Here is something that is no shocker to those of us who have spent plenty of time in USFK:

One man is in custody and three more face charges in connection with a black-marketing operation that was being run out of an Army and Air Force Exchange Service store at Camp Long, near Wonju, South Korea, authorities said Wednesday.

The case was a result of a yearlong investigation and involved more than 21,000 cases of beer from AAFES, according to Kim Jong-mu, a Seoul-based South Korean customs officer who is the case’s senior investigator.

The duty-free beer was driven off base in a U.S. government vehicle and sold to middlemen, who in turn resold it on the South Korean market, he said.

The four suspects in the case were AAFES employees, he said.

AAFES employees are really the brains behind the black marketing scams in Korea. Here is how these criminals have been pulling off their scam:

The 21,300 cases of beer believed to have been smuggled over the past year was valued at 700 million won, or about $750,000. Kim said investigators believe the suspects have been involved in black marketing for many years.

The Camp Long smuggling was done by loading cases into a vehicle with USFK plates and driving the beer to a middleman waiting off base in an identical vehicle with South Korean license plates, Kim said. Then the plates were switched and the beer was delivered to liquor merchants in Seoul’s Namdaemun Market, he said.

They black marketed $750,000 in just beer, imagine how much they are making from Spam, ox tails, and other popular food items as well. I’m willing to be their black marketing ring was bringing in close to $1 million a year and they have been getting away with this for years. This is a huge amount of money and this is just from Camp Long.

From the Chosun:

Former President Kim Dae-jung has urged the United States to consider lifting sanctions it imposed on North Korea last year and talking directly to Pyongyang. In an interview with the financial news service Bloomberg, Kim said Washington must lift financial sanctions on the North for the Stalinist state’s alleged money laundering and counterfeiting if there is no proof.

No proof? Has this guy been smoking dope with President Roh? You want proof? Here’s your proof, how about here, here, & here for starters? Kim Dae-jung is washed up, corrupt, and his Sunshine Policy is a failure, which means in pure Roh fashion, it is time to blame the Americans for everything in order to obscure the issue of his own failed legacy. No matter how many times he blames the US for everything wrong in Korea, one day North Korea will collapse and the horrors on the Kim Jong-il regime that will be discovered will ensure both Kim’s and Roh’s legacies are remembered as the two greatest failed presidencies in Korea’s short history in democracy.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Here is just a short story from a website with a number of stories from veterans deployed overseas during the holidays. Remember to keep all the US military personnel deployed overseas today in your prayers this Thanksgiving:

Bill Shepard of Plymouth, US Army, Korea: 

“I came back home after the Second World War and then was recalled during the Korean War. It was a shock — I hadn’t even really told my new wife that I was still in the Reserves…
“I wrote a letter home from Korea on Thanksgiving Day, November 22, 1951, that my wife has saved. You can see by the letter :
Am so full I can hardly move! We just finished eating a huge turkey dinner with all the trimmings. I’ll enclose the menu. Typical Army — feast or famine, but today we had the feast.
We were up on the front lines eating cold K rations and then suddenly we go to the rear for Thanksgiving dinner, and then right back to the front line!”

UPDATE: More details have come out that the soldier’s death was possibly a suicide. It is the holidays so take extra effort to look out for each other during this time of year.

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Not many details out yet, but a 2ID soldier has died at Camp Eagle:

A 2nd Infantry Division soldier was found dead at Camp Eagle on Saturday, according to Army officials.

Pvt. Gristen Buttrey, 23, was discovered by his roommate in his barracks room, a 2nd ID spokesman said. The cause of his death is under investigation, a spokesman said.

Buttrey was an ammunition specialist with the 1st Battalion, 2nd Aviation Regiment, 2nd Combat Aviation Brigade.

Maybe if Cindy Sheehan had shown up a few weeks earlier she could have gotten this guy to sign her in on post and they could of eaten Taco Bell together:

An Army private will serve 10 months in jail for using a friend’s debit card 23 times to buy fast food, a general court-martial ruled Tuesday.

Pvt. Walter B. Wade Jr., of the 2nd Infantry Division’s 1st Battalion, 43rd Air Defense Artillery, Echo Company, must forfeit all pay, was reduced in rank to E-1 and will receive a bad-conduct discharge.

That ended up being some expensive Taco Bell for this soldier.

An old icon of the DMZ is being moved:

“It’s very sad to see this kind of history rot away in the DMZ,” said Han, 80. “But I’m very happy for what they are doing today.”

On Monday, a crane lifted the locomotive on to a flatbed truck and took it to Imjingak, where it will be spruced up in accordance with its standing as a South Korean national cultural property.

Workers will spend up to two years preserving what is left of the train, but they will not be restoring it to its original condition.

To do that they would probably have to replace most of the original material, which is heavily corroded after 56 winters of inactivity.

“We will use chemical techniques to maintain the locomotive as it is, to slow down corrosion,” said Jeong-seok, Cultural Heritage Administration spokesman. “This will preserve it for the next generation to see.”

The locomotive will be treated in a public glass enclosure at Imjingak, the Imjin River train station that now serves as a tourist park. Imjingak is only about a mile from the restricted access Tong-il “Unification” Bridge, which leads to Camp Bonifas and the United Nations Joint Security Agency.

The locomotive will then be returned to the DMZ, one bridge away from the final South Korean checkpoint and one mile from the military demarcation line that separates the two Koreas.

I think Nomad is right, maybe Cindy Sheehan did want to get some Taco Bell after all. From the Stars and Stripes:

Peace activist Cindy Sheehan and a handful of other Americans on Tuesday afternoon held their passports in front of South Korean riot police outside a main gate onto Yongsan Garrison, requesting a meeting with U.S. Forces Korea’s commanding general.

