Nomad has the latest on a survey taken about the attitudes of Pyeongtaek residents on the USFK relocation to Camp Humphreys:

 Out of 1,000 people surveyed in the Pyeongtaek area by the Gyeonggi Research Institute, 41.9 percent said they had a positive perception of the planned Camp Humphreys expansion, 38.3 percent said they disliked or strongly disliked the addition of more troops, and 19.8 percent didn’t care one way or the other.  When asked how they feel about the proposed relocation of 2ID to their area, one in four people said they strongly disliked the move – mainly because unlike Yongsan, 2ID is made up of mostly single personnel.

First of all let me say I am always skeptical of polls taken in Korea, but the results on this one sound about right.  Basically you have over 60% of the population who either support or don’t care one way or the other about the relocation of USFK to Camp Humphreys.  I actually find these numbers encouraging because for the last year the USFK relocation to Camp Humphreys has been hit with constant anti-US demonstrations organized by North Korean agents and the issue has been demagoged continuously by Korean activists and politicians to advance their own agendas.  Heck the demagoging of the Camp Humphreys issue was even picked up by American leftist Cindy Sheehan.  Despite all of this the leftists and spies still couldn’t sway the majority of public opinion in Pyeongtaek against the relocation.  It is an encouraging sign that the South Korean love affair with leftism and anti-Americanism is slowly waning.

The new South Korean anti-Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung has called for what President Roh must think can be the only thing that would give him any symbolance of a legacy after his presidency ends next year:

 Senior government officials and politicians have been talking up the possibility of a second inter-Korean summit and are concentrating their energies on bringing it about. The new Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung said Monday an inter-Korean summit was a long-pending issue. South and North Korean leaders agreed to hold one in 2000, and President Roh Moo-hyun has stressed the need for a second summit several times, he said. Speaking after his inauguration, the minister told reporters arranging the summit was a task for the leaders of both Koreas. But he added it remains to be seen when and how another inter-Korean summit will take place.

Is it any wonder now why the South Korean government would rather better fund North Korea than the US-ROK Alliance by sending a billion dollars of aid to the North next year.  Is it also any wonder why South Korea isn’t going to ignore North Korean human rights violations along with the ruling party doing everything possible to cover up the South Korean spy scandal:

More than half of the Korean public suspect that the government has been less than aggressive in hunting down North Korean spies, while a majority feels that there is a problem with the way that people here perceive national security issues regarding the North.

On a commission from the Chosun Ilbo, Korea Gallup conducted a telephone opinion poll Monday in which 60.3 percent of respondents agreed with the statement “Even though there have been many spies in the country the government has intentionally not caught them,” while only 26.4 percent thought that, “The government has caught every spy it found.”

Looking back, you have to Kim Dae-jung credit; it only cost him $500 million in bribes to Kim Jong-il to secure a summit.  President Roh on the other hand has steadily increased the aid to North Korea throughout his presidency to where now South Korea is giving over one billion dollars in aid to the North a year.  What does President Roh have to show for it?  Let’s see, a weakened US-ROK Alliance, a sluggish economy, a North Korean spy scandal, North Korean missile and nuclear bomb tests, along with a host of other issues that has made President Roh and his ruling Uri Party extremely unpopular in South Korea with a 5.7% approval rating.
Instead of choosing to do things that would leave him some sort of positive legacy after he is gone, President Roh has instead chosen that getting a photograph of him toasting Kim Jong-il is more important.

From the Chosun:

Police made clear their zero tolerance in enforcing Korea’s new anti-prostitution laws in the first bust of an establishment offering manual sexual favors.

The Seoul Central District Public Prosecutors’ Office on Wednesday booked the owner of a sports massage parlor in Dogok-dong in Seoul’s Gangnam-gu district for violating the Special Law on Prostitution. The owner, identified as Chung, employed some 20 women offering manual relief, colloquially known as hand jobs, to customers at W60,000.

This is the first time police have charged someone for involvement in such acts since the Special Law on Prostitution came into force on Sept. 23.

What’s next for this great prostitution crackdown? The barber shops?

Slightly interesting article in the Korea Times about Bruce Cumings’ wife, a professor at the University of Michigan, being featured on ABC’s Prime Time Live. Here are some of her views regarding the Korean peninsula:

Woo expresses her passion for Korean studies in her praise of Korea’s potential.

“The country has excellent human capital with people so energetic and intelligent,’’ said the professor. “Korea had many geopolitical conditions starting in 1945 that had to be resolved before becoming a truly developed country.’’

“North Korea is undoubtedly an important country,’’ she said. “It can choose to be a country of peace and stability or go the other way and become a tremendous problem to East Asia and the world.’’

On the matter of the North’s nuclear detonation in October, Woo said, “It was unexpected because North Korea is always in a guessing game, but after the test took place, the anticipated thing was done.’’

I agree with her about South Korea, but she is kidding herself if she thinks North Korea as long as Kim Jong-il is alive, will ever be interested in “peace and stability”. Kim Jong-il brings in all the international aid money by being a threat. Plus he has to keep the US and South Korea as the boogeymen of the North Korean state in order to validate his juche ideology. So it isn’t in his interest to suddenly want peace. So that is why I say plan around them being a threat to the region for some time.

