I always find old pictures of Korea interesting and the Korea Liberator has dug up pictures of Korea from 1906 of unbelievable quality.  Definitely check these pictures out.

The Roh Administration fresh off of bashing Japan for condemning the North Korean missile launches, has now come out and denounced any sanctions against North Korea:

Seoul will not support a UN resolution co-sponsored by seven Security Council members including Japan, the U.S. and France to impose sanctions on North Korea for test-firing seven missiles last week. A government official on Monday hinted as much, saying it was ¿not desirable¿ for South Korea as a non-member of the Security Council to express its position on a particular UN resolution.

Vice Foreign Minister Lee Kyu-hyung on the same day called in Japanese Ambassador to Korea Shotaro Oshima to inform him the government does not support the resolution. ¿We can¿t be in the same boat with Japan all the way,¿ Foreign Ministry spokesman Choo Kyu-ho told international news agencies.

Seoul¿s lack of support makes it unlikely that South Korea, the U.S. and Japan will cooperate to resolve the missile issue.

Sanctions on North Korea would be the final blow to the failed “Sunshine Policy” because it would forbid the economic activities (bribes) going on between South and North Korea, most notably the Kaeseong industrial project and the Kumgang Mountain Tours.  Advancing the Sunshine Policy has been the Roh administration centerpiece governmental policy program.  I failure of this program would be seen as a failure of the Presidency.  The Roh administration is in full scale damage control to protect what ever little bit of legacy they which to leave South Korea.  I can only hope for the sake of the people in North Korea that the sanctions pass and the Sunshiners are voted out of office next year in South Korea.  The beginning of change in South Korea will also mean the beginning of change in North Korea.

Niels Footman has the latest Going to the Blogs column up on the Joong Ang Ilbo site and this week looks at K-blog reactions to the North Korean missile tests as well as a look at the upcoming Korean movie the Host.  Go check it out.

Well it seemed like a good idea at the time?:

It is premature for South Korea to take back operational control of its armed forces during wartime from the United States in six years, given its lack of intelligence capabilities shown in North Korea’s recent test firing of missiles, a lawmaker said yesterday.

“It is total nonsense to exercise independent wartime command in five or six years without the U.S. military’s intelligence and surveillance backup,” Rep. Song Young-sun of the main opposition Grand National Party said in a telephone interview with The Korea Times.

“Building up capabilities for gathering intelligence, monitoring enemies and intercepting incoming missiles accurately is a prerequisite to South Korea’s independent exercise of wartime command,” said Song, a member of the National Assembly National Defense Committee.

Seoul and Washington are engaging in talks over the transfer of wartime command. Many military sources expect the timing of wartime command transfer could take place by 2012 after the South’s military upgrades its surveillance and weapons systems. South Korea took back the authority to control its military during peacetime in 1994, but wartime control has remained in the South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC), led by a four-star U.S. general, since the 1950-53 Korean War that ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

If you want it, you are going to have to pay for it, is basically what it is coming down to for South Korea.  It was easy for the Korean politicians to demagogue the wartime command issue, but now that Washington has called their bluff and let the South Koreans have it, it is becoming increasingly expensive for South Korea to buy the needed systems to ensure South Korean security that the US military has been providing for them for years.

The World Cup is finally over and Italy beat France in a penalty kick shootout to win the championship.  Is there a worse way to end a game than by penalty kicks?  Watching these penalty kick shootouts it all appears to be mostly luck who scores because the goal keeper has to guess which side of the net to dive to.  Then what happened to Zidane?  The Italian player definitely put on his best flopping performance after the head to chest butt, however he should have known the Italians were baiting him to do something with all the grabbing and holding they were doing to him.  That is a boneheaded way for a soccer legend to go out.  Watching this game I really can’t say the best team won because it appeared France was the better team and Italy held on to penalty kicks.  There has to be a better way of ending these games.

