First we had sailors trying on some new ACUs for duty in Iraq, now it looks like some Air Force officers may get to try on some ACUs as well:

The service has determined it has too many officers who received their commissions in 2002 and 2003 and a board met in April to determine who will stay in. According to a press release issued by the Air Force Personnel Center, 843 officers ?or just more than 40 percent of those who joined in the two-year period ?will be let go.

Judy Grojean, a spokeswoman for AFPC, said Tuesday from Randolph Air Force Base in Texas that officials were reluctant to answer further questions until those affected had been notified.

(…)

Those who aren’t retained are eligible to seek positions in the reserve or Guard or submit packages to transfer to the Army. They also may apply for civil service jobs. They’re also eligible for variable separation packages.

According to the press release, the officers will be separated no later than Sept. 29. It was not stated how soon the departures might begin.

There are going to be some pissed off Air Force officers in the coming weeks, but the Pentagon is trying to cut fat where ever it can in order to boost the number of junior officers into the Army.

The Chosun has a pretty good article today about the image consultants that are hard at work cultivating the teenage golfer’s brand image:

Her Korean-ness also plays a part. Despite her American nationality, when Wie answers questions asked in English in her not-so-fluent Korean, and when she introduces herself by her Korean name Sung-mi instead of Michelle, hearts here melt.

Wie stressed that heritage during last week¿s visit. In contrast to a visit three years ago when she spoke both in English and Korean, this time she several times asked to be called Sung-mi. It seems part of an emerging strategy that saw her offer greetings in Japanese when she went to Japan for the Casio World Open last November and endear herself to locals by saying she likes sushi and Japanese noodles. An advertising professional says a surname like Wie will also go down well in China.

Her girlish image is grist to the mills of a marketing industry infatuated with youth. Meeting the press, Wie recited a string of Korean dramas and movies she claimed to love and confessed to dreams of meeting such idols of Korean teenagers as Chang Dong-kun and Lee Joon-ki. Another image consultant expressed doubt Wie had actually seen the soaps.

But Wie has 20-strong team of handlers. Her agency is William Morris, with 108 years of marketing the famous behind it, two of whose staff came along on the trip. Her image consultant David Lipman also does what he can for Angelina Jolie. They are joined by six lawyers, a nutritionist and a designer or two.

I do have to say that all those consultants are doing one heck of job promoting someone who has won nothing yet. The hype around Michelle Wie reminds me so much of the former hype that followed Russian tennis player Anna Kournikova and look how far that got her.

At least one segment of Korean society has had enough of the violence in Pyeongtaek over the Camp Humphreys expansion:

Parents of soldiers injured in clashes with protesters opposing the relocation of U.S. military installations here roundly criticized the Defense Ministry for not protecting the unarmed troops constructing fences around the base site in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi province.
The violence broke out after anti-U.S. demonstrators broke through riot police lines late Friday afternoon to try to cut down the fences.
Thirty soldiers were injured, a ministry official said; five are still at a military hospital. (….)

Soldiers’ parents turned their wrath on the demonstrators as well as the ministry. “Taking away their helmets and beating up people can only mean they want to kill people. I don’t know whether what they argue for is wrong or right, but it’s hard to understand their actions,” said Lee Gyeong-suk, 45, the mother of Private Lee Kang-woo, 21, who was hit on the head with a stone in the melee.
Police said a task force of 20 officers had been formed to search for and arrest three officials of the civic groups that organized the bulk of the demonstrations around the base area.

Maybe the riot police should get their pissed off ajuma mothers into battle gear to fight these people. I am willing to bet these mothers would beat these rioters up even worse than the riot police did on Friday.

Some how I doubt the Korean Human Rights Commission will come out and demand an investigation of the protesters’ actions like they routinely do of the riot police.

I was quite shocked myself when I saw this footage of US soldiers in action in Iraq.  It is so shocking that even the MSM can’t air it.

I have a hard time believing this is going to happen:

South Korea’s prosecution said Saturday it will sternly deal with those who staged violent protests against a plan to expand a U.S. military base south of Seoul.

About 540 demonstrators were arrested Thursday after they clashed with riot police and soldiers who evicted them from their headquarters, an elementary school in Pyeongtaek, about 70 kilometers south of Seoul. Hundreds on both sides were injured.

The prosecution requested a court issue warrants to officially arrest 37 of those suspected of taking part in violent protests, said Lee Kwi-nam, head of the prosecution’s public security bureau.

