Former US Army deserter Charles Jenkins, now back in Japan, after visiting his elderly mother in North Carolina, is now speaking up against the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il.

“The Japanese government has never pushed me to say anything,” Jenkins told Kyodo News on the phone from his home in the city of Sado, Niigata Prefecture.

Jenkins said that unlike in North Korea there is freedom to speak in Japan. He added it was in fact Pyongyang that used him as a propaganda tool.

As much as dislike Jenkins for what he did 40 years ago he does have an opportunity now to redeem himself some what if he becomes a vocal advocate against Kim Jong Il. However, if he does decide to continue to speak out against Kim Jong Il; if I was him I would make sure I locked the doors at night.

Hat Tip: JP

South Korea, Japan, and the US are demanding a written commitment from North Korea to abandon their nuclear weapons program:

A diplomatic source who participated in talks between the three nations said the trio felt the process discussed up to the third round of talks — a preliminary freeze followed by dismantlement ? was no longer meaningful. He said North Korea must announce a strategic decision to unconditionally dismantle its nuclear program.

The three countries will not be content with vague reference to “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” or a preliminary freeze, and Washington and Tokyo have threatened to stop the talks and impose sanctions if no written undertaking is forthcoming. A Korean official said Sunday the goal of the six-party talks was “the dismantling of the North Korean nuclear program” and the sole aim of the fourth round to confirm this principle in writing.

North Korea in turn wants a security guarantee in writing that they will not be attacked. I think both written guarantees are fair but the written agreement with North Korea means nothing if it cannot be verified.

I have said this before, but the North Koreans just 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.

In turn they will keep quiet and give the appearance of good behavior to the international community, all the foreign diplomats can pat each other on the back about what a great job they did, heck maybe somebody can even get a Nobel Peace Prize out of this like Kim Dae Jung did back in 2000. All the while the North Koreans will be sitting back enjoying their spoils, their people still starving, make no progress on human rights, and continue to covertly make nuclear weapons.

A written agreement means nothing if it cannot be verified.

It appears that 2ID is even exporting our taxi cab related incidents to Japan:

A 20-year-old U.S. Army soldier from South Korea pleaded guilty Friday in Naha District Court to robbing a cab driver of about $55.

Pvt. James Joiner Jr. of Camp Red Cloud, Uijongbu, South Korea, said he regretted his actions.

“Had I not been drinking, I would never have done that,” he told the court.

Joiner was charged with robbing Sakae Kuba, 56, at 3:35 a.m. May 11 in Okinawa City. He hailed Kuba’s taxi on Gate Two Street near Kadena Air Base to go to the Uechi bar district. As Joiner left the taxi, police said, he grabbed the driver from behind and fled with 5,000 yen (about $45) and $10 in U.S. currency.

If cab drivers in your area are pissing you off, and you think it is time to do something about it, well you to can have 2ID’s finest in your area to teach those cab drivers a lesson. Feel free to contact the 2ID Public Affairs Office so they can get some TDY orders cut, so your area can enjoy 2ID’s finest as well. Our rates are competitive and the taxi dancing show is as always free of charge.

Four suspects were detained on Friday in connection with the mugging of two ROK Army soldiers with the help of descriptions given to police using hypnosis:

After a tip, police questioned four men Friday night in connection with an incident in which two soldiers were stripped of their rifles and ammunition on Wednesday.
The military released an artist’s rendition yesterday of one of the three assailants. One of the men who is being questioned is said to resemble the sketch.

Police said that man was discharged from the military last year, and soldiers who knew him suggested the man to police. The men were detained in Donghae, Gangwon province. Police are offering a maximum 10 million won ($9,000) reward for information on the assailants. The soldiers were hypnotized and were able to give a description of one of the men but not the other two, police said.

I would think a lawyer would have a field day with this if any arrests are made. Anyone know if descriptions from using hypnosis can be used to make arrests?

American billionaire Ted Turner is to go to North Korea next month. Allegedly the trip is for environmental conservation reasons:

Diplomatic sources in Washington said that Turner, accompanied by a huge CNN media corps, was planning a visit to North Korea in mid August to discuss North Korea’s ecosystem conservation measures in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) with the Turner Foundation, an international environmental conservation organization which he runs.

Having personally seen much of the DMZ, I wonder if the North Koreans plan to show Mr. Turner all the deforested hills adjacent to the DMZ as shown in this picture looking into North Korea from Freedom Village near the JSA? I imagine they will probably parade him around the DMZ on the East Coast where it is not nearly as deforested as the Western portion of the DMZ. I have always found it interesting to see how the brown, deforested, land of North Korea gives way to the green, forested landscape of South Korea at the DMZ.

Is it any wonder why so many crops and people get washed away which seems like every monsoon season in North Korea when they have mismanaged their forests so badly. Well, now they got Ted Turner coming to town to tell the world how great and eco-friendly their land is, never mind the deforestation, land mines, artillery emplacements, bunkers, infiltration tunnels, and tanks destroying the environment adjacent to the DMZ.

