From the Hanky:

 The Nogeun-ri civilian massacre, a much chronicled event in 1950 that divulged one of the most grueling scenes of the Korean War, has hit bookstores in South Korea and is to advance to Europe in the form of a cartoon book.

Nogunri Story Volume 1, a 612-page hard-cover illustration by Park Kun-woong, is the latest art work on the tragedy in South Korea where efforts to remember it have gained momentum in recent years through documentaries, theater plays, a novel and a movie.

“It’s a history we should remember. If we forget, it will repeat over and over. There is an idea that usually goes around that during the war we can kill people. I want to break this notion,” Park said.

Based on a novel by Chung Eun-yong, a survivor of the incident who lost his two children to it, the cartoon opens with rural scenes of Nogeun-ri (also spelled as Nogunri), Yeongdong County, North Chungcheong Province, where a little boy plays with his sister floating a paper boat on a village stream. Soon, the village people receive an order from U.S. soldiers to leave their homes in advance of North Korean communists and, during their toilsome evacuation, U.S. warplanes appear and strafe hundreds of them as they walk along a railroad track. Survivors cornered under the railroad bridge are machine-gunned.

The mythology of Nogun-ri continues.  I have my own series about what happened at Nogun-ri that can be read here.  For some good debate go through the comments section in this Marmot’s Hole posting where I lay out many of my viewpoints.  The bottom line on this is that I higly recommend that everyone read all the information out there and make your own opinion.  Don’t listen to the propaganda merchants such as the people making this comic book.

The massacre did happen but what is in dispute are the numbers of dead and the motivations behind what happened.

The Korean War is known as the Forgotten War and now is becoming the Rewritten War especially now with this comic book release and with so many Korean War veterans now passing away they can’t even defend themselves anymore as a mythology of them being war criminals is being created.

HT: Yeolchae

Not only is Cindy Sheehan polluting newspapers and web pages in Korea with her image, but now she is even on Korean television screens with her interview on the Heart to Heart program on the Arirang Channel. Here is the video on demand link to the show.

From the beginning I could tell this was going to be a softball interview of Sheehan when the host of Heart to Heart, Ahn Jung-hyun opened up by talking about the futility of war. Futility? War worked to pretty well to protect South Korea from communist invasion, not to mention using war to defeat that little thing called Japanese Imperialism that established the Republic of Korea to begin with. So I really can’t agree war is totally futile.

Anyway the first thing that jumped out at me during the interview was how proud Sheehan appeared to be to have met with leaders of the Democratic Labor Party who helped organize her visit. Now if I was interviewing her I would have hit her with a question about if she knew the leaders of the DLP and the Camp Humprheys protesters had recently been arrested as North Korean spies.
It is also quite ironic that after this Sheehan than makes a comment about how the US needs to stop meddling in South Korea when the country that is meddling more than anyone in South Korea by organizing protests to tear down the MacArthur Statue in Inchon, organizing the Camp Humphreys movement, creating a false USFK pollution scandal, and even trying to influence the election of the mayor of Seoul along with a host of other issues, is North Korea not the United States. However, people like Sheehan hate the US so much; their warped world views only allow them to see the US as the boogeyman of all the world’s ills and journalists like Ms. Ahn do nothing to challenge these people on their warped views. Unless of course Ahn believes like Sheehan the US is the real evil in South Korea.

Ahn than asks Sheehan why her son Casey joined the Army. Sheehan went into the typical leftist rant about how the recruiter lied to him and tricked him into the Army, he was a mechanic and wasn’t supposed to see combat, and how he only joined for the college money. Ahn than asks her why Casey went to Iraq and Sheehan explained how he didn’t want to go ,but the Army made him go. Now I would like to direct everyone to this link with provides a biography of Casey Sheehan. Casey reenlisted into the military before he deployed to Iraq. Why would someone who supposedly was lied to by his recruiter and didn’t want to go to war and was just in it for the college money reenlist into the Army knowing full well he was reenlisting to go to war? I guess Casey was duped and lied to by his reenlistment NCO as well?

I wish someone would challenge Sheehan on this. Especially since she keeps saying Casey would support her anti-war movement including in this Arirang interview. The question that needs to be asked to her is if Casey was so anti-war why did he reenlist into the Army, effectively volunteering him to go to war in Iraq? Nobody is willing to challenge her though because Sheehan and her leftist allies would call anyone who asks such questions heartless to ask such questions of a grieving mother such as the holier than thou Cindy Sheehan.

