Where is Andrew Sullivan now?  I would love to hear him defend his "civilians" again after reading this.

When I read something like this, I have to wonder if this guy used to be a hagwon owner.

An anti-US activists being investigated for spying?  Say it ain’t so:

The Seoul police have announced that it is investigating a photographer on suspicion of military espionage.

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency announced on January 24 that it has been conducting a investigation on Mr. Lee (40), a photographer, for several months after obtaining a wiretap warrant. The police said it launched the investigation after receiving a tip that Lee had photographed weapons at U.S. military bases in Korea and had given the photos to the media.

Lee is under suspicion of leaking military intelligence, the police said, such as revealing the U.S. Forces Korea’s chemical weapons deployment status, to the public through news articles and contributions to the media. Lee took the photos while a reporter for a progressive internet media site.

However, a representative of the progressive internet media site for which Lee worked said, "We did run an article with a picture of a nuclear submarine docked at Jinhae Port. But the picture was taken by some other environmental group. At the time, Mr. Lee was not able to take a picture of the nuclear sub." The representative also said that Mr. Lee wrote the special report under question on the chemical weapons status of the U.S. Forces in Korea being revealed to the public "based on the information the U.S. military disclosed in accordance with their Freedom of Information Act."

First of all his claims of the US having a chemical weapons stockpile on the peninsula I have found nothing to corroborate this story.  However, the South Korean government did build a chemical weapons stockpile that I’m willing to bet these anti-US groups are trying to blame USFK for.  South Korea signed a treaty in 1997 banning chemical weapons and has been in the process of slowly destroying their chemical weapons stockpile.  One more spy down and a whole lot more to go. 

All you bloggers out there, you might want to read this before promoting or endorsing any South Korean political candidates.  How come I suspect this will be selectively enforced?

The Chosun has the latest on the Ansan murder investigation:

Parts of a dismembered human body were found in a toilet in Ansan subway station on Line 4 around 4:30pm Wednesday. The partial remains, which consist of a woman’s trunk and two arms, were found packed in a suitcase by a subway worker identified as Chae.

Police revealed CCTV footage that shows a man in his 30s throwing the suitcase into the toilet for the disabled. Chae first saw the man around 3:30 p.m. Wednesday as he was carrying the suitcase which was dripping blood. Chae and another worker Yun blocked the man from boarding the train.

No where in the article does it say the police is looking for a foreign suspect but for some reason the Chosun felt like slipping this in at the end of the article:

The area near the subway station, Wonkok-dong, Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, has a large community of illegal foreign workers from China, Russia and Southeast Asia.

Is the Chosun implying a foreigner committed the crime?  If not why slip this passage in at the end of the article?  Anyway no matter who it is, this is one disturbed individual and hopefully the police capture him quickly.

The soldier being held for the alleged rape of a 67 year old South Korean woman definitely doesn’t seem to be the brightest of people:

In a handwritten letter to the woman, which defense attorney Jin Hyo-guen provided to Stars and Stripes, the soldier apologized to the woman but said he didn’t remember anything because he was heavily intoxicated.

On Friday, Jin said the soldier is adjusting well in the Seoul Corrections confinement facility.

Jin said he’s tried repeatedly to meet with the woman and her family but they refuse to see him or to talk about his client.

“I understand that,” he said. “It seems that it takes time for them to get stabilized.”

You can read more about this case here.

This guy has made an apology which in the Korean court system is a good thing, but now he just needs to shut up because it is beginning to appear he is harassing the victim.  He needs to start getting money for a big restitution payment because even if he didn’t do the rape, just the fact he has been arrested means he will be found guilty of something because GIs are never aquitted in Korean courts.  By paying restitution he will help reduce his jail time. 

I think it is great that more and more sailors are signing up to transfer over to the Army, but I have to wonder about this guy:

Guevara, who left the Navy in 2006 after eight years, said he received a $2,000 bonus to join the Army, but his major reason for switching services is the Navy made it much harder for him to advance from E-4 to E-5.

“I love my job, I love to help people,” he said. “I became a corpsman because I wanted to help injured Marines, or anybody, and the Army offered me the same job and I jumped right on it.”

I admittedly don’t know a whole lot about the Navy, but I have to wonder about someone who can’t make the E-5 rank in 8 years.  In the Army soldiers usually make the E-5 rank in 3-4 years of service sometimes even quicker.  Does anyone know if it is that hard to make E-5 in the Navy?

The United States has decided to cut funding to the United Nations Developmental Aid program due to the misuse of funds going directly to North Korea:

The United States said Thursday it would withhold all contributions to the United Nations Development Program. It alleges that the UNDP mismanaged its North Korea operations, leading to a large influx of cash into the authoritarian regime.

Washington is also considering a proposal that the U.N. stop all programs in the North except those for humanitarian assistance, the Yonhap New Agency quoted Alejandro Wolff, acting U.S. envoy to the United Nations, as saying.

