Look who is making a visit to the Dokdo islets:

South Korea’s ruling party chairman made a surprise visit to a string of disputed islets Monday and said the country must defend them at any cost, amid heightened tensions with Japan over rival claims to the territory.

Chung Dong-young’s visit came as a top Japanese diplomat was set to arrive in South Korea to try to repair bilateral ties battered by recent spats over the islets, known as Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima in Japanese.

Japan’s Senior Vice Foreign Minister for Foreign Affairs Yasuhisa Shiozaki was scheduled to meet South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon later Monday.

Chung, a former unification minister, warned that Japanese moves to deny South Korea’s sovereignty over the islets would bring unhappy results to both sides, and that Japan will be held responsible.

“Dokdo cannot be the subject of any negotiation or dispute,” Chung said on his one-day trip to the islets, according to a transcript provided by the Uri Party.

This is really no surprise that Chung is trying to play to Korean nationalism to improve his own political standing. As the former South Korean Unification Minister he was one of the masters of using anti-Americanism to improve his own political standing as well. If Chung likes Dokdo so much how about he just stays out there and doesn’t come back.

Is this the best the anti-US hate groups can do to rally people on a weekend none the less?:

Two groups of protesters gathered near Yongsan and the ministry to protest plans by South Korea and the United States to move the U.S. Forces Korea headquarters south and triple the size of Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, according to Korean police at Yongsan-gu station.

The first group of 80 people gathered closer to Gate 5 from 8:30 to 10 a.m., police said. The second, larger group of about 300, many apparently college students, gathered near the ministry’s entrance to protest both the Humphreys expansion and tuition costs, police said.

What I find funny about these people is that they are probably the same people who used to protest about Yongsan needing to be moved out of Seoul.  Now that Yongsan is preparing to relocate they are now protesting that as well.  So the bottom line is that no matter what USFK does you can’t win with these people, so that just makes them rather irrelevant.

You know how Koreans always have to compare some place or somebody to something overseas before it can become famous in Korea, such as BOA being Korea’s Britney Spears or Cheju being Korea’s Hawaii.  Well, now Brian over at Cathartidae has compiled a list of Who’s Who in Korea.  So now you will be able to keep all the Korea’s Backstreet Boys and Korea’s Justin Timberlakes straight.

Brian over at Gangwon Notes has provided an update on the progress of the reconstruction of Naksan Temple in Gangwon Province after the forest fire that destroyed much of the temple complex that Brian also provided outstanding on the scene reporting about here and here. You can also see some pictures I took about two months after the fire here.

Two of Brian’s friends that went to the temple with him, the Seoul Hero and Seoul Man also have some nice pics up of their visit to Naksan Temple as well, plus pics of a killer rabbit.

It looks like progress in the reconstruction of the temple is going well and hopefully it continues, because Naksan Temple was one of the prettiest temples in Korea and hopefully after the reconstruction it will be that way again.

Korean-American golfer Michelle Wie has landed in Korea and apparently the reception was quite large.  No word if she needed riot police yet:

American golfer Michelle Wie received a rapturous reception on Saturday when she arrived in South Korea her parents’ home country, for her latest brush with male opposition next week.

The Hawaiian-born 16-year-old, the top draw at the Asian Tour’s SK Telecom Open at the Sky 72 Golf Club in Incheon starting on Thursday, was met by hundreds of reporters, cameramen and well wishers.

“I never imagined this many people would show up to welcome me,” Yonhap News quoted Wie as telling a news conference. “I’m so glad to be back. I want to try lots of Korean food.

If Wie misses the cut like she usually does in these tournaments, she will have plenty of time to eat Korean food.  So far Wie doesn’t appear to be having the same amount of fan fare as during Hines Ward’s trip to Korea last month despite her father’s actions to show Wie as being a true Korean.  I wonder if this is why Koreans maybe aren’t jumping on the Wie bandwagon as much as Ward’s:

Wie, despite her U.S. nationality, has overshadowed South Korean women players in popularity even as some surged to LPGA Tour title success, while the Hawaiian has gone without a major title.