If the South Korean authorities want to discourage the protesters then they need to give them all heavy fines and imprison the ring leaders.  The priest, if you can really call him that, leading these protests is still running around causing trouble.  He is the one that needs to be in jail.  However, enforcing laws is not a strong point of Korean society, especially when it comes to violently attacking 20 year old draftee policemen with metal pipes and bamboo poles like these idiot protesters have been doing.

The War on Terror is being fought on more than the streets of Baghdad, but also on computer screens in the bedrooms of Islamic youths:

Tech-savvy militants from al-Qaeda and other groups have modified video war games so that US troops play the role of bad guys in running gunfights against heavily armed Islamic radical heroes, US Defence Department official and contractors told Congress.

The games appear on militant websites, where youths as young as seven can play at being troop-killing urban guerrillas after registering with the site’s sponsors.

“What we have seen is that any video game that comes out … they’ll modify it and change the game for their needs,” said Dan Devlin, a Defence Department public diplomacy specialist.

This really isn’t a surprisng inovation, but it does show the lengths that Islamic extremist are having to go to now in order to recruit more youths to waste their lives trying to stop democracy in Iraq, while the recruiters like Zarqawi roll in the dough and buying new tennis shoes.

I wonder if the anti-US hate groups in Korea like Hanchongryun or the Korean Federation of Trade Unions has thought about making a video game mod of the Battle of Pyeongtaek yet?

The first group ever of North Korean refugees allowed asylum status in the United States has arrived:

Six refugees from North Korea, including four women who say they were victims of sexual slavery or forced marriages, have fled to the United States, a senator said Saturday.

The group is the first from North Korea to be given official refugee status since passage of a 2004 law that makes it easier for North Koreans to apply for such status.

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, said the six refugees arrived at an undisclosed U.S. location Friday night from a Southeast Asian nation. He would not identify from which nation they came because of worries about security for their families and to avoid diplomatic complications with the country that sent them.

“This is a great act of compassion by the United States and the other countries involved,” said Brownback, a co-sponsor of the law. He said that the refugees’ arrival in the United States showed “the act is working” by making the refugees’ human rights a part of U.S. policy toward the North.

It is very common for North Korean women who are hiding secretly in northern China to become victims of sexual slavery and forced marriages because if they don’t agree to such practices than they can be turned over to the Chinese authorities which means deportation back to North Korea and from there the gulag.

Hopefully this will be more than just a one time event because this will give refugees hiding in China and other Asian countries another outlet to seek asylum besides South Korea.  This news is not going to make South Korea to happy though.  South Korea is actively trying to prevent North Koreans from defecting in order to appease the Kim Jong Il government in North Korea.  Appeasing the North Koreans is of more interest to the current South Korean government than human rights of refugees.

Like I said before, I will be more impressed when she actually wins something:

Michelle Wie slid to a two-over-par 74 at the rain-shortened SK Telecom Open in South Korea to finish 14 strokes behind winner Prom Meesawat of Thailand.

Hawaiian teenager Wie, who made the cut in a men’s tournament for the first time, was disappointed by her final day display.

“It just didn’t really go the way I wanted today,” she said.

Wie mixed two birdies against four bogeys at the Sky 72 Golf Club course for a three-round, three-under 213. The event was re-scheduled for three rounds after Saturday’s washout.

“I did my best, but the result was not as satisfying as I would have liked,” Wie said after her final round. “But the most important thing is that I tried my best,” she added.

I still maintain she should worry more about winning an LPGA event before tackling these PGA events.

Michelle Wie has finally done it, she has made the cut in a major mens tournament, in Korea no less:

Sixteen-year-old Michelle Wie on Friday became the first women to make the cut in a major men’s tour event for 61 years at Incheon, South Korea.

Wie fired four birdies on her way to a three-under 69 in the second round of the Asian Tour’s SK Telecom Open to put at her at five under.

The last woman to make the final two rounds of a senior men’s event was Babe Zaharias at the 1945 Los Angeles Open.

The Hawaiian schoolgirl had been bidding to make her first halfway cut in eight appearances against the men.

I will be more impressed when she win’s a major women’s tournament.  It just seems to me that she should be focusing more on being the best LPGA golfer which she is not, before taking on the PGA tour.

The Chosun has an interesting article on the revenue that Michelle Wie is bringing in for the appearance in Korea:

SK Telecom levered the golf tour to the international level in terms of scale and significance by inviting Choi, last year¿s champion, and global sports star Wie. But the cost was steep. In addition to the US$700,000 appearance fee for the pair, the company had to fork out for air tickets, accommodation and security for Wie, her parents and her four staff.