The Japanese are actually taking an even stronger stand by recommending ending all non-humanitarian UN aid programs in North Korea:

Yonhap reported that Japan went further, its envoy suggesting that the U.N. stop all programs in North Korea except for direct humanitarian aid.

The South Korean news agency quoted Wolff as saying the Japanese argument “is quite compelling” and the U.S. will consider the proposal.

A whole lot of background information on this scandal can be found here, but basically a lot of the UNDP aid going to North Korea was unaccounted for hard cash.  New UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has authorized an investigation into this.  What is going to be most interesting about this is how vigorously Ban will investigate this.  This  is really his first test to see how serious he is about cracking down on UN corruption.  The Wall Street Journal has been so bold to even declare this Ban’s first UN cover up.  It is actually a pretty good article that is worth reading, but I agree with One Free Korea that we need to give Ban some more time before we declare him just another corrupt UN bureaucrat interested in only keeping things business as usual, but the clock is ticking.

The South Korean Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung is now clearly with out a doubt a useful idiot.  His first signs of ascending to useful idiot status was when he claimed North Korea built a nuclear program because they are poor.  One Free Korea had the best take on this claim by Lee:

Now Lee is coming out and saying that North Korea is not using the money given to North Korea through inter-Korean projects for their nuclear program:

South Korea’s unification minister on Friday denied that North Korea has diverted cash it earned through inter-Korean economic cooperation for the development of its nuclear weapons.

Lee Jae-joung, Seoul’s point man on the communist neighbor, also stressed that North Korea earns such money "in a transparent and legal manner," saying the government will expand and deepen inter-Korean economic cooperation in the future.

First of all I would love to see Lee pull out an audit report of all the money given to North Korea by the ROK to prove his claims.  I won’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen.  Secondly, even if the money isn’t used directly in the nuclear program, it will instead be used to buy the Dear Leader and the regime elite mansions, booze, luxury cars, etc. which are in violation of the UN resolution prohibiting this. Additionally the money given by the South Korean government to ensure the lifestyle of the regime elite means that money brought into North Korea from other sources can be used for the nuclear program instead.   To Lee Jae-joung’s credit, he still has a long way to go to reach the useful idiot status of former Unification Minister Chung Dong-young.

Nomad is right, this is different:

A South Korean soldier faces trial in a military court, accused of sexually assaulting a female U.S. soldier at Camp Casey on Dec. 19, 2nd Infantry Division and Ministry of National Defense officials confirmed this week.

The soldier’s first hearing in the South Korean military court is scheduled for Feb. 2 in Dongducheon but will be closed to the public, a defense ministry spokesman said.

The 6th Infantry Division soldier has been jailed since his arrest, the spokesman said.

I can guarantee you that if the soldier is found guilty the ROK Army will punish him much more severely than the light sentences handed out to South Korean civilians who have raped US soldiers in the past.  In my unit a few years back we had a senior KATUSA go to ROK Army jail for 2 months just for hazing a soldier.  Worst of all for him was that his time in jail did not count against his two year ROK Army commitment.  His hazing crime?  He would make new KATUSAs sing patriotic Korean songs in front of the unit. Finally one new KATUSA complained and the next thing we knew the senior KATUSA was in jail.  I can only imagine how long a sexual assault conviction would land a soldier in ROK Army jail, especially when you consider the ROK Army is really going to want to save face with their USFK allies.

It will be interesting to see how this turns out when you consider in 2003 a similar incident happened between a USFK a soldier sexually assaulting a KATUSA trainee at Camp Jackson:

A U.S. military court on Thursday sentenced an American soldier to 30 years in jail for sodomizing a South Korean soldier, the U.S. military said. Two other American soldiers suspected of involvement in the assault are under investigation.

Sgt. Leng Sok was court-martialed at Camp Casey in Dongducheon, north of Seoul, on charges of aggravated assault, indecent acts, sodomy, submission of a false official statement and conspiracy.

Sok “has been found guilty in all five charges,” said Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, a spokesman for the U.S. Eighth Army.

The victim’s family actually handed over jurisdiction of the case from Korean authorities, despite protests from anti-US groups, to the US military because of the light sentences given for sexual assaults in Korean courts.  The convicted sergeant in this case received 30 years in jail.  That’s sending a message and I expect the ROK Army will probably want to send a message as well.

Anyway as OFK points out the irony of this rape is quite evident when you consider all the righteous outrage from sectors of Korea over the US soldier who is alleged to have a raped a Korean woman a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t seen anything about this case in the Korean media yet compared to the instant headlines the US soldier made after his arrest two weeks ago. This is just the continuation of a trend of when crimes are committed against US soldiers little if any articles in the Korean media are written about it compared to instant headlines every time a US soldier commits any crime no matter how small against a Korean civilian.  The soldier doesn’t even have to commit a crime, it just has to appear he did to make headlines.  This is how the Myth of GI Crimes is cultivated in Korea.