The Korean government is taking a harsher stance against anyone who assaults taxi cab drivers:

Physically assault a South Korea taxi or bus driver and you’ll face a minimum three-year jail term or a $20,000 fine, officials said Wednesday.

A Ministry of Construction and Transportation official confirmed Wednesday that a revised bill addressing the assault of public transportation drivers recently passed South Korea’s National Assembly and is to go into effect in February.

Several U.S. military community personnel found themselves entangled in the South Korean legal system after tangling with taxi drivers in the last year.

“The law was designed to boost people’s safety,” an unnamed ministry official told The Korea Times.

“We will sternly punish those using violence against public transportation drivers that threatens the safety of drivers, passengers and pedestrians.”

Killing a driver will bring a sentence of five years to life in prison, the official said.

I am all for punishing idiots who assault taxi cab drivers, but I do have to wonder if this law is solely meant for USFK personnel or will it be enforced on the general Korean population as well because I have personally seen many times cab drivers getting into confrontations with other Koreans.  With the selective nature of enforcing laws in Korea, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is solely a law focused on punishing USFK personnel.  I would also love to see increased penalties as well for taxi cab drivers who break the law by overcharging and even sometimes assaulting customers who will not pay them the overcharged price. 

I have always found it amazing how ignorant many Koreans are about their own history and the results of this test seem to only confirm this:

More than half the candidates who sat the first Korean history proficiency test by the National Institute of Korean History on Nov. 25 failed. The NIKH said Wednesday that 48.37 percent of 15,395 applicants passed the test. By level, 45.71 percent of applicants passed the high-school history education equivalent level, 31.73 percent passed the middle school test, and 85.04 percent and 72.94 percent the two elementary-grade papers. In other words, while most candidates at elementary level passed, candidates at middle school level proved particularly poor.

The Japanese colonial period is often used to condemn the Japanese, however according to this test many of the Korean students don’t even accurately understand the Japanese colonial period:

Candidates were most embarrassed by questions about Japanese colonial rule. Experts say this is because some school history classes sometimes don’t cover the era, which is in the latter part of the standard textbooks, due to time restraints. Many applicants also gave wrong answers to questions about the ancient Koguryo and Barhae kingdoms, which China has been trying to co-opt as part of its history by way of the so-called Northeast Project. This suggests Korea has tackled attempts at historical distortion by Japan and China with more rhetoric than substance.

I guess I should give these students a break because maybe they didn’t understand which answers to give on this test because you have real history and than you have the revised history of the Korean government that revises unpleasant aspects of Korean history such as Korean war criminals during World War II.  Does the student answer the actual number or the revised number only accepted by the Korean government?  Actually I would be impressed if the students even knew Korea had war criminals during World War II to begin with.  Just think if they asked a question about who was responsible for the Gwangju Uprising how many different answer they would get.  The politicization of Korean history by politicians for their own short term political advantage is what is responsible for so many competing theories of Korean history.  Not to mention the North Korean fifth column interested in rewriting history in order to give a more sympathetic and positive view of North Korea while at the same time exploiting issues in order to drive a wedge between the US and the general Korean public which they have had much success at.  Unfortunately I don’t see this trend changing any time soon.

The Chosun has an interesting interview with a North Korean defector who has been constantly harrassed for the past 10 years by both the Korean government and the North Korean fifth column allowed to operate freely in South Korea:

Next month, Hwang marks 10 years since he risked his life coming to the South and left his family behind. He is not a man whose resolution is easily shaken by threats from North Korea or its fifth column. But what must be unbearable is the persecution he has been subjected to by the South Korean government, in the very country he came to in search of freedom. For most of the 10 years he has lived in the South, he has lived the life of a virtual person non grata, unable to meet people he wanted to see and say what he wanted to say. He published a newspaper for North Korean refugees that criticized the government’s North Korea policy, only to be stopped by the National Intelligence Service. How bitterly disappointed he must have been to find that somehow Constitutional rights did not apply to him.

When he visited the U.S. in 2003, agency minders shadowed his every step to check whom he met and what they talked about. There were even scuffles when staffers of an American congressman attempted to push them out of an office where the legislator was meeting with Hwang.

