I don’t think so:

Coming under united international pressure, Kim Jong Il reportedly apologized for the Oct. 9 nuclear detonation and said he wouldn’t test any more bombs.

That doesn’t mean Kim can afford to show any weakness to a home crowd who live in an officially enforced siege mentality and are long accustomed to blaming their desperate living conditions on outside forces — mainly the United States.

“No matter how the U.S. imperialists try to stifle and isolate our republic … victory will be on the side of justice,” Choe Thae Bok, secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, told a rally of more than 100,000 people, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

The North also held firm to its demand that the U.S. lift financial restrictions that have strangled Pyongyang’s access to banks abroad as a condition to return to disarmament talks.

Washington has repeatedly rejected that request, and appears even more unlikely to alter its hard-line approach to the communist nation in the wake of the nuclear test — leaving the potential for the crisis to escalate further.

“If the U.S. makes a concession to some degree, we will also make a concession to some degree, whether it be bilateral talks or six-party talks,” Kim was quoted as telling a Chinese envoy, South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo daily reported.

North Korea is just implementing one of the oldest terrorist tactics in the book and just like with the terrorists the media is doing everything it can to aid Kim Jong-il. Kim Jong-il is not apologizing he is just trying to appear conciliatory to save face for China, but also to make the US seem unreasonable because he says they are the ones threatening North Korea and implementing the financial sanctions on him thus causing the nuclear crisis. If the US would just be conciliatory like him and give up the sanctions they would return to talks.

This approach is much like the terrorists in Iraq when they say they want to negotiate with the US, but the US won’t negotiate with them or meet any of their concessions in order to end the insurgency, but at the same time the terrorists are launching death squads to kill civilians and planting as many IEDs as possible to influence next month’s US mid-term election. The terrorists do this because they want to make the US seem unreasonable by not negotiating with them when in fact the terrorists have no intention of negotiating with the US to begin with. This tactic is about as old as the ceasefire tactic used by terrorists when they need time to rearm, reman, and resupply themselves which the media always seems to aid them with as well. Tora Bora, Fallujah, Lebanon ring any bells?

I say the media is complicit in this because they rarely challenge these claims. For example in the AP article I linked to there was no mention that the US financial sanctions on North Korea have nothing to do with the nuclear crisis; they were implemented due to North Korean counterfeiting and money laundering. This just seems like an important piece of information that the AP article just some how left out.

Than again if the media actually challenged the claims of terrorists and dictators than that would effect their access to them; how else would you be able to get video of US soldiers being killed by enemy snipers to air on the news in order to increase ratings?

This claim seems a bit pre-mature to me:

Seoul and Washington will add use of nuclear arms by U.S. forces in response to North Korean atomic weapons in a joint operation strategy codenamed OPLAN 5027, sources said Thursday. That would mean the return of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea 15 years after they were pulled out in 1991.

At the 28th Military Committee Meeting (MCM) between the allies, Gen. Lee Sang-hee, the chairman of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff met his U.S. counterpart Gen. Peter Pace in Washington on Wednesday. The two mandated U.S. Forces Korea Commander Gen. Burwell Bell to draw up plans for the U.S. provision of a nuclear umbrella for South Korea in the wake of the North’s nuclear test, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

I would personally be very surprised if the US redeploys nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula. First of all the US is trying to decrease the force footprint in Korea not increase it, plus what signal would that send to the North Koreans? This would confirm their hostile rhetoric of why the need nuclear weapons, to defend themselves from American conventional and nuclear attack. The best way to defend out troops is not put more nukes on the peninsula but to continue to move forward with the USFK transformation and draw down of forces despite all the outside actors trying to stop it.

Chosun Ilbo was kind enough to provide a test to determine if you are an “ajumma” or not.  Here is a preview:

 The ajumma tends to step on someone’s foot and give them a dark look when they say “ouch” instead of apologizing. She is not ashamed of nudging someone’s bottom with an umbrella on the bus or subway to occupy a seat, and weighing down a person next to her by not taking hold of a handle in a joggling bus or train. What is worse, she shouts into her cell phone so everyone around can hear, and it is never even about serious matters. A lady, by contrast, says sorry when she breezes past, and is told it’s all right in reply: the magic word. Strictly speaking, it is pukkah to refrain from talking on your mobile altogether in a public place. If you get to get a call, keep it short and call back later.

Read the rest, but I’m really curious if this got printed in Korean or not?

I love the wording of this compromise:

In a compromise, Korea and the United States agreed Friday to complete the handover of full wartime operational control of Korean troops to Seoul between Oct. 15, 2009 and March 15, 2012. The two sides issued a 14-point joint communiqué at the end of further negotiations after the 38th Security Consultative Meeting headed by Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung and his U.S. counterpart Donald Rumsfeld.

I’m willing to bet Rumsfeld is leaning towards Oct. 16, 2009.  That’s between the two given dates, right?  This is just a face saving measure for President Roh because he would look even weaker on national security than he already is if he appeared to be trying to kick USFK out the door as soon as possible.  I just don’t see the operational control issue lingering to 2012, I’m betting on 2009.

