Korean and Chinese gamers have found a new favorite past time online:

Last year, an American game titled Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault became one of the most popular games in China. This game replays the blood war history between the United States and the Japanese during the second World War. Many of the game players say something like: “Never mind the screens and the sound effects. When you take the machine gun and spray fire on the little Japanese until they get ripped to pieces, that is what is called ‘cool’!”

If Korean and Chinese gamers are not getting a thrill killing Japanese soldiers in Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault then they turn to killing each other:

Team China

VS:

Team Korea

But more recently, the players from China and Korea engaged in another full-scale ‘war’.

There was one supporting battalion of about 200 persons, but only 9 of them survived in the end. They told the Chinese defenders: “We are from Taiwan and this is the sum total of all the fighters that we can offer. When you have problems, we will come to help for sure because we are brothers!”

Maybe the South Koreans can recruit a few gamers from the one internet cafe in North Korea to help them out next time.

(Hat Tip: Japundit)

If you ever had dream of becoming a superstar, Korea may be your place:

SHE might live a quiet life in Adelaide as a singing teacher, but overseas, Kirsty Roberts is a pop idol. Well, she’s treated like one, anyway. Scoring work in South Korea earlier this year, Kirsty headed over to do what she thought would be a simple cover-band gig.

Kirsty lived in a beachside apartment and ate three meals a day at a five-star buffet. She also lived it up. “You’d play six days a week, but you’d only sleep about three or four hours a night,” she says. “It’s pretty hard to come down after gigs like that.” The group even needed security guards, but Kirsty says they didn’t help much. “Even the staff think you’re stars, so that’s weird,” she says.

Maybe New Kids on the Block or Milli Vanilli can make a come back here too?

This is interesting, North Korea plans on fielding a Korean K-League soccer team based out of Pyongyang:

If the Pyongyang team participates, the K-League will increase to 15 teams from the current 13, counting the new team from South Gyeongsang province that plans on joining next year.

This will give all of us more opportunities to see North Korean cheerleaders and North Korean soccer hooligans.

New Japanese textbooks that whitewash Japan’s colonial history and involvement in World War II continue to be criticized by Japanese NGO’s:

Japanese textbooks that exercised the country’s colonial victims for months may have been approved but will hardly be taught anywhere, a group says. Children and Textbooks Japan Network 21 says the history and social studies textbooks, sponsored by the rightwing Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, will be adopted by no more than 1 percent of middle schools, amounting to about 13,000 copies. According to the group, as of late July, 300 of Japan’s 584 educational districts had decided on their textbooks, and only one — Tochigi Prefecture’s Odawara City — had adopted the offending texts.

“The initial goal of the Society for History Textbook Reform, an adoption rate of 10 percent, has been blocked,” the group said. “In the days ahead, a battle will unfold over the 1 percent line.” No more than 0.039 percent of schools adopted an earlier version of the textbooks in 2001, and they are currently used in mere 21 schools across Japan.

Think about that, the first set of textbooks that caused all this uproar in Korea and China back then is used by only 21 schools, .039% of the population. The newest edition of these textbooks will once again go to less then 1% of the population. It is obvious that attacks on Japan for the use of these textbooks by Korea and China are politically motivated when many Japanese don’t agree with the books to begin with as well.

Japan could of have saved themselves this headache to begin with if the Ministry of Education didn’t approve these textbooks from the start.

Strategic cooperation between India and Korea continues to improve:

Mr Natwar Singh conveyed India’s interest in joining the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) and sought Seoul’s support to help India contribute in this project. The Korean side agreed to consider the request earnestly and consult with other parties to the ITER.

The two Asian powers decided to strengthen cooperation through putting in place institutional framework and regular service-to-service exchanges at senior and middle levels to generate confidence between the two sides, regular ship exchanges and conduct of joint exercise as also cooperation in areas like anti-piracy and search and rescue operations, exchange of training delegations, mutual visits to defense establishments and industries connected with defense production.

It wise for Korea to build relations with India which has a growing economy and a surging technology sector that complements Korea’s technological expertise well. To help build economic ties government is making it easier for Indian businessmen to gain Visas to Korea:

South Korea agreed to seriously consider the issuance of visa-on-arrival at South Korean destinations for visiting Indian businessmen, South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Ban Ki-Moon said Monday.

Addressing a meeting of business leaders organized by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), Ban, who is leading a high-power 10-member official and business delegation from South Korea, said, “One of the most effective ways to augment the vast potential that exists between the two countries from their complementary trade and industrial structures is to speed up efforts to establish institutional framework such as relevant laws, systems and consultations between the two governments.”

India is also interested in the ITER nuclear program probably because India foresees this program as being the way to solve a future energy crisis for India as the country develops and requires more energy. Some of you may remember the bickering between Japan and Korea over this program, that looks like the French will ultimately end up building.

The development of military exchanges between the two countries is also wise. It is helpful to have a strong Asian military power like India to be on your side in case of any future conflict with China over North Korea or Taiwan.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see this relationship further develop in the future.

The wild and crazy summer for USFK continues. The Stars and Stripes is starting to read like a police blotter. First this incident down in Seoul:

A U.S. soldier was charged over the weekend with using a beer can to assault a Korean teacher, according to officials at the foreign affairs section of Seoul’s Mapo police station.

Police said the soldier, a 30-year-old sergeant first class, was drunk and confronted the Korean man at about 2 a.m. Saturday in Seoul’s Mapo district. The soldier took the Korean man’s can of beer and began hitting him on the head with it, the police said.

No taxi cabs or beer bottles involved so it must be a Yongsan soldier.

Then there is this from Camp Humphreys:

An Army sergeant based at Camp Humphreys pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges stemming from accusations he tried to abduct a South Korean woman as she walked home, picking her up, throwing her down and beating her when she resisted.

