles:

Now compare the SDF mascot to the Korean Army mascot Hogugy:

I think it is safe to say Hogugy could whoop Prince Pickles ass.  Rest easy Korea, Dokdo is still safe for now. 

Great article by Ralph Peters about the Congressional vote to undermine the US soldiers in Iraq.  The Dems have over reached so bad that even the Washington Post has condemned them. 

As the Japanese originally speculated, Japanese leftist extremists were behind the last week’s Camp Zama explosion:

The same group that claimed responsibility for a 2002 blast near Camp Zama said it also was responsible for the explosions reported near the base last week, local Japanese police said.

A group calling itself the “Revolutionary Army” sent letters to several Japanese media outlets in Tokyo on Saturday claiming responsibility for an incident in which a projectile was found on the base, Zama city police official said. The police believe the group is connected to Kakuryokyo, a leftist extremist group, he said.

In the letter, the group said it is opposed to relocating the Army’s new headquarters to Camp Zama, which was agreed upon last year by the United States and Japan as part of an overall plan to realign U.S. military forces in Japan, the official said. He said the group also wants to stop Vice President Dick Cheney’s visit to Japan this week.

Though Japanese authorities claimed from the beginning of this story that Japanese leftists were probably behind the explosion, it didn’t stop the US media from making claims of a possible Al Qaida attack.  The US media doing yet more scare mongering.

What is kind of interesting about this leftist attack was that Chirol at Coming Anarchy just had a post that discussed leftist terrorism.  Leftist extremism is on the rise and Japan has a long history of leftist extremism, namely the Japanese Red Army that was responsible for a variety of terror attacks in the 1970’s and 1980’s. 

This posting about memorable bar brawls over at Blackfive got me thinking about memorable brawls I have witnessed during my time in Korea.  I have seen plenty of stupid drunken beer brawls in the ville, but they usually ended pretty quick and were relatively unmemorable.  Just a bunch of drunks pushing and shoving acting tough, the whole while someone would break them up.  There was a couple of fights though that were quite memorable that I will never forget.  The first one was at the Rendezvous Club over in Dongducheon.

Back in the day the Rendezvous Club was a nice place to go to meet local Korean girls because there were no juicy girls there at the time.  The club was really the only place in the ville where locals and GIs mixed.  The locals would arrive in the club right after curfew hit because back then the vast majority of GIs in the ville were gone and back on Camp Casey because of the curfew.  The few GIs that remained in the ville past curfew had what was called a Warrior Pass.  Back then every company had a limited number of Warrior Passes that the First Sergeant and Commander could give to people to stay out after curfew.  The soldiers that had Warrior Passes were usually older, more mature, and higher ranking and not from the younger 18-21 year old age group that statistics show cause the majority of alcohol related incidents.  Plus the younger soldiers that received a Warrior Pass for the weekend usually used it to hang out with juicy girls all night and not to hang out at the Rendevous Club with local Koreans.  The locals all knew this and thus had no problems mixing with the soldiers that did go to the Rendezvous Club after curfew.

The Rendezvous Club was really a nice place back then and was operated by a guy named Mr. Han.  Mr. Han was not your average GI ville bar owner.  Mr. Han if I had to guess was about 35-40 years old back then and over 6 feet tall, well built, with really long hair.  He had a few huge Koreans working security for him at the club and he always made sure his club had the most beautiful female bartenders in town.  The local police would occasionally stop by and pay their respects to Mr. Han as well.  In short he was the perfect stereotype of a Korean gangster.

Mr. Han from what I heard was one of the head Korean mob bosses in TDC and operated a number of the juicy girl clubs in the ville.  Anyway there I was, drinking a few beers with Mr. Han with a few of my buddies at the bar counter.  We were all friendly with Mr. Han since we frequented his club so often.  He spoke good English and despite being a mob figure was actually a really nice guy to us GIs.  Anyway a fight broke out towards the front of the bar where the dance floor was at.  No soldiers were involved, it was strictly a Korean on Korean fight.  There must of been about 15-20 people going at it and then some guy grabbed a beer glass and threw it at this other guy, but missed and the glass shattered against the wall near some Korean females.

