The Marmot has provided a link to this video of 2ID Assistance Division Commander General Joseph Martz meeting with Uijongbu City Mayor Mr. Kim Mun-won. I tend to agree with the Marmot that the whole video seemed kind of goofy and a translator with some PR skills could of helped but it did provide a look at the taxi cab and the driver. The cab driver pointed to how the soldier jumped up and ran across his taxi and then showed the marks he had on his body due to the altercation. He had some bruises on his shoulder.

I think the video backs up my prior opinion that the soldier should pay for whatever the damage to the taxi was and offer a big apology to the taxi driver. Isn’t his how it would be handled in a Korean on Korean incident? The taxi driver was not seriously harmed so to throw the soldier in jail for this would be ridiculous. Yes he is an idiot but should all idiots go to jail? I guess we will see.

Checkpoint set up to look for the criminals

A ROK Army patrol in Donghae was assaulted by a group of unknown thugs. The only people that can be ruled out now for committing the assault are 2nd Infantry Division soldiers since the attackers spoke with South Korean accents and did not involve a taxi cab:

A group of men in their 20s ambushed a patrol near a coastal guard post on the East Sea coast in Gangwon Province on Wednesday night, taking one K1 and two K2 assault rifles and 30 rounds of live ammunition.
The guard post commander, a first lieutenant identified by his family name of Gwon, and his signalman, a corporal identified as Lee, were overpowered at 10:10 p.m. by men in a black Hyundai Grandeur who stripped them of guns, two magazines of 15 rounds each, a P-96K walkie-talkie and a mobile phone.

The Army provisionally concluded the assailants are not North Korean spies since they spoke South Korean accents, and the ambush did not suggest professional training. The assailants fled without killing the soldiers and there was no damage to fences near the guard post, it said.

The police and Army suspect the assailants were common bandits who intended to use the guns in robberies or similar crimes. Investigators are trying to trace the vehicle.

How come their is nothing in here about Korean criminals “running amuk” in Donghae? I guess the Korean media can only use that phrase if after the assault and theft the criminals jumped on top of a taxi before fleeing the scene.

The incident with the taxi driver in Uijongbu this past weekend has been a topic of interest for soldiers up here. The topic was brought up during scheduled New Horizon’s Day training that was held today in 2ID. New Horizon’s Day is held twice a year and focuses on educating soldiers about Korean customs & history, alcohol related incidents, sexual assaults, and sexual harassments. Ironically this date for the training fell at a good time discuss the consequences of soldiers getting in trouble here in Korea because of recent events. This training usually brings up some good discussions and today was no different.

Unlike the Korean media I am going to warn you before hand that this is second hand information from the rumor mill brought up during the discussion, so take it for what it is. Concerning this weekend’s incident apparently what happened was that a Private First Class waved down a taxi after exiting a club in downtown Uijongbu. Upon waving down the taxi the soldier ran and jumped onto and then quickly off the hood of the taxi basically because he was drunk and being an idiot. He didn’t dance around and “run amok” on top of the taxi as some would have you believe.

Never the less this idiot dented the hood of the taxi and the cab driver was pissed and began yelling at him and grabbing him demanding he pay for the damages. The soldier never punched the cab driver by was trying push him off of him and the physical contact was begun by the cab driver though granted the soldier provoked it by denting the hood.

Two other privates with the PFC then went and grabbed the cab driver to pull him off of the PFC. They pulled the cab driver off the PFC and the PFC ran off leaving his other two buddies. Some buddy, leaving his friends to deal with the aftermath of the mess he created. While the PFC ran off two other Korean nationals jumped in and confronted the other two soldiers, more pushing and shoving happened but the Koreans were able to detain the two soldiers, where they were eventually picked up by the Korean police. The PFC was later picked up by the MPs and brought to the KNPs for questioning. That is where it is at right now. The questioning is being done and no charges have been filed yet.