Apparently USFK and a nuclear waste dump have a lot in common in Korea now a days according to this Joong Ang Ilbo article:

The Pyeongtaek problem has in many ways the potential to become another Buan incident. The residents of Buan also had confrontations over the choice between the livelihood of the residents and the economic gains from the construction of nuclear waste disposal facilities. However, with the intervention of outside forces, the logic for environmental protection and the development logic collided each other and the problem was expanded to a national level and became a political issue, making it more difficult to solve.

We shouldn’t leave the Pyeong-taek situation alone so that it can become another Buan incident. In order to stop this, the government and local autonomous organizations must actively mediate friction among the residents over their livelihood and business interests. The greater the friction among the residents is, the more room there is for outside organizations to intervene. Therefore, minimizing the chances of internal friction is the shortcut to keeping the problem from expanding to the national level. After that, the government must make an effort to find a contact point where those parties to the Pyeongtak issue who emphasisze the importance of the alliance and those who emphasize the importance of peace can compromise.

Maybe a nuclear waste dump is a good analogy for USFK. A nuclear waste dump is something no one wants in their back yard but the pay off of cheap electrical power is worth the annoyance of keeping the nuclear waste dumps around. Maybe USFK is the same way; an annoyance but useful to keep around.

However, I think the USFK “nuclear waste dump” that is trying to be expanded in Pyongtaek is being held up by the local farmers, not because people don’t want it in their backyards, because Camp Humphreys is already in their backyards, but because they want more money from the government for their land. The anti-USFK parasites are just jumping on to this issue to try and make it look like the big American bullies are pushing around Korea again to further their own political agendas. They could care less about the farmers. However, once the farmers get their pay day from the government the majority of them will happily move out to greener pastures.

Here is something in the article I need to point out that just annoys me:

For the sake of our alliance with the United States, they want the Pyeongtaek issue to remain a non-political and local problem. They think that the Pyeongtaek problem can be solved by efforts to improve such procedural matters as eliminating unequal elements in the Korea-U.S. alliance, not by the demand to withdraw the U.S. forces from Korea.

Quick somebody name these unequal elements in the US-ROK alliance? This is a common quote I hear over and over again but never see anything to substantiate it. It is just something people like to throw out there because they hear it over and over again and just assume it to be a fact. If you know of any of these inequalities in the US-ROK alliance please feel free to comment.

The controversy over the MacArthur statue located in Jayu Park in Inchon first raised it’s ugly head last December.

This Kim Su-nam character appeared last week promoting last weekends protest at Jayu Park:

The group’s chairman Kim Su-nam said rectifying “the vestiges of colonialism and our distorted history must begin with removing the MacArthur statue, which is a symbol of imperialism.” He said the group would form a coalition with other groups from Inchon to bring down the statue.

So originally he says that removing the statue is an effort to correct distorted history. I don’t know what is so distorted about MacArthur saving the Korean nation twice, once from the Japanese and once from the North Koreans. Heck you could even say he helped save them from the Chinese too. Anyway this guy had a different story to say during last weekend’s protest:

“The statue is part of our humiliating history,” said Kim Su-Nam, a 65-year-old activist wearing a yellow jacket inscribed with anti-US slogans.

“By dismantling the statue, we want to stoke an anti-US movement aimed at expelling US troops from the peninsula,” Kim said.

Using a loudspeaker, he rebuked the pro-US demonstrators as “followers of the US colonial master”.

Well at least Kim is now showing his true motives. He could care less about whatever history MacArthur has in regards to Korea. His real motive is to create images on American TV screens of the MacArthur statue being toppled ala Saddam Hussein, to create a strong anti-Korean backlash in the United States. He is absolutely right. If that statue gets torn down and that is broadcast across America, the US-ROK alliance is over and South Korea might as well put up this statue in MacArthur’s place:

The pro-US protesters that Mr. Kim spoke of actually greatly outnumbered his small 50 person protest group:

“We will never forget what he did for us. He is a hero who stopped the communization of the Korean peninsula,” said Lee Jin-Ho, a 74-year-old veteran who fought alongside US soldiers during the war.

But forget is exactly what some South Koreans want to do.

After laying a wreath at the memorial, Lee joined hundreds of other pro-US demonstrators, including war veterans in their 60s and 70s, who gathered in the park on Sunday to block about 50 anti-US activists intent on pulling down the statue.

Here is the money quote of the protest here:

“Instead of quibbling, they should pay attention to North Korea’s human rights situation and the dictatorship of its Kim Jong-Il regime,” Lee Phil-Han, a 56-year-old businessman in Incheon, said.

“We owe a lot to the United States which played a key role in our economic development. My notion is being supported by a silent majority of South Koreans.”

