From the Stars & Stripes:

….. USFK will mandate that incoming family members attend orientation training as they arrive on the peninsula, something other commands have done successfully on a smaller scale at various Pacific bases. 

(…) The revised policy does two things, said Air Force Col. Mark C. Vlahos, assistant chief of staff, J-1. It directs commanders to create an orientation for family members, and it makes family attendance mandatory.

“That’s a key word right there — mandatory,” Vlahos said. “When we give command sponsorship out to a spouse, they have certain responsibilities.”

Getting the command sponsored families to attend will be the easy part, getting all the non-command sponsored family members to attend is a whole other matter. 

Korea is looking to add their first natural heritage site recognized by the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization:

On Jeju Island, there are many nominees up for world heritage recognition, like the nature reservations, caves, and tuff cones in Mt. Halla. Because of the fantastic geographical features created by breathtaking scenery and volcanic activity, the preservation value of its environment is high. Last October, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and National Resources (IUCN), the consultative body of the World Heritage Committee, visited Jeju and finished its research. Shim Mi-hwa of the Korean UNESCO committee says, We cannot say for 100 percent certain that it will be chosen, but last year the committee rated the place very highly and theres a good possibility.

I think it would be great if one of the natural features on Cheju Island receives World Heritage recognition, but in my opinion I find Soraksan National Park as being a better candidate for World Heritage recognition. I find Sorak Mountain more scenic than lets say Halla Mountain on Cheju plus their much more cultural sites surrounding Sorak Mountain than Halla Mountain. The Korean authorities have had Sorak Mountain on the tentative UNESCO list since 1994 and added Cheju Island sites in 2002. So it appears the Korean government has given up on listing Sorak Mountain because it has been pending for so long and focusing on getting Cheju listed instead.

Since Koreans like to compare themselves to Japan let me pose this comparison. In my opinion the Sorak Mountain wilderness is just as spectacular the Shirakami-sanchi Mountains in Japan that are listed as being a World Heritage area. Both areas are of nearly equal size (Sorak -163km2, Shirakami-170km2), both have important cultural history, and both protect an environment unique to their countries. So how come Sorak Mountain hasn’t been listed after all these years? In my opinion is probably because natural beauty is not the first thing that comes to mind when people working at the UN who make these decisions think of Korea when compared to Japan. That is why I hope Korea at least gets one natural feature cited to begin to shift this stereotype because the Korean mountains really are beautiful and under appreciated.

Now the really bold move that I would love to see the Korean government try, is to list Ulleongdo and Dokdo islands as World Heritage protected areas. Ulleongdo island is one of the most beautiful areas in Korea and Dokdo islets are not really beautiful, but are unusual. Additionally, a World Heritage nomination for Ulleongdo and Dokdo would be a way to resolve the whole Dokdo nonsense between Korean and Japan. A claim I have often heard from Koreans is that the UN is biased against Korea because Japan gives so much money to the UN. That claim is very weak when the UN is one of the most notable anti-American organizations out there and the US gives more money than any other country to the UN. Plus the new UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is a South Korean which totally debunks the biased UN claim. So now is the time to try to list Dokdo.

This wouldn’t be the first time an area has been given UNESCO recognition that was controversial. Look no further than the ancient Korean kingdom of Koguryo enshrined by China in 2004. The claiming of the Koguryo kingdom by China has been hotly contested by Korean scholars and UNESCO enshrined it anyway in the name of China. What better way than UNESCO recognition to settle the Dokdo dispute? No more talk about old, inaccurate maps, no more ex-pats losing their jobs over disputing Dokdo ownership, no more people chopping off their fingers, no more bee man, no more disrespecting Japanese flags by Korean politicians, just generally no more wackiness over Dokdo. However, I don’t see it happening because Korean politicians don’t want to settle the Dokdo issue just like they don’t want to settle the Yongsan Garrison issue either, because it provides them an issue that is easy to manipulate to promote nationalism within the general Korean population to their own political advantage.

UPDATE: One Free Korea has great posting that provides further background information concerning the South Korean governmental policy of total indifference to the kidnapping and forced inprisonment of their own citizens in North Korea.  I have to agree with OFK that this man married very well that his wife after 31 years never forgot about him and did all she did to bring him home while her own government just wished he didn’t exist.