Obviously, the PFC should be the one in a lot of trouble for provoking the incident by jumping on the cab. If true that he did not punch out anyone which I think may be true since we have seen no pictures yet of anyone that was beat up. If you remember the prior incident with the beer bottle, pictures of the injured Korean national were on the net within hours. No pictures of anyone injured in this altercation which leads me to believe that no serious fight happened. Probably a lot of grabbing, pushing, and shoving after the idiot jumped on the taxi hood but no serious physical injury.

Assuming that this story is true, like I said before, who knows, the PFC should pay for the damages to the hood of the Korean taxi and offer a big apology to the cab driver, plus he will receive his military punishment which could entail loss of rank, money, restriction, and extra duty. I don’t see how he would go to jail over this though if no serious physical harm was committed, unlike the beer bottle incident where the soldier involved in that incident is in much more serious trouble because he used a weapon, the beer bottle, and caused serious harm to the Korean national. It doesn’t matter who started the fight, if the soldier used a weapon like he did. He caused serious scarring on the man’s face that he will have to carry around for the rest of his life. So that soldier is more than likely going to jail and paying a big fine on top of it plus the military punishment he will receive, which could include a bad conduct discharge.

I can assure you that soldiers do not get over when it comes to serious crimes like this like the Korean media wants you to believe. They will be punished accordingly. As I have stated in my previous posting I think that the Army can do more to create a better environment that can help prevent these things from happening because I hate seeing soldiers go to jail over these things that could of been prevented.

There is good news for people who are sick of receiving the scam e-mails from Nigeria:

Nigerian court has sentenced a woman to two and half years in jail after she pleaded guilty to fraud charges in the country’s biggest e-mail scam case, the anti-fraud agency said on Saturday.

Anajemba’s sentencing by a Lagos High Court on Friday is the first major conviction since the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) was established in 2003 to crack down on Nigeria’s thriving networks of email fraudsters.

She only got 2 1/2 years for swindling $242 million dollars? I wonder if she had to give the money back at least? Anyway, hopefully this will reduce the amount of scam emails I get every week.

According to this Blogcount article Korea is a nation of bloggers:

“It is asserted that there are 11.9 million bloggers in South Korea, a country with a population of around 50 million people. This means that over 20 percent of the people in the country, including old ladies and babies, are bloggers. This is a laughable and needy assertion. IBM cannot even muster 0.1 percent of its employee base, and Korea manages over 20 percent of its entire population? This is how delusional the blogging-crowd members have become about their hobby. And, frankly, I don’t get it. Everyone has to conform. It’s the ‘everyone must become a blogger because I am one’ mentality.”

Does 20% of the population in Korea really blog? I don’t buy it. That is an extremely high percentage when you think about it. However, I can agree with the group think mentality in Korea that may lead to Korea having a larger than normal blogging population, but 20% seems really high.

As a fellow K-blogger I can definitely say that this place never runs out of things to blog about. Between the violent protesters, the bias media, wacky politicians, the Dear Leader, one word: Dokto, and not to mention the threat of nuclear annihilation there is always something to blog about here.

Hat tip to the Asiapundit for the link.

UPDATE #1: Yonhap has a few more details about the taxi cab incident this weekend. However, nothing has been provided yet to explain what happened to cause soldiers to “run amok.”

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The Lost Nomad inquires why incidents between soldiers and Koreans keep happening in 2ID. The Marmot also is wondering what the heck is going on in 2ID. I’m sorry but this is a long post but some things just need to be said.

Now let me shed some light on what is going on. Basically the ville here is a big play pen for the soldiers. With the curfew and other restrictions on the soldiers they have few options other than go to the ville. There are very limited entertainment options on post so they turn to the ville. Then to top things off the battle buddy policy makes it nearly impossible for the soldiers to carry on any meaningful relationship with anyone other than drinky girls. How many girls would like a boyfriend that has to bring their buddy with them on every date everywhere they go. Not my idea of a romantic time out.

Something else that ukes me is that the USFK leadership constantly harps on alcohol abuse and human trafficking and prostitution but what do we do, we send the soldiers to spend the majority of their free time in a place that promotes alcoholism and prostitution: the ville! The Army creates conditions for these soldiers to get in trouble through their policies that indirectly promote what I call the “ville culture”.

