Here is an article by Yonhap that chronicles a visit to Korea by a group of California college students who during their trip visited the site of the Nogun-ri Tragedy during the Korean War. Here is the background history provided in the article:

More than fifty years ago, the actions of a group of U.S. soldiers in this small village some 230 kilometers southeast of Seoul led to the deaths of hundreds of refugees, who were being escorted from their homes on the pretext of finding a safer hiding place. The troops later sprayed the refugees with bullets while they waited under the village’s cement bridge, with reports claiming hundreds died including scores more in subsequent air raids. The incident took place about a month after the outbreak of the Korean War when the country was in a state of extreme turmoil.

Yonhap of course is pushing the established mythology of the incident prevalent in not only the Korean media but also the US media. Yonhap provides no context in the report such as the fact that North Korean soldiers were often dressed as civilians and regularly ambushed US soldiers especially during the early phases of the war that this incident took place.

Read T.R. Fehrenbach’s This Kind of War for multiple examples of soldiers being attacked by Korean “civilians.” Plus the situation at the time was extremely desperate. The small contingent of US forces on the peninsula were ill prepared for combat and in full retreat trying to delay the North Korean advance while reinforcements continued to arrive in Pusan. In fact the soldiers from H company 2-7 Cavalry Regiment involved in the shooting were in complete disarray at the point of the shooting. They were on the run in a total state of panic when they found themselves in Nogun-ri.

Present Day Bridge at Nogeun-ri

The time this incident took place was during one of the most critical points of the Korean War. If the US forces failed at this time this whole controversy would be null and void because North Korea would of conquered South Korea. A full context of the situation is appropriate before we just condemn these soldiers as heartless killers of civilians.

These soldiers at the time did kill civilians at Nogeun-ri. Everyone seems to be agreement on this as the joint US-ROK report on the Nogeun-ri incident concludes. The only difference between the US and Korean views is that the US officials believe that about 50+ civilians were killed while the Korean officials believe it to be upwards of 250 people. To determine the actual truth of what happened is extremely difficult as soldiers and civilians allegedly at the scene of the incident have been proven to be liars. Take the case of Edward Daily as an example. He was the lead witness that started the entire controversy and he was proven rather easily to be a phony yet he was put on all the networks at the time to bash the US military over the incident:

Edward Daily, first mentioned as a principal source in a Pulitzer-Prize winning Associated Press story about the killings at No Gun Ri during the Korean War, has now told the AP he couldn’t have been there and probably learned details of the alleged incident from GIs who were present. In the original AP story Daily gave a chillingly graphic account of the incident at No Gun Ri – an incident in which he insisted he had participated, machine gunning hundreds of Korean civilians huddled under a railway underpass. The AP story, quoted him as saying: “On summer nights when the breeze is blowing, I can still hear their cries, the little kids screaming.” He added: “The command looked at it as getting rid of the problem in the easiest way. That was to shoot them in a group. Today,” Daily concluded, “we all share a guilt feeling, something that remains with everyone.”

Nobody bothered checking this guy’s background. A simple background check through the military archives could of found him to be a phony. Yet he was all over the news bashing the army:

As reported in NewsMax two weeks ago, NBC’s Dateline flew Daily to Korea to visit the No Gun Ri site. Daily told Tom Brokaw about receiving the order to fire on the refugees under the railroad trestle. “Just shoot them all,” Daily quoted the order. Brokaw: “You heard that order?” Daily: “Yes, sir.” Brokaw: “Kill them all?” Daily: “Yes, sir.” In February, the Washington Post Magazine put Daily’s picture on the cover and said he “was in charge of the lone machine-gun post” on one side of the railroad culvert. The Los Angeles Times, Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News all published stories citing Daily’s account of No Gun Ri.

How can a major network like NBC and Tom Brokaw along with major publishers make such a huge mistake as believing Daily and putting him on the air and on the cover of magazines like this? Simple background checks exposed this guy as a liar and Robert Bateman the author of the book No Gun Ri, actually informed Charles Hanley, the head AP reporter of the original AP article on Nogun-ri, about the unreliability of Daily and other veteran witnesses the AP quoted and Hanley even concurred that he had his doubts about them but used them anyway in his article.