Name the small island in the center of this picture:

The beautiful Korean island of Cheju is attempting to become yet another UNESCO recognized site in Korea:

 An inspection team from the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on Monday (Oct. 16) began assessing natural rarities on Korea’s southern island of Jeju, following a local request to give them World Heritage status, officials said.

The Jeju provincial government filed an application to the U.N. cultural body in January to have its scenic rarities registered.

The designation will be decided when UNESCO holds a general meeting in July next year, based on a report from its advisory body, the World Heritage Convention, that is conducting the inspection.

The week-long assessment led by Paul Richard Dingwall will focus on whether the recommended sites have value for global recognition and have been well-preserved and whether the local government is capable of looking after them, the government officials said. The candidate areas are a preservation area of Mount Halla, five lava caves and Seongsan Ilchulbong, a small rocky mountain peak overlooking the harbor which is famous for its rare plants and view of the sunrise.

The Jeju government plans to spend about 4 billion won ($4 million) this year for the World Heritage project. The funds will go toward organizing a committee of experts and officials to set up protective measures for the natural rarities and organize publicity campaigns at home and abroad.

I for one hope the island receives the designation which means the island will have to receive increased government funding to protect the natural environment and cultural properties of the island.  Protecting the environment is not something that Koreans are well known for.

I wonder if the UNESCO ranking will stop the wrath of the picnickers?  At another UNESCO listed place the Suwon Fortress, one time I saw someone had left their picnic garbage right there on UNESCO listed cultural property.

The mayor of Los Angeles is in Seoul and of course his escorts made sure to show him the Cheongyecheon:

He looks pretty impressed; I wonder how impressed he was with Mr. Hanky though?

r every taxi cab related incident or in this case bus related incident, there are at least two good news stories you won’t hear much about. The Stars and Stripes on the other hand has two good news stories worth reading.The first story is about soldiers from Camp Casey helping to teach English at local schools:

After being stationed here for seven months, Colvin says he knows that some South Koreans see U.S. soldiers and think “trouble.”

The public relations value of participating in a volunteer fair wasn’t lost on him and other soldiers.

“A lot of kids get better impressions of soldiers this way,” Colvin said. “It’s also a better way to learn more English through conversation than just through a book. And it looks like the kids enjoy it.”

The kid in this next story is a real hero:

The man got two boys to safety but one of his sons had disappeared under about seven to eight feet of water.

Over the next seven or so minutes, Adam, an eighth-grader at the International Christian School in Pyeongtaek, made 10 to 15 dives.

“I swam straight to the bottom and was feeling around and I resurfaced, and I just breathed in a huge gulp of air and went back down,” he said. “It was really, really murky.”

He found the boy and brought him up.

The father and another fisherman began trying to resuscitate the boy, but neither seemed familiar with how to do it.

“I tell you, I never felt so helpless in my whole life because here I had two cell phones and I didn’t know how to call for help and I didn’t know how to tell them they were doing CPR wrong,” Heather Budge said.

Make sure you read the whole article because it is a good read about this young boy doing a heroic deed in saving the child’s life. So what are the odds that any Korean will remember a heroic story like this a year from now, but they can still recall the Great Shinchon Massacre of 2004? I know one family that won’t forget is the family of the boy that this one courageous Osan teen saved.

The Gas Can

On one occasion I had to drive my M113 ambulance to Bravo
Company, 2/72 Armor, to support them for some operation. I had a
KATUSA as my TC and was following a jeep that was my ground guide.
We approached a village with a small bridge that spanned a creek and
since the APC was too heavy for the bridge, had to find a place to ford the
stream. I went past the fording spot, stopped, backed up and then did a
hard right turn to re-orient the APC to the ford. When I did that, one of the
track sprockets bent and the track broke. As I was sitting there trying to
figure out what to do next, I heard a scraping sound coming from the back
of the APC. I jumped out of the driver’s hatch and looked to my rear and
saw two slicky boys running away with my gas can! They had cut the
straps on the can and hauled ass, with each one holding one side of the
can handle.

Sheets

One of my collateral duties was to occasionally pull laundry duty.
Part of laundry duty was to sit in the back of the deuce and a half with an
ax handle as the laundry was transported to 2nd S&T (I think). My job was
to discourage any slickyboys from reaching into the truck and taking any
laundry. On one occasion I actually had to slam a slickyboy when he
jumped on the side of the truck and began to cut through the canvas with a
knife. He got the knife blade through the canvas then…                                
KAPOW!

THE ABOVE TWO STORIES WERE SUBMITTED BY:
                                    Sp 4 Rich Hernandez
                                    Medic
                                    HQ Co, 2/72nd Armor
                                    Korea, 1967/68

This slicky boy story was from Korea, A Tour of Duty.
 If you have your own slicky boy story to share e-mail me your story at gikoreaonline@yahoo.com and I will be happy to post it.