The US has stopped recovering the remains of soldiers killed during the Korean War in North Korea.

The Pentagon on Wednesday abruptly suspended U.S. efforts to recover the remains of American soldiers from North Korea, accusing the Koreans of creating an environment that could jeopardize the safety of U.S. personnel performing the work.

The work has been proceeding since 1996, resulting in the recovery of more than 220 soldiers’ remains. Thousands more are still missing, and a large number of those are believed to be recoverable.

The move came just one day after the Pentagon announced that a number of remains of U.S. soldiers had been recovered during the first of what had been scheduled to be a series of missions this year at two former battlefields in North Korea. That announcement gave no indication there was a problem with safety.

This is interesting, I wonder if the North Koreans are demanding more money? The recovery of the remains is a nice little money maker for the North Koreans because they make a lot of money for allowing the US authorities to recover the remains. I don’t think the US government would suspend this type of mission unless the money demand was completely unreasonable.

I have actually seen one of the repatriation ceremonies at Panmunjom in the JSA. It really is a solemn moment to see the coffin being brought across the MDL (military demarcation line) at Panmunjom. It kind of brings home the ultimate sacrifice that 53,000 American soldiers made in the hills of Korea 50 years ago and we continue to make today in the deserts of Iraq. It has to mean a lot to the families that the US government is so vigorously pursuing the recovery of their family members. Hopefully this program will continue again once the North quit doing whatever they were doing.

Last month’s elephant “rampage” in Seoul has allowed one restaurant owner to try and capitalize on this strange incident:

The restaurant that serves barbecue and other traditional Korean foods was closed for a month for repairs after three elephants rampaged through its plate-glass front. It has just reopened with a new name: “Restaurant Where Elephants Have Been”. Owner Keum Taek-hoon said on Monday she had used the 18 million won ($18,000) insurance money to remodel her eatery.

Three of them crashed through the eatery, sending staff and patrons fleeing in terror. The elephants crushed tables and stools and also munched on carrots. Keum said patrons have been heading to her newly reopened restaurant out of curiosity and sales have doubled.

I guess the anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea does not apply to race horses. The Asahi Shimbun is reporting that Japanese race horses are being bought from breeders at a record pace from South Koreans.

So why the sudden interest in Japanese race horse despite the current tensions between the two countries? Well this just goes to show that making money is more important than two rocks out in the middle of the ocean.

Hyundai last week opened an automobile manufacturing plant in Montgomery, AL. This is a big step for the company in trying to increase it’s market share in the United States.

The plant will be responsible for making both the Hyundai Sonata car and the Santa Fe SUV. The plant will also provide 6,000 high paying jobs and many other secondary jobs providing services for the plant. The plant has even taken a policy to provide locals with the first jobs at the plant. Needless to say that Hyundai is now very popular in the Deep South.

I have to thank one of my commenters for providing this link to the local WSFA Channel 12 website in Montgomery. The news channel actually has a really good webpage that features many news video segments about the opening of the Hyundai plant and the news channel even sent a reporter to Korea to provide a news segments about Korean culture and traditions. He found out though that the only thing Koreans know about Alabama is the song “Oh Susanna”. If Korea wants to improve its image in America, this is a good way to do it. Images of Hyundai creating jobs for Alabamans will do more for Korea’s image in America then people continuously seeing protestors burn the Stars and Stripes and Kim Jong Il’s puffy hair doo.

Alabama and Korea have got to be two of the most culturally different places in the world but it appears this partnership is working out. The effect the plant is having in this southern city is really phenominal. By viewing the numerous video segments you will see that the city has now offered MBC as part of their cable program, more Korean restaurants and businesses are opening up, local news webpages are being translated into Korean, locals want to buy Hyundais, and even former President George H.W. Bush has gotten into the act by saying God Bless Korea at the Grand Opening ceremony for the plant.