Read the rest of the article but this guy is obvious scum. Hopefully the Koreans throw the book at him.

Then finally a verdict on the Camp Red Cloud soldier arrested for a taxi cab related incident in Okinawa:

U.S. Army soldier found guilty of robbing a cab driver of about $55 in May was given a prison sentence Tuesday in Naha District Court.

Pvt. James Joiner Jr. 20, formerly of Camp Red Cloud, South Korea, had pleaded guilty to attacking Sakae Kuba, 56, in Okinawa City and was sentenced to 2? years in prison with forced labor. No part of the sentence was suspended.

Just think about this, this was a 20 year old kid on his way home after spending a year in Korea, gets layed over in Okinawa, then gets drunk and stupid, and now will spend 2 1/2 years in prison; life ruined. He says he never would of committed the crime if it wasn’t for alcohol.

I don’t know if acts of indiscipline are up overall this summer or just that USFK is under a bigger microscope than it normally is by the media, thus the appearance of more incidents. I do know the USFK leadership must be frustrated by this and I wouldn’t be surprised if some big policy changes come into effect to deal with this problem. Stay tuned.

I really don’t know what to think of this:

Scientists for the first time have cloned a dog. But don’t count on a better world populated by identical and resourceful Lassies just yet.

The experiment extends the remarkable string of laboratory successes by Hwang, but also reignites a fierce ethical and scientific debate about the rapidly advancing technology.

I guess there is medical value in these experiments so I am withholding judgment on the ethical values of cloning, but I wonder how the boshintang industry views dog cloning?

The Asia Times has an article that backs my analysis of what the North Koreans want to get out of the current 6 Party Talks:

Thus, the third critical point: the US is going to have to accept this, too. China and South Korea (and Russia) will not back the US demand for “complete verifiable” nuclear disarmament. In these circumstances, it is Washington, not Pyongyang, that risks isolation for pushing too hard. (The Japanese could come down either way.) Doing so could alienate South Korea and marginalize the US on the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia, the real strategic prize. Moreover, accepting the ambiguity surrounding the original plutonium is merely going back to the status quo ante of the Agreed Framework.

By this logic, a six-party agreement would be a gradual process that dismantles the North Korean nuclear infrastructure, starting with the 8,000 fuel rods and then moves on to the disputed uranium-enrichment program. Dismantlement by the North would be matched by economic aid from the South, humanitarian assistance from other parties and diplomatic recognition from the US. The process would be long and carefully calibrated, but by the end the North would be left with whatever nuclear weapons that had been built from the fissile material generated before the Agreed Framework and had been hidden.

The article stresses that to get any deal done with Pyongyang the US will have to allow the North Koreans to keep some nuclear weapons and not have a rigid inspection system to ensure compliance with whatever agreement they cook up at these talks.

I continue to maintain that the North Koreans want a nice face saving deal that gives them the free food, money, and the oil they need to keep the regime going plus have enough flexibility in the agreement to be able to covertly hide their weapons program.

This is what the North Koreans and everyone else wants except the US. The international community wants to resolve this issue without really resolving it, just like the 1994 Agreed Framework. In the coming days we will see if the US is willing to live with a agreement like this.

The United States Forces Korea may become a thing of the past according to this report in the Chosun Ilbo:

A new U.S. Army command to be set up at Camp Zama in Japan would assume charge in an emergency on the Korean Peninsula, the Daily Yomiuri reported Monday.

The daily said direct command of the UEX would be limited to an emergency on the Korean Peninsula, while the China-Taiwan “hot zone” and conflicts in Southeast Asia included in the “arc of instability” would come under the command of the Third Marine Expeditionary Force based in Okinawa. However, in any Korean emergency U.S. Marine units in Okinawa would come under the operational command of the UEX.

The move seems intended to strengthen the USFJ and will likely entail reorganization of the U.S. Forces in Korea. USFK command could be merged with the USFJ’s or taken down a peg to be put under USFJ control.

If this is true that would mean that the Army could further cut down on soldiers here in Korea by eliminating the soldiers involved with every day operations of USFK. It is going to be interesting to see what the Korean response to this will be because I’m sure they will not like the fact that operational control of the US Army and in wartime the ROK Army would fall under a general based in Japan. Plus Korea will lose clout with the United States with the 4 star command being moved to Japan. Yes, we live in interesting times over here.

The Korean media is slowly but surely starting to speak out against removing the General MacArthur statue in Incheon. Here is the latest editorial from the Korea Herald that condemns the removal of the statue:

Professor Kang at Seoul’s Dongkuk University, who stirred a controversy by eulogizing the late North Korean leader Kim Il-sung on the guest book at his birthplace during his visit to Pyongyang in 2001, said in an article he contributed to an Internet newspaper that U.S. forces were responsible for the 4 million deaths during the Korean War and Gen. MacArthur should be condemned as their commander.

(…)

Thus, Kang helped the anti-MacArthur demonstrators articulate their cause. They regret that the Republic of Korea was saved from being communized through the North Korean invasion and its liberal democratic system was preserved by the American-led U.N. Forces. His idea, epitomized as “unification over everything,” does not deserve any more space in this newspaper, but the problem is that he must be trying to indoctrinate his students with this gross historical distortion. Or, should we not be worried too much because our young, sensitive students must know better?

(…)

Whether they like the American general or not the statue is part of history, a memorial of a war that saved tens of millions from sharing the misery which befell their brothers and sisters now in the North.

I think the author is naive to think that Korean students know better than to listen to the crap these professors put out because a lot of them do. However, it is good to see at least some in the Korean media are at least speaking out against these revisionist leftists.