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When I read stories like this it just makes me wonder how many more South Korean citizens are stuck inside of North Korea just waiting for their chance to get out while their own government ignores them:

A crewmember of the squid trawler Cheonwangho abducted by North Korea while fishing in the East Sea in August 1975 has escaped the communist state after 31 years. Choi Wook-il (67) is waiting for help from Seoul while hiding at an undisclosed location in China, but the government here is dragging its feet. Choi told the Chosun Ilbo he left Kimchaek City in North Hamgyeong Province on Dec. 22, arrived at Hyesan on Dec. 24 and crossed the Yalu River the next day. On the arduous trip, he sustained a cut to his forehead after a car accident on the way to Yanbian in China. He was finally reunited with his wife Yang Jeong-ja (66) there.

Read the whole thing because it is just amazing that this guy’s wife he hadn’t seen in 31 years did more to free him from going back to North Korea and it’s gulags than the South Korean government.  It is situations like this that I wish the US government could do more to help these people who were abducted.  It could be through funding more NGOs to help North Korean defectors escape North Korea through China possibly.  This would be a way of shaming the South Korean government into taking actions to protect their own citizens. 

If President Roh is so determined to have a 2nd Inter-Korean summit the first item on the agenda should be the demand that all South Korean citizens abducted by North Korea be returned to South Korea.  It would be a disgrace for the South Korean president to be toasting Kim Jong-il during Inter-Korean summit while his own citizens are trapped in slavery in North Korea.

UPDATE: LOL, Nomad was thinking the same exact thing I was after reading the Paris Hilton article.

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From the Chosun:

Paris Hilton, singer, actress and heiress to the Hilton Hotel fortune, signed a modelling contract with Fila Korea, Fila said Thursday. The one-year contract, said to be worth W1-1.5 billion, begins in March. Shooting for the print and broadcast ads will take place this month in Los Angeles. A Fila staffer explained that Hilton was chosen because her sophisticated style matches Fila’s image and said the company plans to introduce a line of Paris-related products.

Is it just me or is "sophisticated" not the first word that comes to mind when thinking of adjectives for Paris Hilton?

From the BBC, the violent murder rate in Columbia last year:

Police chief Gen Jorge Daniel Castro said that a total of 17,206 people suffered violent deaths in 2006, 517 fewer than in 2005.  Kidnappings also fell from 329 in 2005 to 200 in 2006, he said.

Colombia continues to have one of the highest murder rates in the world, but observers say security has been gradually improving in recent years.

Now compare that to Iraq’s violent murder rate, from the AP:

Iraq reported Tuesday that about 12,000 civilians were killed last year – the third full year since the U.S.-led invasion – with a dramatic rise in the last three months, when 5,000 died. Only about half as many Iraqi soldiers died in 2006 as American troops.

But the number of Iraqi security forces killed jumps to 1,543, nearly double the American death count of 823 for the year, when the deaths of police, who conduct paramilitary operations, are added to the number of slain Iraqi soldiers.

In all, the Iraqi ministries of Health, Defense and Interior reported a total of 13,896 Iraqi civilians, police and soldiers died last year, 162 more than the tally kept by The Associated Press.

So how come the media is not talking about troop surges in Columbia?  Actually better how come they aren’t talking about Columbia at all?  There are US soldiers there on the ground and Columbia is the third largest recipient of US foreign aid.  Plus I think a very strong argument could be mad that drugs coming from Columbia are more dangerous to the US than Al Qaida terrorists.  Think about it, Al Qaida may be able to kill more US citizens in one strike like they did during 9/11, but compare that to the loss of life from drug overdoses and the violent crime related to drug abuse.  I was able to find this statistic on total drug overdoses from 2000, which put the number at 17,000 that year,  while this statistic from the US Department of Justice, said that 14,860 homicides occurred in 2005 that were drug related.  Both numbers are higher than the total number of violent deaths in Iraq.  Drugs have effected the lives of more Americans than any terrorist ever has and yet it is back burner issue not considered news worthy. 

I’m not saying Iraq isn’t a news worthy event but very little perspective is given by the media on what is going on there compared to other similar situations around the world.  Take for example the media glee over the 3,000th US military death happened recently.  Yes the death is tragic, but just like the media glee over the civilian deaths in Iraq, no perspective is given that US military deaths are down from last year and that the total number is no where near the casualties the US military took during World War II, the Korean War, or Vietnam.  Yet the media will come out and tell you that the Iraq War has gone on longer than World War II.  Comparing the Iraq War to World War II is utterly ridiculous but this is the perspective the media is giving the American people.

The Iraq War is almost treated as a reality TV show by the media.  If you ever watch interviews from Survivor contestants after they finish competing on the show they always say that the footage from the island is always manipulated to create better storylines when it is edited for TV.  Talk to an Iraq veteran and most will tell you the same thing about the US media. 

If the US can turn Iraq into a Middle Eastern version of Columbia that should be considered a success, but will the media ever give the American people that kind of perspective?  I seriously doubt it.

HT: Milblogs

So not only can the taxi driver watch TV while driving, but now the passengers can as well:

Taxis equipped with video screens showing local news features and advertisements made their debut ithis week — after the screens were adjusted to allow passengers to turn them off.

Five hundred taxis, each with a liquid crystal display screen in the back of the headrest on the front passenger seat, have begun service in Seoul and the surrounding area, company officials said.

The screens automatically turn on when a customer gets into the back seat and initially could not be turned off, although the sound volume could be reduced or muted.

So with the passengers watching TV now as well who will tell the driver to watch out for that red light while he is busy watching his TV? 

The glorifying of anything or anyone remotely related to Korea continues.  Now it is professional golf where this 2nd generation Korean-American is supposed to over take Tiger Woods as the PGA’s greatest golfer.  My money is on Tiger.

Instead of bribes, this time Seoul is offering the North Korean "Marshall Plan" for a second inter-Korean summit:

Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung in a New Year’s message on Tuesday said South Korea must assume responsibility for solving the poverty of North Korea. In the message e-mailed to all ministry officials, the minister said the South has to assume responsibility “as a country exporting US$300 billion worth of products and services around the world and one of the 10 largest economies and since its people share the same blood as the North Koreans.” Lee said, "Security on the Korean Peninsula will always be in danger, and we cannot guarantee peace on the peninsula unless we can find a fundamental solution to the problem of poverty in the North.”

Here is the South Korean’s government’s answer to solving poverty in South Korea:

The government provides rice and fertilizer to the North on humanitarian grounds. But that is not enough to address the fundamental poverty there, and a different approach is needed. Lee appears to be thinking of comprehensive economic aid so Pyongyang can overcome poverty. Experts speculate that the government is thinking about a large-scale economic package similar to the Marshall Plan that revived Europe after World War II.

(…)

On Tuesday, the unification minister said, "We need to offer aid to North Korea from a more productive and longer perspective beyond what is currently being done. We need to restate our concept of aiding the North so that it can continue under the next administration.” Kim Tae-hyo, a political scientist at Sungkyunkwan University, says it sounds as if the government wants to help North Korea in infrastructure or logistics systems, beyond cooperative projects like package tours to Mt. Kumgang or the Kaesong Industrial Complex. “It seems to have concluded that it must do it in a way so the next government can’t change the policy on aid to the North it has set.”

The fundamental problem with poverty in North Korea is that the South Korean government won’t admit what the cause of the problem is, the regime! You can give them fertilizer and food, you can pave all the roads in North Korea, but poverty will remain because it is in the regime’s interest to keep the people poor and the South Korean government knows it. 

All this aid is just a bribe to get Kim Jong-il to agree to a second inter-Korean summit.  The first inter-Korean summit in 2000, was agreed to after than President Kim Dae-jung paid off Kim Jong-il with $500 million dollars.  President Roh Moo-hyun can’t just bribe Kim Jong-il like Kim Dae-jung did so he has instead disguised the bribes as increased economic assistance to a tune of over one billion dollars in aid to North Korea this year.  President Roh wants, what I call the "World’s Most Expensive Photo Op", which he believes will give him some kind of legacy once his presidency ends this year.  The leftists in South Korea on the other hand believe that a inter-Korean summit will give them momentum going into this year’s presidential elections against the conservative candidates when Kim Jong-il makes vague promises of inter-Korean unity and cooperation he has no intention of keeping. 

It worked in 2000, but hopefully South Korean voters have wised up to being burned one to many times by the Sunshine Policy of unconditional aid to North Korea that has led to only more belligerence from North Korea. 

So where is this aircraft carrier in a pond located at?

Hint: It is not in Korea, but it is in Asia.

The Stars and Stripes has a good round up of 2006 for the US military in Korea.  Needless to say USFK transformation issues dominated the headlines of 2006.