She also keeps making the statements that Casey was a mechanic and wasn’t supposed to see combat. Normally mechanics wouldn’t end up in direct combat, however she fails to mention that Casey volunteered to be part of a rescue party to save some pinned down soldiers when he was killed. Casey Sheehan was one of many heroes that day that died.

Than later in the interview Sheehan throws out this bombshell that the US has killed 700,000 civilians in Iraq. The Iraq Body Count site puts the civilian death toll at just over 54,000. Keep in mind this website bases it’s numbers off of media reports that have often proven to be inaccurate. Of course after Sheehan threw out that 700,000 number, Ahn didn’t challenge her on that either.

Sheehan than continues on about how the US military is committing war crimes in Iraq without substantiating it and how in the US people are losing all their civil liberties, which of course I would have responded, okay what civil liberties have you lost? You are still allowed to go on television and broadcast falsehoods and lies as facts and the government hasn’t shut you up yet if this so called civil liberties gestapo is running around taking people’s rights away.

She then tries to make her self out as some kind of martyr being persecuted by the government because she has been arrested multiple times. Earth to Sheehan, you were arrested on multiple occasions because you broke the law! If I did what you did I would have been arrested too, along with anybody else. If anything the authorities have been using the kid gloves on Sheehan because they know if they arrest her it will make the headlines she so crave. Case in point, the picture below:

She sure looks happy for someone supposedly being persecuted. In fact she has been having the time of her life apparently.

However, there is one thing I agree with Sheehan on, but for different reasons that South Korea should bring the Zaytun unit home from Iraq which it was just recently was decided will happen by the end of 2007. I am willing to bet Sheehan is going to take credit for that too.

The fact that Sheehan is a blabbering propaganda machine is to be expected, but why do journalists like Ahn Jung-hyun not challenge this woman on anything, especially Korea related subjects that Sheehan knows nothing about. Like no mention from Ahn about how the USFK camps are being reduced from 41 to 10 including the fact Korea is receiving some of the most valuable real estate in the country, Yongsan Garrison in Seoul. Nothing either about how USFK is down sizing from 37,500 to 25,000 soldiers and possibly even more. I could go on and on about just the Korea related questions Sheehan should have been asked but it appeared Ahn was to intimidated to challenge Sheehan on.

Thus that is the problem with Sheehan, journalists are intimidated by her, which just begs the question of when does one stop being a grieving mother and becomes someone who can be legitimately challenged on her views and the many out right lies and falsehoods she preaches? Unfortunately in Korea the falsehoods have prevailed.

A Japanese court has forced the Japanese government to pay individual compensation claims to Japanese war orphans from World War II:

A court Friday ordered the government to pay millions of dollars in compensation to dozens of Japanese who, as children, were stranded in China at the close of World War II.

The 65 plaintiffs claimed the government was responsible for their delayed return to Japan and upon their return, had failed to provide adequate support to help them reintegrate into Japanese society. They were each seeking $285,000 in compensation.

The plaintiffs were the children of Japanese military officials, bureaucrats and private businessmen who were sent to settle in China’s remote northeast. They were left behind by their fleeing parents as Soviet troops closed in at the end of the war in 1945.

About 6,300 people came back after ties between the two states was normalized in 1972, including 2,500 who were under age 12 when they were abandoned in China, according to Health Ministry official Hayato Igarashi.

Raised by Chinese who adopted them, most of them were too young to remember their Japanese names or those of their natural parents. Only some have been able to reconnect with their families.

This ruling makes me wonder if a Japanese court could make the Japanese government at least apologize for their “comfort women” policies of World War II? It just seems like a way to settle at least one thorny issue between Japan and it’s neighbors.

It is about time:

The government and ruling Uri Party agreed Thursday to withdraw all South Korean troops from Iraq by the end of next year, government officials said.

The agreement was made during a meeting of party lawmakers at the National Assembly. Earlier, the party called on the government to set a specific timetable for the withdrawal of troops from the Middle Eastern nation in the first half of next year.