Four South Koreans have now tasted major success with Pak Se-ri getting the ball rolling in 1998 and Grace Park following suit at the 2004 Kraft Nabisco Championship.

Wie hasn’t won a major golf tournament yet professionally and yet she is much more famous than all the other female Korean golfers combined though they have won numerous championships between themselves.  It has to be frustrating for those Korean female golfers to be continuously upstaged by a 16 year old that has won nothing, even in their own country.

This is one sicko:

A recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism in combat action in Afghanistan ended his 19-year career here Friday after pleading guilty to three counts of child pornography and soliciting sex from a 13-year-old girl.

Tech. Sgt. Theodore D. Mirich, 39, a flight engineer with the 33rd Rescue Squadron, was sentenced to 60 months confinement, a bad-conduct discharge and reduction in rank to E-1 at the end of a daylong general court-martial.

This is what the guy did:

During the trial, the judge privately reviewed 40 photographs obtained from Mirich¿ computer that depicted children in various sexual positions with adults. He also considered a lengthy stipulation of facts in which Mirich admitted to downloading and sharing child pornography between Aug. 1, 2003, and Dec. 29, 2005.

Mirich also admitted that he sent obscene photos of himself to the daughter of a Marine gunnery sergeant living on Kadena, and solicited her to have sex with him.

Just makes you wonder how a guy with 19 years of service would even fathom doing something like this, but then again it makes you wonder how long he has been getting away with it too?

I just got back from watching the powerful United 93 movie that reenacts the fateful events of September 11, 2001 based around the people on United Flight 93 that crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after the passengers fought against the hijackers and prevented the plane from hitting it’s designated target which is believed to be the US Capitol building.  This was actually the first time I went to a movie theater where policemen were positioned around the theater.  Viewers will leave the theater feeling angry at the terrorists but not enough to cause trouble in the theater as I am presuming was the reason police were at the movie.

The movie opens up showing the actions of the people on United 93 arriving at the airport and the crew of the plane beginning preparations for the flight that day.  The actors that play the roles of all these people all seem so normal.  There are no larger than life Sylvester Stallones or Brad Pitts in this movie, just normal people doing normal every day things.  This movie really brought the life the fact that real people died that day.  To often people look at the victims of 9/11 as just some distant statistic, much like US military casualties in Iraq are used as a statistic to justify one’s political leanings, while ignoring the fact real people died to make that statistic.

The face most Americans remember from the hijackers was that of Mohamed Atta, but besides that very little was known about them.  This movie gives the terrorists a face and it was quite scary.  These 9/11 terrorists were scarier than any Taliban fighter because they look like you or me.  The movie further brings the terrorists to live by showing them washing and praying in the hotel and than arriving and checking in through security at the airport before carrying out their mission.

The movie also simultaneously shows in tragic detail the bureaucratic confusion that was gripping the FAA and the US Air Force at the time.  The FAA personnel much like the flight 93 passengers were also very well portrayed as just normal people going about their day when the hijackings happened.  People will leave this movie shaking their heads at how little prepared both the FAA and the Air Force were to handle anything like 9/11.  Initially FAA managers would not believe any planes had been hijacked.  When they finally realized the planes had in fact been hijacked, no one was willing to make a decision about whether to scramble fighter planes and when they finally did get the planes airborne no one could decide whether to shoot down the hijacked planes or not.  Everyone ended up waiting for the President to make a decision, but by the time the decision to shoot down the hijacked aircraft was made the planes had already hit their targets.  The authorities were doing everything they could, but there was just no governmental system in place to deal with what was going on.  One leaves the movie hoping that these bureaurcratic and systematic problems have been corrected by now.

The portrayal of the actions before the crash of flight 93 is really eye opening and heartbreaking at the same time.  When the hijackers first sprung into action they just stabbed random people in the first class section and the rest of the first class passengers ran back to the economy section of the plane where two hijackers kept the passengers detained by one of the terrorists posing as having a bomb.  The other two hijackers break into the cockpit by holding a knife to a flight attendants neck.  Once the pilots opened the door the two terrorists immediately attacked and killed the pilots and seized control of the plane.

One of the most sickening portions of the movie was when after they killed the pilots and took control of the plane one of the terrorists tells the other that the flight attendant is needed anymore and he then says an Islamic prayer while the woman is pleading for her life and then sacrifices her to Allah by ripping out her throat with the knife.  That is probably the scene I will remember more than any other in the movie because it shows who these people really are.  Since September 11th Americans have become so desensitized to who the terrorists really are, with all the “Islam is the religion of peace” talk and America is the real villains in the War on Terror.  That scene just shows that we are fighting a war against religious fanatics that no matter how much you want to appease and plead for peace with them they will still rip out your throat.

At the back of the plane the passengers begin placing calls on the airphones to their families.  Hearing the reenactment of those phone calls is truly heartbreaking to listen to.  Through these phone calls the passengers learned of the planes that flew into the World Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon.  The passengers now know this is a suicide mission and decide to gather weapons to attack the terrorists with.  The passenger led by Todd Beamer and Mark Bingham spring their attack and subdue the two terrorists in the back of the plane and then they did something I didn’t even know, they actually did break into the cockpit.  They busted open the cockpit door and were fighting with the two terrorists inside the airplane for control of the plane before it crashed.  These passengers were truly heroes and should rightfully be remembered as so.

The director of the movie Paul Greengrass did an excellent job in creating this movie.  I think the fact that he is British helped because a Hollywood director would have politicized the movie which would have been a shame.  Greengrass in great detail stuck to recreating the events that day by using the airport security camera footage, cockpit voice recordings, and the passengers phone calls during the hijacking.  Sticking to the facts is powerful enough and doesn’t need a political message attached to it.

These same terrorists from flight 93 are the same Zarquawi terrorists randomly blowing up and killing civilians and children in Iraq right now.  It is important that people don’t forget this.  There is only one way to deal with them and that is to kill them before they rip out your throat.  After watching the movie you feel September 11th all over again.  Just like watching Saving Private Ryan was not good for some World War II vets this movie may not be good for those with personal connections to 9/11.  However, for everyone else this movie will remind people of the fact that we are fighting religious extremists bent on killing us and like the passengers on United 93, we are the good guys and never forget it.

How come I don’t think this is going to work:

The Defense Ministry will put up a barbed wire fence around farming land in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province designated as the new site for U.S. Forces Korea headquarters before rice planting begins. The ministry is trying to prevent locals and activists from planting rice there because they hope to delay construction of the new USFK base. The fence will be some 20 km long and 1.80 m high and surround the entire farmland, a ministry source said Thursday. The source said the ministry will be able to finish the work in a day and is considering whether to hire private contractors or mobilize military engineering troops for the work.

So what is going to stop the hate groups from tearing down the fence if the Defense troops won’t even be armed?

The ministry says even if it mobilizes military forces to build the fence, they will not be allowed to carry batons and shields. ¿They will be unarmed and have construction equipment only, so they will not confront residents there directly,¿ it added.

The local riot police has already said that they are not going to help.

Gyeonggi Provisional Police Agency Commissioner Oe Cheong-su on Thursday said police would reject a Defense Ministry request to provide security during the fencing in of the site for a new U.S. Forces Korea headquarters in Pyeongtaek. After plans for a ditch to keep residents and activists from farming the fields failed on April 7, the ministry said it would study setting up wire fences instead. “Under the Status of Forces Agreement, the police undertake security duty at protected military facilities like American bases. But there are no legal grounds for the police to do so in areas military facilities have yet to move to since they are property of the Defense Ministry,” Oe reasoned. “If the ministry is afraid of damage to the fences, it had better hire security contractors.

So who is going to stop the anti-US hate groups from doing this to the Defense ministry soldiers tasked to put up the fence?:

Now where is the government you may ask in all of this?  Let’s see you have an agreed upon land acquisition deal with Korea’s major ally the US that has only brought the greatest stability, power, and wealth that the Korean nation has ever seen; being derailed by a bunch of serial anti-US hate groups that get pissed off over any USFK “provocation” much less this land deal.  If a USFK serviceman farts around them, they would probably claim environmental damage and demand compensation and an apology from the USFK commander.

Plus the Korean government has people openly breaking the law by occupying abandoned buildings including a government owned buildings such as the Daechu-ri Elementary School; and what are they doing?  Absolutely nothing so far.  Why aren’t these people in jail?  This is why::

Meanwhile, some 1,000 leaflets comparing protests against the base to the 1980 Gwangju Democratic Uprising have been distributed in Pyeongtaek. Under the title of ¿Pyeongtaek May Become a Second Gwangju,¿ the leaflets demand, ¿The defense minister should resign because he defines the people of Pyeongtaek as enemies.¿ It is unclear who distributed them.

Why should the government be concerned about the ghosts of Gwangju?  Korea is a thriving democracy and not a military dictatorship now, plus no troops are going to go into Pyeongtaek and shoot people which was the case in Gwangju.  These people just needed to be loaded up and taken to jail.  These hate groups are trying to leverage public sympathy by bringing up the Gwangju Massacre when it is in fact them that is attacking the policemen and then claiming that the police used brutality against them.  It is a well known hate group tactic to beat the police and then claim police brutality in Korea in order to gain public sympathy.

This Camp Humphreys issue just goes to show how weak the Roh Moo-hyun government is in Korea.  Is there any leadership on this issue?  The only one now showing any leadership is General Bell as he has recently been publicly speaking out against these people.  However, leadership on the South Korean side is in short supply.  This whole issue should be viewed as a national disgrace.   If I was a Korean citizen I would be ashamed to see fellow Koreans beating the hell out of these 20 year old mandatory service draftees who are just trying to complete their service to their country.  Korean politicians should be disgraced over the strategic consequences the entire country may face if USFK decides to pull out of Korea over this issue.  But no one cares because there are more important things to worry about like declaring war over Japanese research vessel surveying some worthless rocks.

This just doesn’t make sense to me:

South Korea plans a ‘focused’ campaign, including special holiday packages, to woo the Indian traveller.

‘We are hoping for a five percent increase in the number of tourists from India this year,’ said Korea Tourism Organisation (KTO) chief Kim Jong-Min here Thursday.

Now why doesn’t this make sense you may ask?  Well this is why:

‘India is a significant market for South Korea. Considering the potential India has in the tourism sector, KTO aims to promote the destination among prospective travellers through focused and coordinated efforts,’ he said.

Citing survey reports saying that an average Indian traveller spends $300 on vacations, the KTO chief said, ‘South Korea has lots to offer at $1,500, including travel expenses.’

India, domestically has a much wider variety of pristine beaches and mountains than Korea for significantly cheaper prices so Korea’s natural beauty is not going to draw Indian tourists so what is the KTO counting on then to draw in those extra tourists? I think I have a feeling I know what it is.  I could be wrong though, and maybe all those Indian tourists are in fact just heading to Korea to see the wonders of Dokdo?

Thank God this guy isn’t in charge of US foreign policy:

Zirkle has sought to call attention to his low-budget campaign with a series of news conferences and startling statements.

On Thursday, Zirkle suggested the unification of North and South Korea and giving North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il 60 days in which to abdicate or face the threat of a unified invasion by the United States and China.

To get the North Korean leader to agree to abdication, Zirkle suggested tempting him with international amnesty for his crimes — and the offer of a professorship at either Beijing University or Yale University.

Kim Jong Il might be more tempted by a professorship at Columbia or Berkeley.  He would be treated like a rock star there.  Would his course be called,  Jucheology 101.

Hat Tip: Party Pooper