UPDATE:  The moonbats are saying that this picture is a right wing hoax and that the picture is not from the chow hall in Baghdad but actually England because of the British flag in the background.  Well the moonbats are wrong again.  I don’t expect them to admit though.  I’m sure they come up with some Bush/Cheny/CIA conspiracy theory behind it next.  Here is a picture of the blogger who broke the story taking a picture of him in the chow hall sitting in the same chair as Kerry and holding a current Stars and Stripes newspaper proving that this is the chow hall in Baghdad. 

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This picture via LGF, from a US soldier in Iraq is just priceless:

Here is the note that the soldier wrote with the picture:

This is a true story…..Check out this photo from our mess hall at the US Embassy yesterday morning. Sen. Kerry found himself all alone while he was over here. He cancelled his press conference because no one came, he worked out alone in the gym w/o any soldiers even going up to say hi or ask for an autograph (I was one of those who was in the gym at the same time), and he found himself eating breakfast with only a couple of folks who are obviously not troops.

What is amazing is Bill O’Reilly came to visit with us and the troops at the CSH the same day and the line for autographs extended through the palace and people waited for two hours to shake his hand. You decide who is more respected and loved by us servicemen and women!

I have to wonder what Senator Kerry was thinking by going to Iraq in the first place?  I’m guessing he was hoping he would get some good photo ops with the troops in order to show that he is not anti-military.  Well it appears he isn’t going to be getting that photo op he is so desperately seeking any time soon.

Some how I just don’t see this new law having any effect on the new Hooters franchise.

Brendon Carr over at the Marmot’s Hole has a very insightful posting about lawyers in Korea.  Highly recommend you go through and read the comments as well that shines a lot of light on what can seem like a very murky aspect of Korean society.

While the Pentagon has remained silent about the announcement from the Korean government that they plan on delaying the USFK relocation until 2013, the Korean government has gone ahead and cut funding from next year’s budget for the project:

The government’s request for 158 trillion won in general accounts was reduced by 1.46 trillion won, while 110 billion won was added to its original request for 6.7 trillion won in special accounts.

Some of the significant cuts came from requested funds for inter-Korean cooperation and social employment, which were each cut by 150 billion won from original requests.

The Assembly also cut by 198 billion won the fund allocated for the relocation of U.S. troops stationed here.

So basically since the Pentagon hasn’t come out and vigorously defended the agreed upon the timeline the Korean government has been able to go ahead and cut funding which means that if the USFK relocation is to happen on time by 2009 the US government will have to fund the move itself. 

USFK said last week the move was going to happen on time, but I don’t see how that can happen when the farmers haven’t even been given a deadline to move off the annexed land and now there is no money available to fund the move.  I’m beginning to wonder if the Pentagon is getting ready to approve some money for a move, not to Camp Humphreys, but to CONUS.

HT: Nomad

The recent dispute between the Korean and US governments has heated up recently as after beef fragments were found in the first shipments of US beef to Korea in three years.  The Koreans say that bone chips in US beef is a health concern because of the case of mad cow disease in one US dairy cow a few years ago.  The US government is claiming that the mad cow disease fears are just being used as a ploy to stop US beef from entering Korea and protecting the domestic Korean beef market from cheaper US beef.  One US governmental official has even gone as far to accuse the Korean government of planting the bone chips:

Park Hong-soo, minister of agriculture and forestry, has not made any particular comment on the beef import war between Seoul and Washington, in contrast to aggressive words by U.S. policymakers including Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns and Deputy Under Secretary Chuck Lambert.

Foreign media quoted Chuck Lambert, as saying, “The U.S. beef industry is suspicious about where the fragments came from. Some people have suggested DNA sampling or other means of trying to determine the origin of those bone chips.”

A U.S. agricultural news service reported that U.S. beef officials, in off-the-record comments, have intimated South Korea may have “planted” the bone fragments as an excuse to keep American beef out of the Korean market. An Australian broadcaster said Chuck Lambert is not ignoring the possibility that the shipments may have been tampered with.