NBC later retracked their report on Daily but the damage had already been done. Who knows how many people saw the original report and have taken it to be the truth about what happened at Nogun-ri, sliming not only the soldiers of the 7th Cav but all Korean War veterans. Why did the US media jump all over this story like this without doing extensive background checking? It is very similar to the CNN Tailwind scandal that the media jumped on and then CNN had to later retract. The story fit what many in the media wanted to believe, the military is evil.

This instant aversion to the military comes in part to the natural checks and balance of the media of the government and the military. However, many people currently in the US media are from the Vietnam generation and remain suspicious and unsupportive of the draft time military they once knew. They still equate the military with what they remember from Vietnam not realizing how different the all volunteer military of today is. That is why when the military is portrayed in popular culture cliches and stereotypes from Vietnam are used.  Many in the US media never miss an opportunity to criticize the military and Nogun-ri was just another example of this.

The Korean media on the other hand is a whole different beast. The objective for many people in the Korean media is pure and simple anti-Americanism. Feel free to comment if you disagree with me but how else do explain the misinformation about Nogun-ri, every little USFK incident turning into front page news, and the constant misinformation about GI crimes and the SOFA agreement. If you disagree with me about the disinformation about GI crimes and the SOFA Agreement you need to check out the USinKorea site that chronicles this issue in great detail.

I’m all open to fair criticism about the US, but the Korean media seems to rely more on mythology and stereotypes than facts. What bothers me so much about the Nogun-ri criticism in particular, by the Korean media it is an effort to down play the significance of the US military in the Korean War because some people feel the US did not have noble intentions in defending Korea during the war and should not feel a debt of gratitude to the US for saving this country. Creating a stereotype of these veterans as war criminals is just another way to slowly degrade the Korean public’s image of America. What is further troubling is that many of these veterans from the war are passing away and cannot defend themselves as this new revisionist history is being created about them. It is a shame and no one seems to be speaking out against it. That is why I found it so important to start this debate about Nogun-ri and hopefully restore some honor to the Korean War veterans that have been tarnished by this tragedy by both the US and Korean media.

The One Free Korea site has a great posting about the current status of the 6 way talks and the refusal of South Korea to back the US’s stance on the North Korean human rights issue. Here is the money quote from the posting:

How has Korea as a nation come to the point that something which has killed up to 3.5 million of its people is not “essential,” even as an ongoing process within a broader set of talks? Can we contrast this jaw-dropping moral laissez-faire with South Korea’s intransigence in its SOFA negotiations with the United States, following two completely accidental deaths? Why should North Koreans who have lost children, parents, husbands, wives, and siblings ever forgive those who consider their loss an acceptable sacrifice to realpolitik? Isn’t this just a degree less heartless than the North Korean regime itself, which deprived them of food and starved them in the first place?

Thanks to Nomad for pointing this unsurprising piece of information out:

Nearly four out of 10 persons who died from car accidents last year were pedestrians, a much higher figure than in other advanced nations, according to the Korea Insurance Development Institute.

The agency said yesterday that the percentage of pedestrians who died from car accidents was 38.7 percent in Korea, while the figure was 12.5 percent in France, 14.1 percent in the United States, 15.9 percent in Germany and 27.7 percent in Japan.
“Not only drivers but also pedestrians need to raise their consciousness about safety,” said an official at the institute.

Among the dead from car accidents, the percentage of children younger than 14 years and elderly over 61 years also increased. The figure was 35.6 percent in 2003, up 5.9 percentage points from 2000.

The two age groups on a sharp increase are children and the elderly. I believe it from driving around here in Korea. Children will run out between cars into the middle of the road and elderly people often push carts taking up the whole right lane of a highway. So when you come around a corner you see a cart in front of your vehicle you have to brake or swerve suddenly to avoid an accident. Plus people often walk in the road instead of the sidewalk and cut across the road because they don’t want to wait for the crosswalk to turn green.

Look at the two USFK accidents that have caused such an up roar. The 2002 accident that caused that year’s hatefest involved to middle school students walking in the road. This past June’s accident involved an elderly person cutting between vehicles on the highway without using a crosswalk. The US Army and especially 2ID have gone to great lengths to improve vehicle safety. Imagine trying to drive Bradleys and tanks much less your car through all this. That is why convoy safety is so important here in Korea.

However, I think we will never have an accident free environment until the conditions here change. The police actually enforcing crosswalks and keeping people on the sidewalks would be a good place to start.

At least Korea and the US agree on one thing, the ineffectiveness of the Kyoto protocol:

It will be impossible for emerging industrial powers such as China and South Korea ever to comply with the Kyoto Protocol on curbing greenhouse gas emissions, South Korea’s Environment Minister says.