Their blue booklets and their chants for the U.S. military to halt base expansion plans south of Seoul went unanswered during the 40-minute long protest.

“My father served at this base,” Sheehan said as she stood in front of Gate 5 at Yongsan Garrison. “I have the right as an American to come onto this base.”

No Ms. Sheehan you don’t have the right to enter a US military installation because only US military ID card holders are allowed on post or you can have a valid ID card holder sign you in on post. Better yet maybe you can become a Yongsan housekeeper; that appears to be the easiest way to get an ID card now a days. Then again that would mean you would have to work for living instead of getting your free hand outs from your rich liberal puppet masters. If she is getting all this money through a non-profit I would love to see the book keeping because aren’t non-profits supposed to disclose their finances? I would love to see if she pays any taxes on anything considering the lifestyle she is now living.

Secondly you should be deported from Korea because as the lawyer Brendon Carr noted, foreigners on a tourist visa cannot conduct political activity in Korea. I’m sure the Korean government is just letting her get away this because they don’t want to get any bad press and figure she will just go away as quickly as she popped up.

According to the Economist it is:

The Economist weekly has ranked South Korea 31st and North Korea 167th or dead last in its global democracy index. In a special edition titled “The World In 2007”, the U.K. magazine looked at the state of democracy in countries around the world using 60 indicators across five broad categories such as free elections, civil liberties, functioning government, political participation, and political culture. The index classified the nations surveyed (165 independent states and two territories) into four groups: 28 full democracies, 54 flawed democracies, 30 hybrid regimes and 55 authoritarian regimes.

South Korea scored 7.88 out of a possible 10 to land in 31st place and was classified as a flawed democracy. It scored a high 9.58 for free elections but did worse than advanced nations in the rest of the categories: 7.14 in functioning government, 7.22 in political participation, 7.5 in political culture and 7.94 in civil liberties. North Korea was last with a paltry 1.03. The Economist did not produce a democracy index for each country last year.

(Note: sarcasm on) I wonder why Korea’s lowest score was for a functioning government?

If the US gets it’s way Korea may become a NATO partner:

U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said Tuesday that President George W Bush will propose at the upcoming NATO summit in Riga, Latvia, a program to bring Japan, South Korea and Australia closer to the military alliance.

The three countries “do not seek NATO membership, but we seek a partnership with them so that we can train more intensively from a military point of view,” he said. Japan, South Korea and Australia have all deployed troops in Iraq as members of the “coalition of the willing,” Burns stressed. Japan has been seeking closer ties with NATO, with Foreign Minister Taro Aso having expressed Tokyo’s willingness to strengthen coordination in his speech at a meeting of senior NATO officials in Brussels in May.

First of all, I can’t believe the lunatic left, backed by North Korean agents in South Korea will be to happy about this. Secondly China won’t be to happy either, especially if the US expects China to do anything about North Korea. Than again this just may be a bargaining chip to get China to do something about North Korea.

HT: Coming Anarchy

UPDATE: The Marmot’s Hole now has more on “Pyongyang Cindy” as well.

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Who in Korea approved her entry into South Korea?:

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan visited a village near Camp Humphreys on Monday night in a show of “solidarity” with local residents opposing the installation’s expansion.

Sheehan was part of a group of about 20 activists from the United States who are in South Korea this week to oppose the expansion project and a proposed South Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.

The camp is set to triple in size in coming years and become the U.S. military’s main installation on the peninsula.

Some local residents backed by South Korean anti-US activists have been resisting the expansion since 2005.

What does Cindy Sheehan know about South Korea? Absolutely nothing. As Pelgasius noted, she can’t even make up her own signs. This picture is absolutely priceless:

Her is my favorite quote from Sheehan’s sister:

Sheehan’s sister Dede Miller, of Los Angeles, told the audience, “I’m just very sorry for what my country is doing to yours.”

(Note sarcasm on) Yes I as an American am very sorry about everything the my country has done to Korea as well, especially the ending of 35 years of Japanese colonial rule that costs hundreds of thousands of lives during World War II, the sacrifice of 33,000+ lives during the Korean War to save the country from communism, 55 years of peace, security assistance, and economic development that has brought South Korea’s to the 11th strongest economy in the world and one of the best global standards of living. Yes we as Americans have a lot to be ashamed of.

Do these wackos know that the US is reducing it’s military footprint in Korea from 41 camps to 10? Do they know the Koreans are making a huge net gain in land from all the USFK base closures including some of the most valuable property in all of Korea, Yongsan Garrison in downtown Seoul? Do they know that the vast majority of Daechu-ri villagers left freely and that the majority of the people of Pyeongtaek want the base consolidation and they also want the protesters gone. Has she even seen polls that show that 8 in 10 Koreans oppose the protesters while 7 in 10 approve of the camp consolidation? Does she and her cronies know that they are being used by people linked to North Korean spies? Than again she is friends with Hugo Chavez so why shouldn’t she be friends with Kim Jong-il as well?

Oh My News also has more on the Cindy Sheehan visit:

The sign she is holding says from my limited Korean skills something like renegotiate the Camp Humphreys expansion. Native speakers feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

Mark’s comment at Lost Nomad best summarizes this whole thing:

Maybe she can go up north and pose on a nork 57mm antiaircraft gun wearing a nork helmet?

Is there anyone more hypocritical and self absorbed than this woman? Make sure you read more at Lost Nomad and DPRK Studies.