What I really find interesting is that the drinking age is raised to 21 to reduce alcohol related incidents but these underage soldiers are still allowed to go into all the clubs. Why are the underage drinkers allowed in these clubs to begin with? Underage drinkers are not allowed into drinking establishments in the US so why should it be allowed here? We tell the underage people not to drink but then we set conditions for these guys to fail and get in trouble because the alcohol and sex is waved right in their face. You got 18-20 year old soldiers in a club with ajuma pushing alcohol and half naked Russian & Phillipino drinky girls on them making the soldiers feel like a king. A lot of them cannot resist the temptation at their age. So the soldiers drink get involved with these drinky girls and take this I’m king of the ville attitude with them everywhere else they go in Korea.

Things like fights in the ville, beer bottles over the head, and other similar incidents happen in the ville but the club owners do not publicize it. They let the MPs handle it and let it go through UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice) channels instead of the local police because they don’t want to harm business with the GIs in the ville. Soldiers do get seriously hemmed up under UCMJ. If you get an alcohol related incident you can count on some serious punishment. However, this “what happens in the ville, stays in the ville mentality” carries over into the real Korea outside the play pen called the ville by some of these soldiers.

So when a drunk Korean in a situation outside the ville bumps into a soldier and they exchange words and maybe a few shoves the “what happens in the ville, stays in the ville” mentality takes over for some of these soldiers because these soldiers may have seen over their time in Korea people get in fights in the ville over the same reason and appear not to get in any trouble because they do not see the UCMJ process that takes place. So they get in an with the ajushi and walk away thinking it is no big deal. When it happens in the play pen called the ville it may not be a big deal but outside the ville it is a big deal because there is no business interests that wants to keep it hush hush.

Even if the soldier did not provoke the fight in the end the soldier will be the bad guy and ajushi an innocent victim. I have seen it to many times with my own eyes the Korean police side with crooked or drunk ajushis over altercations with soldiers though the ajushi was clearly in the wrong. Another factor that plays into this; is that in the US when you are provoked or assaulted you feel you have the right to self defense and will not get in trouble if you are assaulted by someone else. Here in Korea it is usually the guy who is beat up the most who is declared the victim no matter who started the fight. So if a soldier got the worst end of a fight with an ajushi and a beer bottle across his face you would hear nothing about it and it has happened before because I have seen it with my own eyes.

I will give you an example of an altercation that could of gone bad if the NCO involved didn’t keep his cool. Four NCOs get in a cab at the ville to get back to camp before curfew. One of the NCOs closes the door to the cab and a sun visor on the window falls off and ajushi starts claiming the NCO broke the sun visor and demands $30. The NCO will not pay ajushi because he knows all he did was shut the door and ajushi set him up to claim that he broke the sun visor. So the NCO continues to refuse to pay and the ajushi begins to grab the NCO and push him and making a scene demanding that he pay him. Ajushi is clearly trying to provoke a situation where some people may have hit him or pushed him back for the pushing and grabbing he was doing of the NCO.

If the NCO would of hit ajushi the Korean media would of dubbed it an American NCO runs amok in 2ID assaulting a taxi cab driver after being drunk and damaging the taxi. That is how it would sound in the Korean media with no reference to the soldier’s side of the story. That is why I say we should wait for more of the story from these past couple of ville incidents. But the soldiers in the other incidents even though they may have been provoked by the ajushis; they should not have beat the crap out of him even though they felt justified to, because they will not win in the Korean courts and have absolutely no chance of winning in the Korean court of public opinion. So as I have said before, swallow your pride and walk away because I hate seeing soldiers get hemmed up or thrown in jail for this stupid stuff.