I can’t tell from the few above comments and I’m not saying she does, but I do wonder if she shares any of the views of her North Korea apologizer husband?

Let’s hope this is true if North Korea collapses:

Chinese People`s Liberation Army (PLA) Assistant to the Chief of General Staff Zhang Qinsheng said in October, “Even in case an emergency breaks out on the Korean Peninsula, there is little possibility of Chinese military intervention.”

Assistant Chief Zhang, who ranks third in power order within the General Staff Office and has the deep trust of President Hu Jintao, made the aforementioned comment during a closed seminar carried out from October 22 to 24 in Beijing.

Being asked whether the Chinese military will intervene in case an abrupt situation arises in North Korea, he answered, “The Chinese military prefers the matter be solved by international bodies, especially the UN. If you see Chinese military involved, it would be in the form of a party to a UN force.”

Like I said before, let’s hope this is true, but I have a hard time believing that the Chinese will stand by doing nothing if North Korea collapses, especially if it is before the 2008 Olympics.  The only way the I don’t see the Chinese getting involved in a collapsed North Korea is if the South Koreans do not quickly occupy the North.  The South Koreans need to occupy and seal the borders before either the Chinese or Russians can organize a force to move into North Korea.  As far as the US involvement in a collapsed North Korea I have long maintained the US should not deploy troops to North Korea for a variety of reasons.

If the Chinese do get involved they have no plans of creating a unified, democratic Korean peninsula, but to avoid foreign intervention into Korean affairs that would continue the division of the peninsula the South Koreans need to have a viable and quickly implementable plan to quickly occupy North Korea.  However, no such plan exists due to South Korean governmental incompetency that unless reversed, will ensure the peninsula will remain divided well into the future.

The indictments are in and it isn’t looking good for those indicted:

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office in interim results announced Friday said it indicted Chang Min-ho, a 44-year-old ethnic Korean businessman from the U.S. and alleged leader of the ring; Sohn Chong-mok, a former student activist; Lee Jung-hoon, a former member of the minor opposition Democratic Labor Party; Lee Jin-gang, an employee in Chang’s firm; and Choi Ki-young, the DLP vice secretary general.

The office said the spy ring dubbed Ilshimhoe consisted of four cells. One of them was tasked with promoting the North’s Songun or military-first ideology and led by Lee Jung-hoon, who was in charge of targeting the Seoul area in the DLP. Another led by Lee Jin-gang was in charge of targeting civic organizations. Prosecutors described the scandal as an attempt to establish a fifth column by infiltrating political parties and converting activists to North Korean ideologies.

Members allegedly got instructions form the North directly or by e-mail to organize anti-American activities, such as protests against the planned Korea-U.S. free trade agreement and the move of U.S. Forces Korea headquarters to Pyeongtaek. It also allegedly spied on leading DLP members and passed confidential documents including one on the disposition of U.S. troop bases to Pyongyang.

The communist country tried to cement its influence in the DLP by ordering members to get a certain unidentified person elected as party chairman, prosecutors said. In e-mails, North Korea reportedly assured members that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il treasures them “like very precious gold.”

Most interesting is how little money the “precious gold” betrayed their country for:

Chang Min-ho allegedly described North Korea as “my country” and South Korea as the “enemy’s rearguard” in a report to the North, while Choi Ki-young allegedly pledged allegiance to Kim Jong-il saying the military-first ideology “is the only best answer.” Chang allegedly received US$16,500 in operational funds, Lee Jung-hoon $2,000 and Lee Jin-gang $3,000.

All this spy scandal does is confirm what everyone already knew, that the anti-US activities in South Korea are organized by North Korean agents in order to drive a wedge between the US and South Korea. I can accept the fact that North Korea is conducting anti-US activities in South Korea; that is to be expected, but what I can’t accept are the politicians in South Korea that jump on any anti-US issue in order to demagoge the issue to their own political advantage. That is what gives the anti-US groups legitimacy in the Korean public when they see the politicians taking up the anti-US causes. Then again the political demagoguery of anti-US issues was enough to get one them elected President.
Go check out One Free Korea for a great analysis of the indictments.

A really good article today in the Stars & Stripes about how the Camp Casey USO has been helping non-American spouses in Korea.

The Associated Press of course:

THE most powerful media institution in all of human history is the Associated Press. Its news feed is ubiquitous – used, directly or indirectly, by every U.S. newspaper and TV news program and a vast number of foreign ones, too. AP maintains the largest world-wide coverage, and its reader base is nearly immeasurable. Unfortunately, and repeatedly of late, this behemoth has not only been getting it wrong – but increasingly refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing.

Instead, acting more like a politician or the mega-corporation that it is, the AP crew spins, obfuscates and attacks. Now they’re at it again in Iraq.

I have got direct experience of this – from challenging the AP’s seriously flawed 1999 “scoop” about the massacre near the South Korean village of No Gun Ri during the opening days of the Korean War.