Overall, though this World Cup is a perfect example of why I think soccer will remain a second tier sport in America.  The team with some of the best floppers won.  The honors for the best floppers goes to Portugal, which got them all the way to the semi-finals, but Italy isn’t far behind in the quality of their flopping.  For Italy to just tie the US team they had to rely on the US playing half the game a player short due to crappy officiating and a goal taken away from the US not to mention the stupendous flopping of the Italians the entire game.  The Italians used the same formula to beat the Australian team as well when with 5 seconds left a flop near the net resulted in a penalty kick for them.  After games like these, countries like the US and Australia that are soccer outsiders are left feeling that since they are not well known soccer countries they have no chance of beating the big names due to flopping and poor officiating.  Flopping and poor officiating are enough to turn off new viewers to soccer and that is why I think the game will remain a second tier sport in America.

From the Joong Ang Ilbo:

A bus plunged off a bridge in Chilgok, North Gyeongsang province, yesterday afternoon, falling 10 meters into the stream below. The bus driver was killed and eight passengers were injured.

This was so predictable:

South Korea has called for a calm response to North Korea’s missile tests, accusing Japan of heightening tensions through its hawkish remarks.

“There is no reason to fuss over this from the break of dawn like Japan, but every reason to do the opposite,” said a statement from the office of President Roh Moo-hyun’s spokesman.

“There is nothing good in heightening tensions on the Korean peninsula and worsening inter-Korean relations. This will not help at all to settle the nuclear issue or the missile issue,” it said Sunday.

“It is the president’s view not to raise a shrill voice but to respond calmly,” it said.

“The possible launch of a Daepodong missile had been widely publicized in advance. It was aimed at nobody and did not lead to a state of emergency in either our country or other countries.”

Roh’s government has expressed caution at a US and Japanese push to slap further sanctions on North Korea at the United Nations Security Council.

President Roh has been feeling the heat due to his lackluster response to the North Korean missile tests, so he pulled out the first play in the Roh Playbook, which is blame the Japanese. Why not? It usually works despite the idiocy of the comments.

How can he say the missiles were aimed at no one? They were obviously aimed at provoking Japan by landing close to their shores with no fore-warning in advance not to mention almost hitting an Asiana Airliner. Then if the Taepo-dong2 had actually worked who knows where it would have landed. If it would have landed any where near the US shores you would have seen a real increase in tensions.

I’m all for a cool and calculated response to the North Korean threat, but could someone please tell President Roh to shut the hell up.

I hope this idiot learned his lesson:

Pvt. John S. McCombs of the Army¿s 35th Air Defense Artillery Brigade was sentenced June 24 to reduction from E-2 to the Army¿s lowest pay grade, E-1, plus 150 days in jail. A five-member jury handed up the sentence in a court-martial that began June 23 at Camp Humphreys. Earlier, the jury found McCombs guilty of assaulting a noncommissioned officer and of drunk and disorderly conduct.

The Army tried McCombs under its rules for special courts-martial before Lt. Col. Mark Sposato, a military judge. The events that led to the court-martial began the night of March 17 at a taxi stand outside Osan Air Base, prosecutors said.

There, McCombs and two companions looked to take a taxi to Suwon Air Base, their duty station. An Air Force master sergeant also stationed there asked if he could share the cab ride. Three of the servicemembers sat in back, the airman in the middle and McCombs on his left, according to the prosecution.

Enroute to Suwon, McCombs addressed the airman, who was in civilian clothes, with ¿the N word,¿ prosecutors said. Both McCombs and the airman are white. The airman identified himself as a senior NCO and told McCombs his use of the racial slur was inappropriate and not to use it again.

At that point, the prosecution said, McCombs attacked the NCO, punching him repeatedly in the head.

At least he didn’t assault the taxi driver. Anyway I’m all for sending these idiots to jail. The Camp Humphreys Confinement Facility is no country club, so five months there should hopefully send a message to other people who like to get drunk and disorderly to modify their conduct.