Anyway back to my story, the NCO refused to be provoked by the taxi cab driver though he felt he was being by the cab driver. Eventually the KNPs come over to see what is going on. The NCO had the other NCOs with him as witnesses to what happened and the KNPs say that they are biased witnesses since they are his friends. Then he finds other American soldier witnesses who were standing nearby and saw what happened and they verify the NCO’s story. The KNPs say that those witness are not reliable because they had been drinking. The taxi cab driver then has other taxi cab drivers verify his version of events and the KNPs take that to be the truth. How are the American witnesses all biased but the other taxi cab drivers are not? The KNPs demand that he pay $30 or he will be taken to jail. He says fine take me to jail because I will not pay this crooked taxi cab driver.

By this time the American MPs arrive and see what is going on. They do nothing and tell the NCO to pay or he will be arrested by the KNPs and will make the blotter and his chain of command will be notified and be angry with him. He had already called his battalion Command Sergeant Major so the chain of command was already notified and trying to coordinate transportation to pick them up. However, the other NCOs with him all decided to chip in and pay the $30 because it was now past curfew and they just wanted to get back to camp. They ask the MPs for a ride and the MPs say they are busy and can’t give them a ride. They needed to take a taxi back to the camp.

All the other taxi cab drivers would refuse to take them and told them they had to take the taxi cab of the driver that just extorted $30 from them. All these taxi cab drivers in the ville are vultures that work together to extort money from GIs so they all were going to let this taxi cab driver further extort money from these soldiers because they all do the same thing. So they had to take the taxi back to camp and the driver extorts them by demanding $10 for a ride that by the meter would cost about 4000 won.

What kind of image of Korea do you think these GIs will carry of Korea the rest of their lives when they return to the states? Basically they will remember a trashy ville filled with prostitutes and alcohol, ajushis trying to rip them off, crooked policemen complacent in it, and MPs that did nothing to help them. That is the image Korea is portraying to many GIs. USFK only adds to the problem by setting conditions that cause things like this to happen by promoting the ville culture due to all the restrictions and regulations. A simple thing that could of prevented the incident from above from happening is that buses that run between camps should run later. Currently they stop running at 2100. There should be what I call the curfew bus that picks everyone up out of the ville at curfew or have a fleet of AAFES taxi there waiting to pickup soldiers so they don’t have to deal with the Korean cabs.

That is my two sense on what is happening. This is what the Nomad thinks should happen:

Why don’t we read about military personnel from Taegu, Camp Humphreys or Osan doing stuff like this? Is it something in the water up there? I have to wonder how long before USFK leadership cracks down, and hard?

Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to stop holding only the individuals accountable. Maybe, just maybe, it’s also time to hold their supervisors accountable. And their supervisor’s supervisors. Or, if someone from a unit screws up like this, make the entire unit pay for it – lock them on base/post for 30 days with no liberty, period. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to stop concentrating on stopping prostitution (which should be left to the Koreans in the first place) and start concentrating on what’s causing this recent rash of incidents. Something is broken and it needs to get fixed.

First of all it would be easy for somebody to say why does all the other Area’s in Korea have all these drunk driver’s and hit and runs that give all us here in Area 1 all a bad name? There are drunk drivers in Area 2,3, & 4 because of the conditions there. Many soldiers until recently when the regulation was changed to E7 and up could drive vehicles in those areas, where in Area 1 you cannot. So you add the promotion of alcohol along with the ability to drive and you have drunk driving incidents.

You don’t have as many drunken fights between soldiers and Koreans because in the other Areas there is much more to do on post compared to 2ID camps. Going to the posts in Yongsan and Osan is like going to Disneyland for someone from 2ID. However to say these areas do not have their own share of problems is untrue. The infamous Shinchon Stabbing Incident involved soldiers from Camp Humphreys. Yongsan has had a soldiers that killed prostitutes in Itaewon just like 2ID has. So their is plenty of finger pointing that can be done depending on ones perspective.

Some of suggestions the Nomad has provided has already been done. I have seen multiple units get locked down on post for weeks at a time due to a string of alcohol related incidents in the unit and that still does not fix the problem. The incidents keep happening.