That was when Mr. Han sprang into action.  He suddenly jumped over the bar and landed a round house kick on the guy that threw the glass.  That kick could have been straight from a Korean gangster flick.  From there he preceded to kick the living crap out of him and then turned his attention to another guy and began using more kung fu moves on him.  Mr. Han and the club security got the fight under control and literally kicked the people out.  The first guy Mr. Han had kicked the crap out of could not leave the club under his own power.  The club security just grabbed him and threw him out in the street in front of the club.  After the fight we figured it was probably a good time to finish our beers and get out there.

We walked outside and the guy that got the crap beaten out of him was still laying in the street in front of the club.  A soldier I didn’t know was walking down the street and saw the guy bleeding and came over to assist him.  He said he was medic.  He started checking the guy out and one the club’s security guards that was standing at the entrance of the club came over and told the medic to leave him alone.  So that is what we did, we left him alone and walked way.  There is times where you have to let Koreans handle business their own way and this was definitely one of those times.  The guy was left to bleed in the street as a reminder to everyone else to not start any fights in the Rendezvous Club.

I haven’t been stationed at Camp Casey since then and I haven’t been to the Casey ville for years so I have no idea if the Rendezvous club is even open any more or if Mr. Han still operates the place.  If so he is a nice guy to us GIs, but whatever you do don’t piss him off.  If anyone has any interesting fights they remember in Korea feel free to comment on them.  By the way here is a link to the funniest fight I have ever seen in Korea.

UPDATE: Thanks to the comments section it has been clarified that this ROK Army soldier will do no jail time.  He will be on probation for four years and as long as he doesn’t sexually assault anyone during that time he will do no jail time.  Incredible, especially when you consider all the righteous outrage when ever a USFK soldier sexually assaults a Korean national.  I don’t know of one USFK soldier getting a suspended sentence for sexually assaulting a Korean. 

What is even more telling is when you compare this case to the case where a US soldier was sentenced by a US military court to 30 years in prison for sexually assaulting a Korean KATUSA soldier at Camp Jackson while this Korean ROK Army soldier receives no jail time for sexually assaulting an American female.  I’m not saying the ROK Army soldier should get 30 years in jail because every case is different, but no jail time at all?  Come on, if this sentence was given to an American GI for sexually assaulting a Korean I can only image in the righteous outrage over it, but since it was an American that was sexually assaulted, nobody cares. 

_______________________________________

The ROK Army soldier who sexually assaulted a US female soldier has been sentenced by a ROK Army court:

A South Korean 6th Infantry Division soldier was sentenced Wednesday to 2 ½ years in prison for sexually assaulting a female U.S. soldier during a joint training exercise.

However, the sentence was suspended for four years, according to a South Korean 6th ID spokesman.

The South Korean military refused to allow Stars and Stripes to cover the court-martial.

The male soldier, whose name was not released, was arrested on the last day of the U.S. Army 2nd Infantry Division’s Warfighter exercise.

It is great the guy was punished but what is the four year suspension for?  It just doesn’t seem right that this guy is allowed to walk around for four years before doing his jail time.

Additionally, I found it interesting how the Korean media has not touched this story.  None of the English language Korean media sites had anything on this story plus I checked over at the Korean language Naver and Yonhap and didn’t see anything there either.  If someone else sees something in the Korean media on this story let me know.  Providing little to no coverage of the rapes and sexual assaults of USFK soldiers and foreigners in Korea is nothing new.  What will be most interesting is to compare the news coverage this story is getting to the news coverage of when the 2nd Infantry Division soldier is sentenced for last months alleged sexual assault of an elderly Korean woman.

You can do an experiment yourself and ask a Korean if USFK soldiers have been raped by a Korean before.  They more than likely will tell you no.  Then ask them if USFK soldiers have raped Koreans and they will obviously tell you yes.  This is all because of the slanted news coverage.  If you really want to have fun with them ask them when the last time a murder involving a Korean and a USFK service member happened.  They will probably tell you one of the infamous juicy girl murders when in fact the last murder between an USFK service member and a Korean was when a Korean man murdered an American major in Itaewon.  I haven’t met a Korean yet who heard of that crime when I asked them, just like very few will ever hear of the crime the ROK Army soldier committed as well.