Oh My News has an interesting article about Korean-American CNN news reporter Kyung Lah.  She had a lot of interesting things to say about growing up in America and the Korean-American community in general in America:

Americans see Koreans in a myopic manner because Koreans tend to sequester themselves within American society. I have felt frustration to some degree myself with how much Koreans see church as the center of their lives, but do not have a tradition of reaching out to the larger community. My family, and the Koreans they knew, did not do any outreach to the community. The most basic problem is that they did not know how to reach out. That gap created a problem with the community that they so wanted to serve.

Some Korean immigrants felt unease as people new to the country. Korean-Americans in the future have to make an effort to reach out.

At the same time, there is a problem in the U.S. of the next generation of Koreans not identifying with Korea themselves, not feeling any connection with that country. Sometimes we even see resentment on the part of younger Koreans that they had to play the role of translator and mediator with America for their parents.

I tend to think that the Asian community in general doesn’t flex their collective muscles enough in politics and main stream American society in general compared to other minority groups in America.  Just like Ms. Lah’s parents the Asian community may be more focused on working hard and trying to educate their children then worrying about politics and other areas of American society:

I am ethnically Korean. I was born in Korea, in Seoul, and immigrated here at the age of seven with my family. My parents were the typical Korean immigrants who opened up a liquor store in Chicago. They embraced the American dream, raised their kids, and made sure to send them off to good universities. My experience followed the standard pattern for Korean-Americans. Much of my family life revolved around the church, and that is where I had my first experiences with the community. On Saturdays I was at church for Korean study school and at service on Sundays. My experience was pretty representative.

Some may remember the Daniel Hong controversy from last summer where he speculated that Asian reporters were not hired due to racist reasons along with a host of other complaints against whites in America which I proved false by providing example of both female and male Asian reporters in America.  So I find it interesting that more and more Asian reporters are appearing on televisions every day, not to mention the success of Korean actors such as Daniel Dae Kim and Yu-jin Kim.

Maybe this is all a sign of not only the “Korean Wave” hitting America, but an “Asian Wave” in general.

Nomad provides a link to this story about US soldiers rescuing an elderly Korean woman and her handicapped daughter from a fire in Uijongbu:

Two Camp Red Cloud Soldiers saved an elderly woman and her handicapped daughter when a sandwich shop caught fire just outside the camp’s front gate July 1.

Pvt. Reid Erickson and Pvt. Russell McCanless Jr. of Headquarters and Headquarters Support Company, Special Troops Battalion, were first on the scene when New York Sub sandwich shop caught fire.

¿We walked out of 7 Club to see whether or not I could do handstand pushups, and when I was doing them I noticed something behind us,¿ Erickson said. Standing and turning around, he saw smoke coming from the shop.

Rushing to the fire, they tried opening the glass door to the sandwich shop to find it hot and locked. The Soldiers then sought assistance at a Korean Police booth outside the gate.

¿We realized when we came back that there was an apartment upstairs and rang the buzzer,¿ Erickson said. ¿Finally an elderly lady came downstairs and she didn¿t speak English. The only thing she could say is `Come in! Come in!¿ She was pretty frantic about it, so we ran upstairs.¿

Upstairs, the elderly woman pointed toward a bedroom behind thick smoke.

¿She pointed toward the bedroom and her daughter came crawling out. She was paralyzed,¿ Erickson said.

By the time the Soldiers got both women downstairs via an external stairwell on the side of the building, the paramedics and fire department had already arrived.

Great job by these two guys and good thing PVT Erickson can do handstand pushups. I don’t hold much hope if this story being covered in the Korean media though. I bet if they jumped on top of a taxi cab after rescuing the family than it would make the Korean news.

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UPDATE: Here is the link to an article in the Stars and Stripes:

Neither Jung nor her daughter suffered serious injuries from the fire. For that, the soldiers have Jung¿s eternal gratitude.

¿How can anyone enter a burning house to save a stranger? It is not an easy act at all,¿ Jung said in a phone interview. ¿And what I am truly impressed about by the American men is that they know exactly how to treat a disabled person in a dangerous situation. I can¿t thank them enough in words.¿

I wonder if these quotes will ever be published in the Korean media?