But the company seems happy, having already recovered the appearance fee for Wie with the W700 million(US$700,000) MBC paid for the broadcasting rights for all four rounds.

Kia Motors offered more than W100 million to SK Telecom for golf lessons from Wie for its customers. Unlike past golf tours, the event is expected to break even from ticket sales alone.

All this money for someone who hasn’t won anything unlike the Korean female golfers that have multiple major LPGA tournament championships.  The marketing of Michelle Wie is really amazing.  I bet very few people even know she hasn’t won anything yet.

I don’t claim to be a fortune teller, but when it comes to the anti-US hate groups their playbook is easy to decipher for those of us who have been in Korea a while and yet the Korean authorities still can’t seem to figure it out. After a successful operation that removed the anti-US protesters from the annexed land needed for the Camp Humphreys expansion project; I predicted the protesters would come right back and tear down the wire fence if it was not monitored by security guards.

What happens, the protesters come right back and tear down the fence and run wild within the perimeter and try to even break into the Camp Humphreys perimeter.

A day after the Defense Ministry forcefully evacuated protesters from an area in Pyeongtaek slated for the relocation of U.S. military installations, about 2,500 activists staged abrupt demonstrations by cutting through the fences built around the site of the future base.
About 2,000 protesters from around the nation broke through the police line to seal off the area from outsiders. They marched three hours to join about 500 other protesters who had been scouting in Daechu Village, where the base construction is slated.
The group held a rally, criticizing the Defense Ministry’s forcible eviction of residents from the site. They also cut the fences, built on Thursday after evicting the protesting activists, in 20 places.
The protesters also tried to enter Camp Humphreys, the U.S. military base in Pyeongtaek near by the site, and scuffled with police trying to block them.

If they will throw these people in jail with heavy fines for assaulting policemen and breaking the law then they would not have to worry about these repeated clashes with these hate groups. But of course as this Chosun Ilbo editorial noted, the political leadership in Korea is so weak and incompetent they in fact actually encourage the violence on one hand while saying the US-ROK alliance is important on the other.

The Pyeongtaek affair is complicated. In terms of moving a military base alone, it is a defense issue, but it is also a diplomatic issue involving our relationship with the U.S, a public security issue dealing with illegal protests and a financial issue involving an increasing tax burden. Anti-American activists are trying to turn it into an ideological struggle, calling it a “second Gwangju Democratic Uprising” after bloodily suppressed protests in 1980.

The administration and ruling party should therefore make every effort to persuade the people that relocating the bases is inevitable and to minimize problems and costs. But government and ruling-party officials, who like to take credit whenever possible, were in hiding, leaving the affair entirely to the defense minister as if he alone were responsible.

To start at the top, the president is fond of speaking to the public, with his ¿dialogue with the people,” “statement to the people” or “letter to the people.” Yet he hasn’t said a word of concern about the affair. On the eve of Thursday¿s clashes he said, “We’ve been greatly indebted to the U.S., but we cannot afford to be obliged to the U.S. forever.” That rather sounds like an invitation to the anti-American activists.

As I mentioned before as well, the human rights activists are already condemning the police force for excessive force, while ignoring the violence of the anti-US hate groups:

With the clash between police and protestors in Pyongtaek Thursday, resulting in more than 200 injured, critics are questioning whether the police used excessive force in suppressing the rally.

Law enforcement authorities detained more than 520 demonstrators after farmers and activists collided violently with riot police in a rally protesting the expansion of a U.S. military camp located in the area.

Police said 210 were injured in Thursday¿s incident _ 117 police officers and 93 protestors _ and the vernacular dailies Kyunghyang Sinmun and Hankyoreh also claimed injuries to some of their reporters covering the scene.

The violence in Pyeongtaek has actually gained some media coverage in the United States. I saw reports on both CNN and Fox News about the protests. Here is the Fox News report. However, this coverage is to little to really shape any public opinion in the United States against Korea. Every time the US media begins to pick up on the violence against the US in Korea, that is when you see the government shows some leadership and clamps down on the hate groups to keep them quiet. Don’t expect any clamp down from the heads of the government any time soon. The Defense Ministry is being totally stuck with handling the political ramifications of the current violence as the politicians hide or take turns making trips to Dokdo. How can a government not comment on the violence and an issue as significant to the national interest as the USFK reorganization?

I’ll provide more updates as things develop, but of course check out the Marmot’s Hole as well for more great coverage of events.