“No matter what the cut required would be, it is impossible to follow the protocol measures that are based on the 1990 levels even if those countries wanted to,” Kwak said, listing South Korea, China, India and Brazil.

“We must look for greenhouse gas reduction measures all countries can take part in,” Kwak said.

I’m actually a little surprised that Korea is the 9th largest emissions producer because the country is so small. So think about that the next time you take a deep breath of air in Seoul. That is not fog you are breathing in.

Boeing signs $6 billion deal with China:

China plans to sign a deal next month to buy 50 Boeing 787 Dreamliner jetliners in a deal worth $6 billion (€4.5 billion), the official Xinhua News Agency reported Friday.

The first planes would be delivered in June 2008 before the Summer Olympics in Beijing, Xinhua said, citing the State Development and Reform Commission, an agency of the Chinese Cabinet.

The Justice Ministry is asking USFK to hand over jurisdiction over the accident in June that killed an elderly Korean woman in Dongducheon:

The Justice Ministry said Friday it asked the U.S. Forces in Korea to waive their jurisdiction in the matter of an American serviceman whose truck fatally hit a woman in Dongducheon, Gyeonggi Province on June 10. The USFK, which has primary jurisdiction in criminal cases against its own personnel, must respond to the request within six weeks, otherwise Korea will exercise jurisdiction, the ministry said.

Now why is the Justice Ministry pushing this? The family of the deceased has already forgiven the driver and doesn’t want to push legal action on him. The Justice Ministry knows that USFK will not hand over jurisdiction so they are making the request just like the local police department did just to cover themselves from the anti-American protesters. So if anyone criticizes them for not doing anything they can come back and say, we tried to do something but that SOFA agreement stopped us from doing anything. This really isn’t surprising.

It seems like the bickering between Korea and Japan will never end. The latest squabble is that South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said last week that the 1965 treaty between Japan and Korea does not absolve Japan of the responsibility to pay compensation to war crimes victims. However, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi sees it differently. He believes that the 1965 treaty does end all claims to compensation because the Korean government at the time could of given the $800 million dollars that Japanese gave Korea to the individual victims but chose to instead use it for economic development. Here is a passage from today’s Chosun I think really sums up this whole controversy well:

Of the five nations that got money from Japan after World War II, in the name of restitution or funds to “congratulate them on national independence,” only Korea made priority use of the funds for economic development by effectively investing it in basic facilities like the construction of Pohang Iron and Steel (now POSCO) and the Seoul-Busan Highway. In the Philippines, which got even more money, the landed elites spent it any way they liked. In the early 1960s, the Philippines’ per capita income was six times ours; now it is not even a tenth.

In March, President Roh Moo-hyun said he was ready to fight a “diplomatic war” with Japan, adding, “We, too, now have the capability to withstand considerable difficulty.” Yet if the government at the time had not secured foreign investment through its agreement on claims with Japan and sending troops to Vietnam and effectively used those funds for economic development, all the while taking criticism for its “submissive diplomacy” on the chin, the Korean government of 2005 would have no such means to boast about, and would be in no position to fight a diplomatic war.

President Park Chung-hee in 1965 chose to teach his people how to fish instead of giving the fish to them. The Philippines is a great example provided in the article. Their economy ran out of fish a long time ago while the Korean economy still continues to fish.

As horrible as the Japanese Imperial Army’s war crimes are it appears to me that 1965 treaty was supposed to be the agreement that would settle all the Japanese financial liability to Korea. However, when you have a 29% approval rating like President Roh, starting a squabble with Japan is a well used tactic to draw attention away from yourself.

Tourism to the DMZ is growing in popularity:

Recently, the DMZ has taken on an added cachet as “gateway to the North,” reflecting a recent thaw in relations between the two sides.

South of the border, nearby rural villages and islands are eager to be included on DMZ tour itineraries.

Kudos to anyone who knows where this village is located. I have driven past quite a few times and it is amazing how much the village has expanded.

The development of tourism along the DMZ is very evident. During my recent visit to Imjimgak which is located near the DMZ, there is a carnival and a festival going on. Just go to the USO at Camp Casey and you can see all the new DMZ tour options available. Plus the name DMZ is becoming almost like a brand name. All kinds of shops selling souvenirs and clothing are sporting the DMZ logo now.