I have long felt that if the ROK Army was going to be allowed to do anything in Iraq than they shouldn’t be there. The ROK Army is great organization and it is a shame that they have been reduced to being global plumbers.

I’m not the only one who believe this way either, as at least one ROK Army officer agrees with me:

The original purpose of sending Korean troops there was to rebuild Iraq. But we went there and spent most of our time in maintaining our own living facilities. We are too withdrawn and I think it’s problematic. The people high up in the ranks are so concerned about our safety. For them, a safe return is more important than accomplishing anything.

I don’t know how South Korea’s sending troops has contributed to the national interest. I get the feeling that we didn’t offer something really useful for Iraqis. We did so for the sake of our national image in the outside world. American soldiers in Korea enjoyed a good reputation in the past because they gave chewing gum and chocolates to the locals. Perhaps my government is thinking about something similar. Personally, I believe that if we had sent actual combat troops to Iraq, we would have gotten a lot better deal from the United States.

I agree with the major that if the goal was reconstruction than the deployment was an absolute failure. The Zaytun unit couldn’t defend a USAID team providing direct reconstruction assistance to Iraqis, they couldn’t protect multiple South Korean aid convoys filled with expensive aid including computers that were meant for Iraqis that ended up being hijacked by criminal gangs, plus one car bombing in Irbil and 4 mortar shells kept the soldiers locked down on their camp for months doing nothing. How you do reconstruction when you can’t leave your camp is beyond me.

In fact the Mongolians have done more dangerous work in Iraq than the Koreans.

As I advocated before, the Korean government is going to simultaneously withdraw troops from Iraq and deploy troops to Lebanon:

The two sides also agreed to dispatch a battalion of 350 soldiers to Lebanon on a peacekeeping mission, as well as to extend the presence of medical and engineering units in Afghanistan for another year.

Don’t expect them to do anything in Lebanon though. The Korean government really doesn’t want to send troops there, but they have to since Ban Ki-moon is going to be the UN Secretary General and they want to save face for him. So look for them to find a nice peaceful area, preferably one with great internet access for Starcraft gaming, just like in Kurdistan, where they can base some troops who will do nothing, but it will appear that the Koreans are doing something; much like all the other UN troops in Lebanon.

So the only thing left for the Korean government to figure out now, is what kind of toilet seats are needed in Lebanon.

I want to emphasise that I have nothing against the ROK Army because I think they are a fine organization, I am just against the policy that makes them nothing more than a window dressing army. The ROK Army deserve better than that.

This is like something out of a low budget Korean crime flick:

A 26-year-old male IT employee known as Lee, enjoyed working alongside a 32-year-old woman identified as Park, and the pair began dating back in 2004. They were on again off again for a while, but in July of this year, Park confessed to being three months pregnant. Lee was in shock, as for the past two months he’d been seeing another woman secretly and had even promised to marry her. Lee asked Park to get an abortion, but she refused, leaving him in a deep hole. It was then that he decided having Park murdered was his best option and took up the search to find a willing hit-man on the Internet in October. Lee found the required serviceman and wrote him an email explaining that he should “Kidnap her and bury her in secret.” If the job was carried out successfully, the agreed price was W11million (US$1=W930). Lee borrowed W12 million from his new girlfriend telling her that he had his reasons.

However the hit man had a heart, and instead of executing the plan, he called Park and told her the whole story. The two put their heads together and came up with a plan of their own that would trick Lee into believing Park had indeed been killed. Park returned home and poured red dye on newspapers to resemble horrific blood shed, took a photo with her cell phone and sent it to the hired killer. With picture in hand the hit-man showed Lee that business had been taken care of and received his money as per their agreement. After getting an abortion, Park reported the incident to the police. Bangbae Police Station, Seoul, issued an arrest warrant for Lee Thursday and is in pursuit of the hired killer, who is still on the run.

This hitman sounds more like a clever conman.

I’ll have to see this to ever believe it. From the Chosun:

U.S. President George W. Bush told his South Korean counterpart he is willing to sign a document declaring the end of the Korean War with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il if Pyongyang dismantles its nuclear program. A diplomatic source in Seoul on Wednesday said Bush made the offer during a meeting with President Roh Moo-hyun in Hanoi, Vietnam on Nov. 18. “President Bush made remarks while talking about building a permanent peace framework on the peninsula,” the source said. “As far as I know, he made remarks to effect that he is willing to sign an agreement with the two Koreas.” That means Bush could meet with Kim, the source added.