The only way I see to reduce the problem is to change the culture in ville. However, the problem will never be fully eliminated because there will always be stupid people who do stupid things. Is the military able to eliminate all alcohol related incidents in the US? No way, so it can’t be expected that USFK can end all alcohol related incidents in Korea.

However, more can be done to reduce the amount of incidents such as providing more things to do on post for one. The crappy clubs on post filled with guys and slot machines get old after a while. Why isn’t there regular shuttle buses that run to Everland or Lotte World? Or regular shuttle buses to different Korean National Parks that run at regular times? How about giving out more passes to soldiers to stay out over night so they can travel to some of these places. I can think of many things that can be done that provides something other than getting drunk for soldiers.

With the curfew and travel restrictions in 2ID it is tough for the soldiers to do anything other than get drunk and go to the ville. So it is important the change the current ville culture. So how do you do this? First of all, why are underage drinkers allowed in the ville? Why are clubs that have Russian and Phillipino drinky girls not off limits? Everyone knows they are not there to sweep floors but for prostitution. With all the preaching about human trafficking and prostitution, why are they not off limits? It is because USFK doesn’t want to piss off the locals who maintain the play pen. If underage drinkers were not allowed in the ville and places with foreign nationals were put off limits the club owners would lose a lot of money and may cause problems for USFK by publicizing “incidents” or holding protests. However, in the long run these club owners would have to change their business models and clean up the ville and create a club atmosphere that is more what you would see in states. These are just some simple suggestions.

If the Army really wants to create a culture change around here allow more command sponsored families here. All these married guys wouldn’t be getting drunk and hanging out in the ville if their families were here. This would greatly reduce the amount of people in the ville thus reducing incidents. Plus the ville would have to have to adjust their business models to attract families to want to go to the ville such as more family restaurants that would replace some drinky girl clubs. This is something that the other areas in Korea have going for them compared to Area 1 where there in no command sponsored families. This may be why Area 1 may appear to have more incidents.

Obviously this is a very complex problem that is not easy to solve. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I am just offering what I believe to be worthwhile suggestions that could improve conditions around here. In the mean time I will continue to do my best to keep my soldiers informed and out of trouble. From the conditions I have to deal with, it is not an easy thing to do.

A Chinese general speaking during a conference for foreign journalists had this to say if war broke out over Taiwan:

“If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China’s territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons,” said General Zhu Chenghu.

Gen Zhu is a self-acknowledged “hawk” who has warned that China could strike the US with long-range missiles. But his threat to use nuclear weapons in a conflict over Taiwan is the most specific by a senior Chinese official in nearly a decade.

He actually better prepare himself for more than just the destruction of all the cities east of Xian; he better prepare for the destruction of the entire country and the end of the Chinese people if the United States were to receive a nuclear attack from the Chinese. I tend to agree with this take on what to do if attacked by the Chinese:

I don’t think he understands that no city west of Xian will be safe either. If one, 10, 100 American cities were nuked; no American President or his political party would do nothing less than ensure the obliteration from the face of the earth the country that did that. We are better at it than the Chinese when it comes to nukes. The only concern of the remaining 150 million Americans will be that we do not destroy the remaining Pandas as we move forward to killing as many of the remaining 500 million or so Chinese left after our initial attack.

We are not stable when given weapons and a good reason to fight. Ask the Japanese, Sioux, and Saddam’s kids. The best thing that China could expect from this conflict is retaining 1/3 of their prior population and their country broken up into Manchuria, Canton, East Turkistan, Tibet, and for good measure we will give some land back to our Mongolian friends, let the non-nuked Hong Kong become a Singapore, a bit to the now-united Korea, let Vietnam, Pakistan and India get their bits back, and Japan will have all oil rights outside 2NM from China’s shores for 99 years.

Well said, but I don’t think there will be much left of Korea either to give land back too.