I have mixed feeling about this because the commercialization of the DMZ is causing people to not appreciate the seriousness of the threat facing South Korea. A carnival is not going to teach people about the 1 million North Korean soldiers deployed along the DMZ or the thousands of artillery pieces pointed at Seoul.

I even see it in American soldiers now, that they don’t appreciate the seriousness of the threat literally just down the road. I guess the North Korean threat is not as great a concern as human trafficking, prostitution, and traffic accidents.

(Hat Tip: Budaechigae II)

Oh My News has a a good article about 3D (dirty, dangerous, difficult) workers treatment in Korea and a reverend Kim Hae Sung who has opened a migrant workers hospital that treats all patients free of charge:

“Because of the jobs they do, the migrants are injured frequently and are open to danger,” said nurse Kim. “There are an estimated 400,000 immigrant workers, but more than half of them are here illegally, which means they cannot go to big hospitals as they are not covered by medical insurance and even if they are, the medical fees are so expensive that they can’t afford it.”

But after a year the hospital could not be any more successful. Although small in capacity, it has all the equipment as any other hospital and is busy all year round, with more than 5,000 patients being treated this year alone. The hospital offers every kind of treatment, from dentistry to gynecology, emergency operations and herbal medicine treatments.

Oh My News has an interesting interview with Yuko Tojo who is the daughter of World War II era Japanese leader and convicted war criminal General Hideki Tojo. Here is her reason that Tokyo fought World War II:

We should properly explain the international situation at the time, and what the Tokyo Trials were all about. How terrible the situation was. We were surrounded and facing attack. We had no oil, or steel and all our assets abroad were seized. How were we to protect all those millions of Japanese except by standing up for ourselves? The media — the Asahi, Yomiuri, all of them were fanning the flames, saying “What is Tojo up to? Why doesn’t he fight back? The media can’t say it was not involved. The people were also involved. Even fifth-grade elementary students were asking: what will we do without steel or oil? And now they talk about the Emperor’s responsibility. It is terribly saddening.

The embargo on Japan would not have happened if Japan would have stopped their conquests of other nations. But to Japanese revisionists they were “liberating” these countries from the westerners. I’m sure the Koreans didn’t feel to liberated.

Here are some of the Korea related questions she answered:

You don’t think there are a lot of similarities between North Korea today and wartime Japan?

Absolutely not; please don’t make that comparison. That is an insult to those who died in the war.

I would agree Imperial Japan was not similar to today’s North Korea because North Korea is a gangster state ruled by fear but Imperial Japan people did fanatically fight and die for the emperor willingly.

But the Emperor himself admits he is Korean.

I know nothing about his roots, but I was astonished that he said such a thing. His majesty (it is clear here that heika refers throughout to the Showa Emperor, not the current occupier of the Chrysanthemum Throne) would never have said such a thing. He knew the limits of what to say. The current Crown Prince (Naruhito) chatters away about everything. As the national essence (kokka genshi) he has to know what to say. He has to maintain the dignity (igen) of the Imperial Family.

I never heard this before but that is a surprising comment.

So do you think that China and Japan should cooperate to create history textbooks?

No, history recognition is impossible because each country’s stance (tachiba) is different. Even when the truth is the same, the interpretation by China and Japan is often completely the opposite. For example, for Koreans the man who assassinated Ito Hirobumi (1841-1909 — first Prime Minister and drafter of Meiji Constitution) An Chung-gun is a hero, but to us he is a criminal. That’s the kind of thing I mean. It’s completely impossible.

I can’t imagine the countries in northeast Asia ever agreeing on history textbooks because the dispute is a great nationalism card for the politicians to pull out when they need to unite public opinion on something.

Here are her views on America:

Do you resent America?

Not even a little. If I resented America I wouldn’t be happy that my daughter was married to a citizen of that country, would I? (Her daughter is married to a U.S. citizen who works for Boeing Corp. and lives in the U.S. Tojo says her son-in-law is soon to take a job in Iraq. When her daughter said she was worried about this, her mother told her it couldn’t be helped because “one had to defend one’s country.”) My grandfather admired America and said we could learn from it. And his American lawyers defended him and said the most amazing things. Other lawyers strongly criticize the actions of the Allied Forces. Those people treated my grandfather with great respect and he respected them, even as enemies.

Read the rest of the interview because it is an interesting read even though I can’t agree with many of her assertions.