I believe President Bush would be willing to sign a peace agreement with North Korea in exchange for dismantling their nuclear program, but I have a hard time believing he would actually sit down with Kim Jong-il and sign anything with him much less a peace treaty considering how much he despises the Kim regime. This is probably either sensationalism by the media or a product of mistranslation.

None of this matters anyway because Kim Jong-il has no intentions of ever giving up his nuclear weapons. Kim figured North Korea would get hit by increased sanctions, but China would keep the oil flowing and the South Koreans would keep the food and fertilizer coming in because neither country wants to deal with a collapse of North Korea. China doesn’t want a possible war or a humanitarian crisis to threaten their hosting of the 2008 Olympics and the South Koreans do not want to pay both the financial and social costs that reunifying with North Korea would cost plus the possibility of war would devestate the peninsula.

Plus Kim also figured correctly that he would be allowed to keep bringing in hard currency through North Korean weapons sales, counterfeiting, and other illicit activities without a naval blockade, which means that the Kim Jong-il regime will survive with more time to develop and perfect their nuclear weapons, while our political leaders aided by the irresponsible US media continue to play politics and blame each other for the crisis, which is just what Kim Jong-il counted on. He will keep playing the diplomatic game as long as possible to make it appear he is considering giving up his nuclear weapons, but he won’t because it is not in his interest to do so.

By keeping his nuclear weapons he ensures his regime’s survival, further consolidates power within North Korea by winning the domestic praise of his military for becoming a nuclear power, while simultaneously making the foreign aid coming into North Korea from neighboring countries appear to be tribute rather than the voluntary assistance that is keeping the country afloat. Kim Jong-il is playing his hand brilliantly. Anyone out there still think Kim Jong-il is stupid?

Just when you thought Bae Yong-joon’s hair couldn’t get any worse it does:

This picture pretty much sums up his fan base:

Can anyone spot one hot woman in that whole mob?

If you haven’t had enough of Cindy Sheehan, the Marmot has linked to this Z-magazine article from Sheehan concerning her visit to South Korea. The article is very badly written and I have to wonder who was the editor that let this thing pass, but anyway the article rambles on about nonsense in other parts of the globe, but I will keep my analysis on the Korean related content.

Prepare your stomach because here we go:

Miles before our bus reached the village on the evening of November
20th, we were stopped by approximately 200 South Korean riot-police who were decked out in their full riot regalia with bullet proof shields. We were traveling with Father Moon, an elderly Buddhist priest who has been an advocate for the villagers for a few years now. Father Moon got out of the bus and negotiated with the police captain for what seemed hours in the near freezing cold, but was only about 20 minutes. Finally, in what the villagers said was an unprecedented move, they allowed us entry into the village (after we passed another heavily guarded checkpoint). Villagers must present ID to get into their own village and visitors are rarely allowed to go in. Why? Because the village of Daechuri is under-siege in a criminal collaboration between the governments of South Korea and the United States of America and the governments don’t want the world to see what their crimes are doing to yet more innocent civilians.

First all, Ms. Sheehan those guards wearing Darth Vader suits aren’t doing so just because you showed up at Daechu-ri; they are wearing that equipment because your so called friends regularly attack them with sharpened bamboo poles, metal pipes, and rocks like this:

Or how about this:

Better yet maybe Sheehan should watch this video of her friends in action.

Then the fact that Sheehan thinks Father Moon is a Buddhist when in fact he is a Catholic Priest just goes to show how clueless she is about her so called friends in Korea. Sheehan then fails to realize the reason ID is shown to get into the village is because the North Korean sponsored anti-US groups had been squatting in the village for weeks before they were expelled by the South Korean police but only after they put up a violent clash and injured 117 policemen with their sharpened bamboo spears, metal bars, and rocks. Not to mention the fact her new Korean friends have links to North Korean spies.

Sheehan continues:

The village of Daechuri has the unmitigated gall to be located next to a US military base, Camp Humphreys, which is slated for an eleven-billion dollar expansion that would include a golf course for the use of
soldiers stationed there. The only problem is (not for the governments)
that the village of Daechuri and their thousands of acres of farmland,
mostly rice paddies, are in the way of the juggernaut of US military
expansion. The people of Daechuri have been cut-off from their farmlands by razor wire, guard towers, and armed foot patrols. Over two-thirds of the residents have the small village, but that leaves about one-third of them there to stand against the mightiest Army and the greediest government in world history.