Anyway, does anyone wonder why President Bush is pushing for national missile defense? The lefties will probably claim this guy doesn’t speak for the majority of peace loving Chinese thus we don’t need missile defense; let’s give the money ear marked for National Missile Defense to corrupt African regimes instead so we can feel better about ourselves because we are trying to end poverty though by giving handouts we are only prolonging it. First of all, it doesn’t matter if the majority of the Chinese people don’t want nuclear war, what matters is who is the guy that would push the button and right now they got one senior Chinese general threatening to nuke the United States. Plus if the US did get nuked by the Chinese the same people going after Bush now over the National Missile Defense project would be the same people criticizing him if we did get nuked, for not implementing National Missile Defense.

What would happen if an American general made a claim to nuke the Chinese? It would be all over the world news and we would be called an aggressive nation looking to provoke wars. The Chinese would demand the general apologize and be removed from the military. When a Chinese general does it, it is regulated to the back pages of any paper if it made the paper at all and limited to debate and analysis only in the blogosphere. Somebody should call the Chinese to account on this.

Anyone wonder where the North Koreans get their belligerent attitude towards nuclear weapons from now?

UPDATE #4: The Korea Herald has now gotten in on the anti-USFK bandwagon:

The South Korean government is granted primary jurisdiction in crimes committed by U.S. soldiers outside working hours as outlined by the Status of Forces Agreement that governs the legal status of U.S. troops and their dependants here.

However, many U.S. soldiers have evaded the South Korean jurisdiction by citing their exemption from the SOFA clause by claiming on-duty status.

Once again a major Korean news media outlet blatantly passing disinformation. Here is something I am wondering? Chosun Ilbo why haven’t you gotten into the anti-USFK hate fest yet? Do you actually have journalistic standards unlike the rest of the Korean news media? It is still early I guess we will see.

Also, I highly recommend you read this post, this post, and definitely this post from the Korea Sojourner if really want to know how the Korean news media operates.

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UPDATE #3: Now this is my favorite headline, from the Donga: A series of crimes committed by U.S. soldiers and their children threaten Seoul and Gyeonggi Province. They might as well and ran this headline: Run for Your Lives the Americans are Sacking Seoul and the Rest of Gyeongi Province. Here are the alledged details from the taxi cab incident the article provides:

According to the police, the private and other soldiers jumped onto a taxi that was waiting for a green signal at a crosswalk and acted violently on the night of July 15 in Uijeongbu city. They assaulted the taxi driver who tried to stop them, and attacked two other citizens who also tried to hold them back.

Some how I doubt the soldiers just jumped into the taxi and started beating the driver. There is more to this story but we will probably never hear it.
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UPDATE #2: I just read the Korea Times article on this incident and all I can say is unbelievable. How are these people considered journalists? Check out this quote from the article:

About 40 South Korean civic activists staged a rally in front of the headquarters of the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division in Tongduchon, northern Kyonggi Province, claiming that the three U.S. soldiers involved in the assaults should be arrested and compensation be paid.

Under the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that stipulates the legal status of U.S. troops and their dependents here, the Korean government is allowed to have primary jurisdiction in crimes committed by U.S. soldiers outside of working hours.

However, many U.S. soldiers have avoided the South Korean jurisdiction by claiming that they engaged in criminal acts while on duty.

First of all the 2ID headquarters is in Uijongbu and the protest happened in Uijongbu not Dongducheon because they shut down the front gate at CRC for a little this weekend in response to it. Secondly, once again I challenge anyone of these so called journalists to provide an example on when a soldier that was clearly off duty that committed a criminal act was able to avoid prosecution by claiming they were on duty. This out right disinformation used to stereotype the soldiers in USFK. The state of the Korean news media is really sickening.
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UPDATE #1: Yonhap has further expanded on their article. Check out this last paragraph they added to the article:

The South Korean government is granted primary jurisdiction in crimes committed by U.S. soldiers outside of working hours as outlined by the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that governs
the legal status of U.S. troops and their dependents here. However, many U.S. soldiers have evaded the South Korean jurisdiction by citing their exemption from the SOFA clause by claiming on-duty status.

Can anyone name a case where the soldier was off duty and was granted SOFA status anyway? I have never heard of one so I’m not sure how Yonhap can say, I quote: “many US soldiers” are evading South Korean jurisdiction. This is an out right lie.