I cannot imagine the people of Inchon tearing down that statue. I have spent a lot of time in Inchon which is evident by my Focus on Inchon series of articles, and feel pretty confident when I say that Inchon is not a center of anti-US sentiment in Korea. If anything the city has always felt pro-US to me maybe due to the city’s connection with the Inchon landing and it’s long history of trade with the US and this feeling is supported by the strong counter-protest against Kim Su-Nam and his other pro-North Korean lackeys at Jayu Park last weekend. I would like to thank the people who showed up at the park and supported keeping the MacArthur statue.

Now my next question is, where is the Korean media on this? I’m getting the majority of the information on this event from Yahoo. We get wall to wall coverage of an idiot jumping on a taxi cab but very little coverage of this protest. In fact the only analysis I have seen of this protest was in the Korea Times of all places, which supported keeping the statue. Maybe the media just couldn’t bring themselves to run images like these I pulled off the Katolic Shinja site:

These pictures run counter to the anti-USFK tone the media likes to trump into the collective Korean consciousness here. Feel free to comment with links to any other Korean news analyis of this event I may have missed because I would like to read it.

Anyway, I tend to agree with the Katolic Shinja on this final quote here:

The best quote from the article above comes from former South Korean U.N. Ambassador Park Keun: “Not even dogs forget their benefactors.”

This story in today’s Stars and Stripes is strange but really not surprising:

Local police are seeking a South Korean man who works for the U.S. military in connection with the discovery of about 12 tons of U.S. military shell casings and live ammunition in a commercial warehouse Monday.

Detective Im Il-soon of the South Yangju police station identified the suspect as a 47-year-old man named Kim who works for the 17th Ordnance Company, which operates from the Kwangsa-ri ammunition depot, south of Dongducheon.

Im said three other South Korean men, none of whom work for the U.S. military, are being held in connection with the case.

Camp Kwangsa-ri is located between Dongducheon and Uijongbu just off of Highway 3. The camp is mainly run by the ROK Army with a handful of civilian workers and even smaller contingent of US soldiers. All training ammunition is picked up and dropped off at this camp for 2ID. It appears the Mr. Kim they are looking for who I actually have had to interact with before at Kwangsa-ri to turn in ammo, if it is the same Mr. Kim, was trying to sell the shell casings as scrap metal but was negligent and let live rounds mix with the expended rounds when he handed over the brass to Mr. Shin. The Korean workers are extremely careful to seperate brass and live ammo at the facility so this slip up is equally strange:

The police detective said the three men in custody helped broker a deal between Kim and a man identified only as Shin, who paid about $30,000 for the casings and ammunition as scrap metal. Im said Shin was not arrested because police believe he didn’t know the merchandise was stolen when he purchased it.

The detective said some of Shin’s employees who had military experience became suspicious of the ammunition boxes and contacted the police.

Im said that as former soldiers, the employees said they knew that “if even one bullet was missing in their units, it would be a really huge problem for them.”

Im said 5.56 mm, 7.62 mm and .50-caliber rounds and shell casings were found in the cases.

Since Mr. Shin turned over the ammunition to the police this leads me to believe he probably didn’t do anything illegal. However, if they did try to melt down the ammo it really could of turned into a dangerous situation for those involved. I just wonder how long Mr. Kim has been selling the old brass for $30,000 a pop? He has been there for quite a while. If Mr. Shin didn’t turn them in, Mr. Kim would have never gotten busted. It also makes me wonder how many other illegal activities such as this goes on in Korea without USFK knowing?

The merger between Hite and Jinro is now complete:

South Korea’s anti-trust body has approved a controversial mulit-billion-dollar takeover deal between the country’s two leading liquor firms, Hite Brewery and Jinro.

The Korea Fair Trade Commission said a plenary session decided late Wednesday to give conditional approval for a bid by Hite, the country’s largest brewer, to take over Jinro, the country’s biggest soju liquor maker.

I wonder how many bribes it took to make this happen? So who likes Hite better than OB? I like OB better.

Former South Korean National Soccer Team Coach Guus Hiddink, dropped a big time bombshell yesterday:

Coach Guus Hiddink, the man behind Korea’s semifinal run in the 2002 World Cup, dropped a bombshell Wednesday when he revealed he would love to coach the Teaguk Warriors again but had to cast around for other work when nobody asked him. Hiddink made the remarks in an interview with the Sports Chosun, a subsidiary of the Chosun Ilbo, before a PSV Eindhoven training session when asked about reports that he could lead the Australian national team.

That is unbelievable that as much as the general Korean public loves Coach Hiddink that the Korean soccer authorities did not ask him to continue coaching the team. The fact that he dropped such a big dime on the Korean soccer authorities shows that he is pretty bitter about it. Possibly he didn’t get along with people operating the Korean national soccer team. Who knows, but I’m sure we will hear more about this.

Also I’m not a soccer expert but it appears to me as a casual observer of Korean soccer that their team is still playing pretty well with their new coach Jo Bonfrere. In opinions on this?