Bad things did happen at No Gun Ri, of this there can be no doubt. My own research and other historians’, as well as the joint U.S.-Korean government investigation, confirms that a tragedy occurred – there were civilians who were killed there, by our side, and that was wrong.

But the AP’s sensationalistic story painted it as a deliberate massacre, done with machine guns at extremely close range.

The most sensational account started in the 57th paragraph of the 3,448-word story, sourced to one Edward Daily. As AP told it, Daily was the only soldier at No Gun Ri who directly received orders from his officers to turn his water-cooled .30 caliber machinegun on the civilians and shoot them down in cold blood at point-blank range.

Daily’s account was chilling. It was also – as AP should have known – a fantasy.

The AP story took at face value Daily’s claims that he was a combat infantryman who won a battlefield commission just a few days after the events at No Gun Ri, and had been awarded the Distinguished Cross and three Purple-Hearts.

In reality, he was an enlisted mechanic in an entirely different unit, nowhere near No Gun Ri. He had fabricated his biography and credentials as well as his entire account of the events at No Gun Ri.

When I later confronted AP editors with the facts and records that showed their source Daily to be a fraud, they blew me off. What would a historian know about this topic after all, or a soldier?

The AP didn’t issue a retraction, or even attempt to reinvestigate; and it certainly didn’t withdraw the story from the Pulitzer competition. Instead, it attacked the messenger.

Make sure you read the rest of the article.

Robert Bateman wrote the book, No Gun-ri: A Military History of the Korean War Incident, that exposed much of the sloppy reporting by the AP in their No Gun Ri story and lays out a very strong case of what happened at No Gun-ri based on physical evidence. Due to his efforts, Bateman had to withstand an AP attack on him for exposing their sloppy reporting.

I’m sure Bateman is looking on with some personal satisfaction as the AP has been caught yet again sensationalizing the news. If you haven’t read “Who is Jamil Hussein?” yet, than you have been missing out because you really should. The AP No Gun-ri reporting aided the North Korean enemy in a limited manner by helping to mobilize public opinion in South Korea against the US military, but the Jamil Hussein controversy is the AP directly taking news reports straight from the enemy and reporting it as fact for two years! This would be funny if it wasn’t so serious.

HT: MM

Taxi Cab Related Incident at Camp Humphreys, but it doesn’t involve GI’s this time.

Korean families are now suing the Yasukuni Shrine in Japan in order to remove the names of 21,000 Koreans enshrined there for their war time service to imperial Japan during World War II:

Families of Koreans who died while serving as part of the Japanese military during World War II are planning to sue the group that runs the Yasukuni Shrine, considered a symbol of Japan’s war of aggression. The families demanding that memorial tablets of their ancestors and relatives be removed from the shrine.

This is believed to mark the first time Koreans have sued the shrine itself instead of the Japanese government to have family members’ memorial tablets removed.

The group “Anti-Yasukuni Joint Action” announced that it is suing on behalf of the 21,000 Koreans memorialized in Yasukuni, and that it plans to file the suit at Tokyo District Court on the anniversary of the March 1 independence campaign of 1919. The group says it is going to announce the move in a press conference on Friday, December 8, the 64th anniversary of the outbreak of the Pacific War.

One of the little known facts of World War II is the number of Koreans that served in the Imperial Japanese military.  Korean scholars today say those who served were forced to fight in the Japanese military against their will.  This is true in some cases but as was evident by the conviction of a number of Koreans for war crimes after World War II many did serve freely.

So that brings me to the point I want to make, is that if there are Koreans that did serve freely and believed in the Japanese cause, then what’s wrong with them being enshrined at Yasukuni?  Isn’t that what they would have wanted if they believed enough in the Japanese cause to die for it?  That leads me to my next point of how will a court be able to tell the difference between Koreans who served freely and those who were forced into the military in able to determine who should be removed from the shrine?  Plus can relatives legally speak for what the deceased would have wanted in the first place?  This is also taking for granted that the court can even remove the names because Yasukuni is a private shrine and not funded or operated by the government.

Common sense tells me that if immediate family members to the deceased want the name removed then they should remove it, but for a few families to demand that all 21,000 names be removed from Yasukuni seems like a stretch to me.  Imagine if a few families from an ethnic minority in America sued to have all people of that minority removed from the Vietnam War Memorial?  It wouldn’t happen; just like in Japan I don’t see court ordering the removal of any names from Yasukuni either.

However, I did find this paragraph from the article very interesting:

The Korean branch of the anti-Yasukuni group plans to hold an “East Asian Peace Festival” next year for human rights and peace activists from Korea, Taiwan, and Japan in Tokyo next year, and organize a scholarly meeting in New York to make the international community aware of “how Yasukuni is against civilization and peace” before taking its case to the UN Human Rights Commission.

What I find it interesting that this Korean group thinks Yasukuni is “against civilization and peace” and is an issue that needs to be taken up with the UN Human Rights Commission, when just 30 miles north of Seoul is a real human rights issue, North Korea that the majority of Koreans like to ignore and cover for as a “special situation”.  Maybe Yasukuni is a “special situation” to the Japanese as well?

HT: Japan Probe