Conveniently after the bone chips were found and disputed by the US government than the Koreans found dioxin poisoning in the beef.  Dioxin poisoning isn’t as ominous as the Korean government would lead you to believe.  The small trace amounts of dioxin come from the environment from cattle breathing in for example burned plastic or smoke from power plants and factories.  If you have ever smelled burned plastic guess what, you have dioxin in you.  The trace amounts are not enough to harm anyone, but the Korean government is going to use whatever they can to keep the domestic beef market closed to the US cattle industry. 

Now on the heels of this controversy the Korean government will not begin inspecting agricultural products bound for USFK commissaries in Korea:

South Korean officials and U.S. military personnel will carry out joint quarantine inspections of agricultural products brought into the country for the United States Forces Korea (USFK) starting in April, the government said Thursday.

The U.S. military is currently responsible for quarantine inspections of food imports for consumption by American soldiers stationed here.

The move, agreed upon at a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) meeting last week, will involve quarantine checks at the U.S. Army’s main garrison in Yongsan in Seoul as well as logistics support bases in the port of Busan and Gimpo near the capital, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry said.

"Inspecting agricultural products, even those set aside for U.S. soldiers, is important to prevent harmful pests from coming into the country and posing problems for the local ecosystem," said a ministry official.

I just have to wonder if this is at all related to the FTA and US beef rejections issues.  For decades the Korean government had no concerns about USFK agricultural products being inspected by USFK, but now all the sudden they want to inspect the products.  You can buy US beef in USFK commissaries that have bones in them.  These beef products are some of the most popular blackmarket items in the commissary.  Will these quarantine inspectors stop these beef shipments from being sold in the commissaries?  Will they find more dioxin poisoning?  I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.

This is all beginning to remind me of the camp pollution issue where the closed out USFK camps are so polluted that the Korean government cannot take them back because of public health concerns and demand that USFK pay to clean up the camps.  Of course this whole issue is a fraud just like the US beef issue because the closed out US camps in their respective cities are a virtual oasis of green in the middle of densely populated and overly polluted urban cities.  Enough of an oasis in fact that many of these camp are being looked at to be turned into public parks, yet they are so polluted it is a public health issue despite decades of US soldiers including myself living on these camps and never having adverse health effects.

Now we are to believe that the food especially the beef that US soldiers eat in Korea is infected with mad cow disease and dioxin poisoning and just like the closed out camps, is a public health issue thus the general Korean public needs to be protected from it.  If I am to believe the Korean government, I must currently be infected with mad cow disease and dioxin poisoning from US beef plus whatever else they find from these agricultural inspections, in addition to being exposed to radiation poisoning from living for years on USFK camps in Korea and not believe that both of these issues are nothing more than Korean demagoguery being used for political and economic advantage against the United States.

According to the South Korean government the US nuclear negotiators have offered the North Koreans a deal:

The United States offered to remove North Korea from Washington’s list of states sponsoring terrorism if the communist regime dismantles its atomic weapons program South Korea’s main nuclear envoy said Tuesday. 

The proposal was just one of the incentives the U.S. spelled out last week at six-nation nuclear disarmament talks with the North, along with offers of security guarantees, a peace treaty and normalization of relations, Chun Yung-woo said.

"The point of the proposal is that everything is possible if North Korea denuclearizes and nothing is possible if it refuses," Chun told news cable channel YTN.

It appears that the South Korean government is making a big deal out of this as some kind of sign of "progress" on the North Korean nuclear issue.  I have said it once and I will say it again, North Korea has no intention of giving up it’s nukes and the US negotiators probably understand that, thus they make proposals for grand deals that they know will never happen just to show that the US government is doing everything possible to denuclearize North Korea. 

While these negotiations go on and on the South Korean government can continue to claim that "progress" is being made while the status quo continues on.  Keeping the status quo is what is important to both Koreas and the Chinese.  The Chinese don’t want any instability in North Korea that could lead to a collapse and refugee crisis, the South Koreans do not want a expensive reunification that would destroy their economy, and the North Koreans just want to continue to have time to further develop their nuclear program and missile systems in order to secure their own regime’s security against a US attack to over throw a regime.  So expect these talks to continue to drag off and on just like they have these past few years and the South Korean government claiming "progress".

Google Earth just keeps getting better and better.  I can almost see the black marketers going out the gate in this image.  So who can name this airfield: