Here is another reason why criminals shouldn’t fear the South Korean justice system:

A Seoul court has ordered that the South Korean government pay about $34,000 to the family of a murdered university student because local prosecutors mistakenly allowed an American suspect to return home, according to court officials.

The decision from early this week ends a seven-year fight from the victim’s family, who was outraged that South Korean officials failed to stop Arthur Patterson, one of the two suspects in the case, from leaving South Korea, according to a family spokesman.

(…)

In April 1997, Cho Chong-pil was stabbed to death in a Burger King restroom in Itaewon. Investigators and experts at the time said the stabbing appeared to be random and similar to an American gang-style killing. Two American teens, Patterson and Eddie Lee, were charged in the case.

Patterson, the dependent of a contract worker for U.S. Forces Korea, was charged with possessing a deadly weapon and destroying evidence. He was convicted and sentenced to 18 months. Lee, who had no direct connection to USFK, was charged with murder and sentenced to life in prison. A higher court, however, reduced that sentence to 20 years and ultimately acquitted Lee for lack of evidence after he had served 18 months.

Patterson also was released early from prison in 1998, in the annual Aug. 15 liberation day amnesty granted by the South Korean government to some 2,000 convicts. Prosecutors promised to pursue the case and perhaps file a harsher charge against Patterson. Yet after his release from prison, he was allowed to leave South Korea, the court’s ruling this week admitted.

Amazing someone originally convicted of a brutal murder and sentenced for 20 years is later released while his accomplice is later released as well by a special pardon.

For those not familiar with Burger King murder case here is a quick recap of the murder:

On April 3, 1997, Joong Pil and his steady girlfriend Jung Eun were on their way to her home in Itaewon after studying at the Kook Ki Won Library. They stopped to use the restroom at the fast food restaurant. Jung Eun went to order soft drinks and Joong Pil went into the restroom.

The motive for the murder was that Lee killed the victim just for fun. After killing Cho, Lee went back to the table and hung out again with Patterson like nothing had happened while Cho slowly bled to death in the restroom. Similar to the Penich murder case another cold blooded murderer was allowed to go free. Now both these punks are running around free in America instead of rotting in jail where they can’t kill anyone else just for fun.

Here is a good example of how an alert blogger was able to help authorities arrest a would be terrorist inside the US trying to organize a terrorist cell. Get this he was an illegal Jordanian immigrant using library computers to try and organize a cell to conduct a terrorist attack in the US.

Without the Patriot Act, authorities would not have been able to monitor his actions on the library computer. Does anyone doubt that the terrorists out there are hoping for the end of the Patriot Act?

The South Korean Ministry of Information is now urging users of Windows 98 to change operating systems to Linux:

During the meeting, the Ministry of Information and Communication urged the other agencies replace Windows 98 with the open-source software Linux, the sources said.

According to industry data, Windows 98 runs on around 13 percent of the total 27 million personal computers in South Korea, most of which are being used at government agencies.

Why don’t the users just upgrade to Window NT instead of using the old buggy Windows 98? I wonder if the move to change to the Linux system is in response to the anti-trust case being waged against Microsoft in Korea? Maybe this is a way to put added pressure on Microsoft to settle the case as they are currently appealing the latest ruling against them.

US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon have reached a compromise agreement over the the USFK “strategic flexibility” issue:

South Korea has agreed to allow the United States to use troops stationed on the Korean Peninsula as a rapid deployment force to deal with possible conflicts around Northeast Asia.
The agreement, coming after three years of tough negotiations, is part of Washington’s global plan to give its forces greater “strategic flexibility.”

There is one catch however:

Reflecting Seoul’s concerns of over the changing role of the USFK, the statement also read: “In the implementation of strategic flexibility, the United States respects the ROK position that it shall not be involved in a regional conflict in Northeast Asia against the will of the Korean people.”

South Korean officials said they intentionally left the agreement at a “broad” level without setting rules or guidelines.

“We will be discussing details as situations arise,” said Kim Sook, director-general of North American bureau at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

He said the agreement should not be a source of concern, considering the agreed principle that South Korea will not get involved in a regional conflict against its will. The chances of the USFK having to use its “strategic flexibility” are slim, Kim added.

What the South Koreans are concerned about is the possibility that USFK troops would be deployed to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack. The South Korean government does not want to become involved in a war with China. I find this a little ironic since the situation the Taiwanese government faces is so similar to the situation on the Korean peninsula. The Taiwanese have been able to achieve amazing economic success while simultaneously living every day with an aggressive communist nation threatening to attack them just like South Korea. You would think the Koreans and Taiwanese would be more readily acceptable to defending each other, but it just goes to show how successful Beijing has been at politically isolating Taiwan over the past 20 years by offering nations like South Korea economic access to the Chinese markets in exchange for isolating the Taiwanese politically.

With that said I don’t think the USFK strategic flexibility has anything to do with deploying troops in defense of Taiwan. I think it has more to do with redeploying soldiers out of Korea in a face saving manner to reduce the US footprint in the country. The scenario would be that troops are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan and then they don’t come back to Korea, they just redeploy stateside.

Force reductions are going to be a reality in the future and this “strategic flexibility” allows the US to withdraw troops in a face saving manner to where it doesn’t look like soldiers are being removed from Korea due to anti-Americanism. IMHO this process will happen sooner rather than later depending on the Camp Humphreys land deal that is still be delayed due to protests over land aquisition to expand the base.

The USFK footprint needs to be reduced due to the population growth and demographic changes in Korean society towards the US. “Strategic flexibility” is a road map to do this with.

Oranckay is reporting this interesting piece of news:

It’ll probably be in the English press by morning but president Roh Moo Hyun has got his own blog.

Some have said one of Roh’s biggest problems is that he’s got his head buried in the internet. You know, instead of just governing without constantly trying to be best buddies with The Netizens all the time. I wonder if he is going to be able to sleep at night without wondering what kind of comments he’s been getting. (He’s been known to leave a few himself here and there.)

Looking at Roh’s Blog it doesn’t appear very original. How original is the title, Cheongwadae Blog? Interesting that the leader from the world’s most wired country has such a low tech blog. I wonder if he will get more hits per day than Marmot’s site?

Here is an interesting LA Times article via Japundit about the ideology training in North Korea:

Some of the highlights.

– Watching foreign movies clouds the mental and ideological health of the people.
– Foreign hairstyles and clothing are signs of the “utterly rotten bourgeois lifestyle.”
– Shaking hands should be avoided in favor of bowing, as it is more hygienic and a part of the national culture.
– The spread of “unusual lifestyles” could render people “incapable of following revolutionary thoughts and sacrificing their lives” for Kim
– “The bastards’ (U.S.) indecent methods are clouding the mental and ideological health of the people,” warns one lecture. “If we cannot stop them in time, we will be in the same position as the Iraqis.”
– “The enemies use these videos and specially made materials to beautify the world of imperialism … and to [spread] a fantasy of the free world.”
– North Koreans are urged to steel themselves against such corrupting influences by eating traditional foods, wearing traditional clothing and keeping their hair tidy.
– One, titled “How to Crush the Schemes of the Enemies Who Disseminate Unusual Lifestyles,” tells citizens that “we must eradicate the erroneous way of thinking that eating foreign foods enhances your living standards.”

Amazing, they didn’t mention anything about the Korean superiority with chopsticks. This must just be a South Korean phenomenom.

Here are some statistic about Korean traffic safety that I have chronicled before that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone:

Overcrowded roads, jaywalkers and motorcyclists who use sidewalks as shortcuts make South Korea the most dangerous place to drive among 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to a report issued in late December. The data, gathered from 2003 statistics, showed 137 car accidents per 10,000 cars on the road. South Korea also ranked worst for number of vehicle accident deaths for the year; for every 100,000 people involved in vehicle accidents, 15 died.

South Korea has topped the list since joining the organization in 1996, according to Lee Ui-yong, chief of the Traffic Accident Analysis Division with the Road Traffic Safety Authority.

None of these stats should be surprising to anyone who has spent time on the roads here in Korea. In response to the continuous traffic safety problems the Korean authorities have plans to launch a traffic safety campaign:

In many countries, the horse-drawn carriage set the traffic culture foundation for the eventual transition to motor vehicles. South Korea, however, experienced the vehicle boom in a relatively short period of time as the economy developed after the Korean War, leaving its people without a real sense of what to do on the roads, Lee said.

Lee said unsafe drivers aren’t the only problem. A lack of guardrails, correct traffic signals and pedestrians who jaywalk or dart into traffic add to the danger.

He said South Korea is going to launch a safety campaign this year to lower accident and fatality rates and promote the importance of traffic laws.

If their safety campaign is just going to consist of policemen waving flags at intersections it will have no effect because cars just run the red lights anyway. If the police want to improve safety start writing tickets, especially for people parking illegally causing additional congestion in the already crowded streets. Than expand from there and write tickets for the mopeds driving on the sidewalks. I could go on and on with suggestions but if they just did these two things it would greatly improve the traffic problems here.

Why am I not surprised by this:

Korea has been named to the deputy leadership position in an international audit of tsunami disaster relief donations.
It was named to the position on a task force set up to audit the relief funds by the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions, a group of national auditors. The announcement was made at the group’s meeting in Norway.

The task force was set up after questions were raised in many countries about the use of the funds donated to help victims of the December 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Critics have charged that of the funds that Indonesia and Sri Lanka received for disaster relief, only 10 percent has found its way to the victims.
Jeon Yun-cheol, the chairman of the Board of Audit and Inspection of Korea, was a leading proponent of the special auditing task force within the organization.

It shouldn’t come as no surprise that much of the donated money would be swindled similar to what happened with the 9/11 funds. Hopefully the Korean taskforce can uncover where all the money went.

It looks like Toby Dawson may become Hines Ward-lite after all:

South Korea discovered a new Olympic pin-up boy on Friday and it turns out he is American.

Pictures of South Korea-born Toby Dawson, who took bronze in the men’s freestyle skiing moguls, were in almost all South Korean newspapers on Friday, while scant mention was made of the two people who finished ahead of Dawson in the event.

Even though he competes for the red, white and blue of the United States, Dawson shot to celebrity status half a world away because of his birth in South Korea, where his biological Korean parents abandoned him on a doorstep.

Dawson was adopted at the age of three by a pair of ski instructors in Colorado, where he quickly shared his adopted parents’ passion for the snow-covered hills.

Papers and TV broadcasts in South Korea prominently showed two images of Dawson: the first was of his triumph in Italy and the second was a mug-shot photo of him as a toddler used by an adoption agency.

At least their hasn’t been any stories yet about bringing “Glory to Korea” or the “Motherland”. Could you imagine the media lovefest if Hines Ward and Toby Dawson took a trip to Korea together? Edit this Post | Delete this Post

Is this really a good idea?

Schools in Broward and Palm Beach counties are tapping a new source of teachers: South Korea.

The Asian nation has more teachers than it needs, and the Korean government is helping them find jobs abroad, said Andrea Seidman, president of Teachers Council, a nonprofit agency that helps place instructors.

Teachers Council has helped Broward and Palm Beach find Korean teachers in recent weeks. Broward has hired three for next year; Palm Beach likely will hire five, recruitment director Marcia Andrews said. Representatives of both school districts say they want to start with just a few to see how they adapt to American life.

I wonder if we can expect to see charming and artistic works of art from the children of Florida such as this seen in South Korea:

Or how about the teachers teaching facts such as this to the children of Florida:

Consider the following question, posed to 400,000 Korean students in a grade school exam: Which of the following descriptions of Iraq after the Gulf War is incorrect?

A) Due to economic sanctions, infant mortality increased by 150 percent, and in some areas, 70 percent of newborns had leukemia.

B) The United States and Britain conducted a bombing campaign against Iraq for 11 years after the war, causing terror among the Iraqi people.

C) Cancer among Iraqi children in 1999 was 700 percent because of depleted uranium left from the bombing.

D) The infant mortality rate of Iraqi children in 1999 was 300 percent higher than it was a decade earlier.

E) Not a single Iraqi starved to death after the Gulf War because of the extensive food relief program.

This question, and many more like it, comprised a supplemental teaching package on the second Iraq war that was distributed two years ago by the Korea Teachers and Educational Workers Union, the Los Angeles Times reported in July 2003. The package allegedly included graphic photographs of child casualties and urban destruction from the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

According to national education law, teachers who belong to unions are permitted to incorporate such supplemental teaching materials into the mainstream curriculum. School principals technically have the power to regulate what is used, though this rarely occurs.

In one controversial instance, a teacher leading a class on the U.S. military role in South Korea showed her seventh-grade students a police photo of a naked Korean prostitute who was murdered and sexually assaulted in 1992 with an umbrella by an American serviceman.

The offending teacher, who subsequently did not lose her job, argued that such material was widely available on the Internet for public viewing. She echoed the opinion of other unionized educators who contend they oppose war of any kind, and are not waging a targeted smear campaign against the United States.

South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun — who dispatched the third-largest contingent of foreign troops to Iraq — supported the union’s position, saying that “antiwar education should be encouraged but only as long as it is not anti-American, in consideration of our diplomatic relations.”

Even better yet they can teach this:

Today’s texts contain pictures of North Korean food shops (“A lot of women,” reads the caption, helpfully, “are participating in economic activity”) and suggest students practice writing letters to their counterparts across the border (without mentioning that North Korea prohibits mail from the South.) In today’s classrooms, you can find a third-grade textbook with a cartoon of two boys from either side of the border deciding not to throw rocks at each other.

Northern Boy: I’m sorry I threw the rock at you first.

Southern Boy: I’m sorry, too. It is not right for brothers to throw rocks at each other.

Northern Boy: Our parents and ancestors would be grieved to see us fighting.

Southern Boy: Speaking of which, do you want to participate in the international Ping-Pong game together as one team? … If we become one team, we can make up for our weakness and no other country will be able to beat us.

Teachers need little encouragement to use such texts. Park Geun Byung, a teacher at Song Chun elementary school in Seoul, uses a storybook that instructs his fourth-grade class in the tale of an evil dragon that prevents a Romeo and Juliet on either side of a river from marrying. The river is plainly the DMZ. The evil dragon is meant to represent the U.S. Park is a believer in what he calls “unification education.” “Teachers,” he adds, “don’t have to be neutral.”