Plus it is ironic that Yonhap complains about the SOFA but the ROK Army has a similar SOFA agreement in place for the Zaytun unit in Iraq. A ROK soldier kills a local Kurdish Peshmerga soldier and they didn’t turn him over to the Kurdish authorities because they cited he was on duty.

I continue to push my arguement that is a drunken fight with a taxi driver more newsworthy than the rape and robbery of a US soldier? It appears the Korean media and law enforcement authorities are more concerned about arresting these drunk GI’s, than the rapist that is running around Korea right now.

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From Yonhap:

Police are investigating a son of a U.S. soldier for allegedly throwing a glass liquor bottle at a passing bus in Seoul and destroying the bus’s front windscreen, police said Sunday.

“One of six drunken U.S. teenagers belonging to the U.S. base in Yongsan (in downtown Seoul) threw a bottle from the roadside on Saturday night,” the police said.

I think it may be time to lock down Yongsan. (Yes I’m being sarcastic.)

These so called “civic groups” are at again. They are demanding that the MacArthur Statue in Inchon be torn down:

Fears of a violent clash mounted Friday after progressive civic groups wanting a statue of U.S. General Douglas MacArthur in Inchon pulled down and conservative groups determined to protect it to the very end announced simultaneous Sunday demonstrations in the city’s Freedom Park.
One pro-unification civic group told police it will hold a rally in front of the MacArthur statue from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Sunday. The gathering, which it expects to attract 100 people, will call for the expulsion of the U.S. military and the toppling of the statue.

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.

These are the same idiots who were protesting last winter to tear down the statue. This Kim Su-nam character thinks that MacArthur is a symbol of colonialism and imperialism? MacArthur pulled US troops out of Korea by 1948 and let Korea fend for themselves unlike the Japanese who colonized Korea for 35 years prior to the US liberating the country during World War II which wouldn’t have happened without MacArthur’s forces defeating the Japanese.

Then MacArthur saved the country again by driving out the North Koreans with his brilliant Inchon Landing Operation. Then MacArthur ultimately lost his job because he wanted to end the communists once and for all and reunite the peninsula using every means possible. President Truman fired him because he did not want a larger war.

So MacArthur saved the country twice and these people want to tear down his statue? What is really going on here is that the Korean far leftists are not just happy trying to rewrite their own history especially in reference to former South Korean President Park Chung-hee, but they want to rewrite US history as well. They want to tear down that statue as well as tear down MacArthur’s image as a liberator of Korea.

I have been accused lately of being anti-Korean by some of my commenters but I just report what is going on around here and lately I haven’t had to look to hard to find some absurd things going on and this is one of them.

Fortunately the article mentioned that a number of pro-MacArthur groups plan to protest against the leftists on Sunday. Inchon is not exactly a center of anti-Americanism in Korea and I have been to Inchon a number of times and experienced no problems what so ever. Inchon actually felt more foreigner friendly to me then Seoul. So I really do not see the citizens of Inchon giving in to the demands of these few misguided idiots. Would America get rid of the French built Statue of Liberty because we are having squabbles with the French now? Americans would never allow that to happen, no mater how much we may disagree with the French at times because that is part of our history just like MacArthur is part of Inchon’s and Korea’s history no matter how much the leftists want to deny that. However, the day Korea does get rid of Mac’s statue will be the day I never come back to this country. That is how strongly I feel about this.

To learn more about Inchon and the history of the MacArthur statue check out the GI Korea, Focus on Inchon Series.:

This video from the Jack’s Army site is really amazing.

The terrorists are initially yelling Allah Akabar when they first shoot the soldier which means, God is Great. I understand very little Arabic but you don’t need to understand Arabic to understand what they are saying after the soldier gets right back up. They are probably saying something like, “What the %$#@! The US Army would later capture these coward terrorists and recover this video tape to show during a Commanding General’s Brief.

Hat tip to Greyhawk for the link.