First of all USFK is not expanding it is downsizing from 41 camps to 10 and reducing soldiers from 37,500 to 25,000 and I wouldn’t be surprised if the number goes even lower. Plus the Korean government is gaining the land from the closed US camps including some of the most valuable real estate in the whole country, Yongsan Garrison. The Camp Humphreys expansion is needed to make room for the soldiers being consolidated on the camp. As Sheehan even noted herself, the vast majority of the villagers voluntarily took the compensation payment and left. Plus the vast majority of Koreans support the Camp Humphreys expansion. 8 in 10 Korean are against the methods her friends are using to protest at Camp Humphreys while 7 in 10 Koreans support the base expansion.

More from Sheehan:

We heard stories of May 4th, when 20,000 Korean olice descended on the village with heavy-hands and strong arm tactics hat allowed the barbed wire fences to be constructed, thereby effectively cutting the farmers off from tens of thousands of dollars worth of un-harvested rice. We heard stories from village elders who lived through Japanese imperialism and occupation to the US Korean police action that killed 2.5 million Koreans, and are now having their lands and ways of life robbed of them by “Pax Americana.” My heart broke for the people of Daechuri and was filled with disgust for whom the people of Korea call “Georgie Bushie” and whom I call “BushCo.”

First of all watch the video I mentioned before to see why the Korean police had to forcibly remove the squatters that had taken over Daechu-ri. Plus the rice she mentions was illegally planted on the farmland by the squatters.

This paragraph here is the ultimate example of how incompetent and clueless this woman is about Korean affairs:

Not only is the expansion of Camp Humphreys hurting the people of
Daechuri, but it will have the effect of further de-stabilizing a region
already on pins and needles due parially to US intervention. You can bet your turkey left-overs that North Korea is watching these developments very closely and only the people of Korea and this region will pay for US infiltrations in South Korea. I know I don’t feel any safer by the raping and pillaging of Daechuri…in fact the expansion of Camp Humphreys will only do what Georgie Bushie is becoming infamous for: making America and the world less safe and secure. As an aside: I took a straw poll of about 400 South Koreans and 100% of them said that Georgie Bushie is far more frightening than Kim Jong-Il and they want the US out of Korea so they can put their divided country back together again.

Is this Cindy Sheehan’s attempt to be the next South Korean anti-Unification Minister? This paragraph is about as clueless as something coming out of Lee Jong-seok’s mouth. “US infiltrations in South Korea”? WTF is she talking about? Would she prefer that US soldiers remain within North Korean artillery range instead of a consolidated camp outside of NK artillery range and under the protection of PATRIOT missiles from ballistic missile attack?

By the way if you are still reading this without stomach pains congratulations, anyway here is more from Sheehan:

What can we do stateside to help these people? We can lobby our
congressional reps to hold hearings into the tragedy of Daechuri. We can donate money to help the villagers get fuel for heating their homes during the bitter Korean winter and to obtain food, since they can’t access their fields for harvest.

Now Sheehan is saying the villagers are can’t get food because they can’t access the fields they illegally planted. This is ridiculous and her final paragraphs are even more ridiculous:

I hope when Americans play golf on the golf course that will be
constructed over the rice fields that sustained and gave sustenance to the villagers for generations, they stop and reflect for even a brief
moment that an entire village was destroyed and hundreds of people were displaced for their recreation.

Golf! A village was obliterated for golf. If this is the “American way”
then we obviously need a new way, as speedily as possible.

The village was not “obliterated for golf”. The village was “obliterated” for the various reasons I mentioned above.
I feel bad for the residents of Daechu-ri who don’t want to move but this isn’t the first time imminent domain has been used in Korea for the national good and it won’t be the last. Sheehan and her friends would have a lot more creditbility with me if they went out and protested every imminent domain case in Korea every time a highway is built, KTX tracks constructed, or new shopping centers and apartments put up. Yet they won’t because none of that involves the US military.

Sheehan is a master propagandist and she demagoges issues in order to hit emotional cords in people. Her article is written to influence people emotionally while being very loose on facts, substance, and context. It just shows she cares more about leftist causes and promoting herself than she does understanding and making educated opinions about Korea, which has ultimately made her a useful idiot of the North Korean sponsored anti-US groups she calls her friends.

Is there anyone out there suprised by the arrest of one of the leaders of the MacArthur protests as a North Korean spy? From the Chosun:

An activist who is on parole after serving time for spying for North Korea has been arrested for espionage again. Kang Soon-jeong, the former vice chairman of the South Korean chapter of the Pan-Korean Alliance for Reunification, an outlawed pro-Pyongyang group, was arrested on Tuesday for providing “national secrets” to Pyongyang, police said. Kang was also co-chairman of a civic group that led efforts to topple the statue of U.S. general Dougas MacArthur in Incheon last year.

Let’s remember the MacArthur protests of 2005 for a minute. The biggest protest happened on September 11, 2005 and was deliberately planned to occur on the same date of the worst terrorist attack in American history in order to rub it into Americans’ faces.

How can we ever forget images like this:

Or my personal favorite:

Something else to remember was that it wasn’t just the North Korean stooges calling for the removal of the MacArthur statue, but also the Korea Times newspaper:

As President Roh made it clear that it is the government’s position to keep the statue, U.S. lawmakers had better wait and see. Nor is this an issue for partisan wrangling domestically. Related officials can consider relocating it to a war memorial from the present public park someday. We have never heard of a statue of Dwight Eisenhower in Normandy to commemorate D-Day.

So keep that in mind the next time you read the Korea Times, that they advocated removing the MacArthur statue because a bunch of North Korean sponsored stooges demanded it. Plus their claims that Eisenhower’s statue is not on display at Normandy were proven to be utterly false as well. Ike’s statue stands proudly at Normandy just like MacArthur’s statue should continue to stand proudly at Inchon.

However, not everyone has forgotten about what MacArthur means to South Korea:

These ROK veterans at the time called the anti-MacArthur protesters North Korean spies and they were right.

The US Congress even got involved in the MacArthur controversy by sending this letter to the Blue House condemning the protests:

Members of the U.S. House Committee on International Relations on Thursday protested at calls in Korea to topple a statue of U.S. general Douglas MacArthur in Incheon. Their protest came in a letter to President Roh Moo-hyun signed by committee chairman Henry Hyde and others.

The letter said but for the 1950 Incheon landing led by MacArthur, the Korea of today would not exist. If attempts to damage the statue continued, it would be better to hand it over to the Americans, the signatories said.

(…)

Needless to say Mr. President the Congress of the United States and the American people would never subscribe to such a description of a hero who led the allied forces which liberated the Republic of Korea twice, first from the yoke of Japanese colonialism 60 years ago this summer and secondly through the brilliant execution of the Inchon landing 55 years ago this month. Our critical bilateral alliance was forged in the crucible of Inchon. The common sacrifices, goals, and achievements which sprang out of Inchon form, in our opinion, the continuing basis for our alliance. We presume that the government of the Republic of Korea shares this view of the critical importance fo the Inchon Landing and the leadership of General Douglas MacArthur.

(…)

In the chamber of the US House of Representatives, directly behind the speaker’s podium hang two portraits. On one side is that of a foreign friend, a soldier who came from a far to assist in the common cause of American independence. That portrait is of the Marquis de Lafayette. For more than 200 years his memory has been implanted deep in the hearts of the American people. We would hope that General MacArthur is so remembered in the hearts of the South Korean people.

Not to be out done the British ambassador to Korea had plenty to say as well:

“I have been saddened to read that a group of protestors attacked and called for the removal of the statue of the U.S. general MacArthur in Incheon. The statue was erected to commemorate the Incheon Landing, which he led, and which was one of the most decisive interventions of the Korean War. British naval vessels were among those involved. By attacking his statue and his memory, these protestors are also denigrating ALL those foreign soldiers under the UN command, who came to fight alongside South Korea in that war. There were men and women from more than 20 nations involved, including my own. Tens of thousands of them gave their lives so that South Korea should remain free and independent. Without the fierce allied fighting that followed there was a real chance that South Korea, by then pinned down to Busan, would have been overrun.

“None of us can change our country’s history. What happened, happened, and we should respect the right for people to demonstrate peacefully, but these protestors risk alienating more than just American friends. I am glad there have been some firmly-worded editorials, and that a number of leading figures, including Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon, have spoken up. They need to, and strongly, if good friends of Korea and war veterans from many countries are not to feel insulted.”

With North Korean agents leading protests to tear down the MacArthur statue and create a wedge in the US-ROK alliance what does the ruling Uri Party chairman do? Blame the conservative groups protecting the statue of course:

Ruling Uri Party chairman Moon Hee-sang said Sunday the dispute over a statue of U.S. general Douglas MacArthur in Incheon was “a clash between civic organizations,” but some media outlets and conservative forces blew it out of proportion for reasons of their own. They “sow distrust and friction between Korea and the United States on the pretext of being concerned about the Korea-U.S. alliance,” he said.

With this arrest of a North Korean spy it is also important to remember those in the Korean government and media that were complicit in this obvious North Korean sponsored attempt to create a wedge in the US-ROK alliance. The only thing I find surprising about the spy arrest is why it took so long to uncover it?

HT: One Free Korea

It looks like the operational control issue isn’t the only thing maybe needing a ultimatum to get completed:

South Korea and the United States on Wednesday resumed talks on how to share expenses for maintaining American soldiers here, with Seoul hoping to conclude the negotiations this time.

“We hope to strike a deal this time, given that we don’t have much time left to get the National Assembly’s approval on the result this year,” Cho Tae-yong, director-general of the North American affairs bureau at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, recently told reporters.

The two-day session in Seoul, aimed at renewing the Special Measures Agreement (SMA), is the sixth of its kind this year.

Technically, it is necessary for the ministry to get the lawmakers’ approval before the agreement goes into effect next year. But there was an exemption of the rule in 2005 when the cost-sharing talks ended four months after the deadline.

The US negotiators have been trying to get South Korea to pay more for the maintenance of USFK because South Korea only pays approximately 40% of the costs of maintaining the alliance while next door neighbor Japan pays approximately 70% of the costs of maintaining the USFJ forces in Japan. The US would be happy to get South Korea just to pay 50% of the upkeep but it appears the negotiators probably won’t even get that:

After several months of discussion with Washington, Seoul agreed in April 2005 to allocate 680.4 billion won ($710 million) per year in 2005 and 2006 to pay for the presence of U.S. Forces Korea (USFK).

That was a decrease of 8.9 percent from the 2004 expenditure.

During the five rounds of talks in the past, Seoul wanted to reduce its burden further, as Washington is determined to cut U.S. troop numbers.

But Washington called for an “equitable” sharing of the expenses, saying it made an exception when it agreed to reduce South Korea’s burden for 2005 and 2006 because Seoul was under financial pressure because of its dispatch of non-combat troops to Iraq.

If the US is only going to get a one digit increase from the South Koreans that means that Korea will not even pay 50% of the USFK costs. It appears that the US negotiators are now paying for the mistake of giving the South Koreans incentive to dispatch troops to Iraq by temporarily cutting costs for the past two years due to the troop dispatch to Iraq. Plus what did the US get out of the troop dispatch? Improved plumbing?

What annoys me most about this is that the South Koreans are willing to give hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the North Koreans, the ones who threaten the very existence of the country, while playing penny pinchers with USFK which is dedicated to preserving the existence of the nation.

Another thing that annoys me is that I often hear from average South Koreans that the Korean government gives special pay to the USFK soldiers. This is absolutely untrue but it seems to persist within Korean society. Feel free to add your thoughts if anyone disagrees.

Some of you garrison guys out there can correct me if I’m wrong, but most the money from the Korean government goes to renovating or making new buildings, which with the reduction of USFK camps from 41 to 10 means the Korean government is getting many of the buildings back. It also goes to paying the salaries of Korean employees that work for USFK. Additionally South Korea gets a discount in their cost sharing by providing USFK with civilian vehicles. The civilian vehicles are bought at discounted rates but when considered in the cost sharing their are totalled up at their full retail sale price.

Like I said before this is all penny pinching stuff that Koreans are notorious for unless of course it Kim Jong-il demanding aid, then it seems that everyone in the Korean government is stumbling over each other to provide him whatever he wants.