The Grand Opening of the plant was quite elaborate and featured many Alabama and Korean politicians. The Grand Opening also had a musical performance by the Electric Cookie Trio which is three Korean ajummas with keyboards and electric violins. Yes, that’s right electric violins. I have never heard of one before either. Anyway it was an interesting blend of music, but when they started playing “Oh Susanna”; I just wanted to cover my ears. Their rendition of Arirang wasn’t to bad, though I prefer a more traditional playing of the classic Korean song.

Hopefully this venture works out for both Hyundai and Alabama. Good to see something positive happening between America and Korea. Sure beats talking about nukes and anti-Americanism.

The government plans to spend 8.8 billion won to repair Naksan Temple in Gangwon province that was heavily damaged from last month’s forest fire, according to the Korea Times:

Brian from Gangwon Notes provides his insights on this issue here.

I actually had a chance to visit Naksan Temple last weekend and was generally amazed first by the devastation of the forest fire. The fire really was quite large and destroyed civilian buildings could be seen, along with scorched cars, not to mention the thousands of acres of blackened trees.

Secondly I was amazed more damaged wasn’t caused by the fire in the Naksan area in general. The civilian community in the Naksan area seemed to fare pretty well considering the cicumstances. I saw many homes, restaurants, and hotels that had scorched trees right along the sides of the buildings but the structures never caught fire. I don’t know if that is due to the firefighters or property owners protecting there own property, but the damage could have been worse. The Naksan Temple on the other hand was heavily damaged:

The Korea Times article made mention about deforesting 20-30 meters around Buddhist Temples in the future to create a fire break. You can see in the below picture workers have already begun deforesting some areas of the temple:

Brian disagrees with the deforestation idea and I tend to agree with him. The Naksan Temple already had a large fire break in place, Highway 7, but that didn’t help protect the temple as the flames obviously were able to jump over the highway. I tend to like the trees around the temples here and it would be a shame if all the temples in Korea have to be deforested because of this one incident.

I for one however couldn’t understand how this fire got so out of hand to begin with. With the amount of available water to fight the fire, along with the Highway 7 fire break you would think the temple could of have been protected. Especially since the home and business owners near the temple were able to protect their properties. Maybe man power was an issue but with the heavy military presence man power shouldn’t have been issue. It was probably inexperience in dealing with a large forest fire. Large forest fires are not very common in Korea so hopefully this was a wake up call that maybe the fire fighters and the soldiers need more training on how to contain these types of fires. I’m confident the appropriate Korean authorities will learn from this incident to improve in the future.

The good news is that the reconstruction at the temple is moving quickly:

Many of the buildings at Naksan Temple have already been reconstructed and workers are moving really fast to clean up debris and dead trees. With the quick pace the workers are moving to repair the temple, I estimate that the temple’s structures will all be fully repaired before the end of the year from what I saw.

Not all of the temple is scorched however, and is worth visiting now:

The monks at Naksan Temple are extremely friendly. Usually when visiting the various temples in Korea the monks are usually quiet and keep to themselves. For whatever reason various monks came up to me while at Naksan Temple and thanked me in broken English for visiting the temple and tried to explain different areas of the temple to me. So please visit the temple and support the reconstruction work going on because Naksan Temple was a really beautiful site before the fire and I am confident it will be that way again in the future.

If Jodi from the Asia Pages thought the picture below was bad:

Well, I just can’t wait until she sees this:

Here some background on this image from the Star and Stripes.

If you are wondering if MAJ Laporte is related to USFK Commander General Laporte; he is General Laporte’s son. Anyway I think it good that students get to hang out with soldiers and see the equipment. Heck even Uri Party law makers came to Camp Casey and the Korea Training Center to check out American weapon systems. As long as these displays are handled professionally and don’t turn into a playground of kids running around with guns or jumping around equipment unsupervised, students should leave with a better understanding of the US military’s role here in Korea and the soldiers can feel proud that people are taking interest in what they do.

This was their first time interacting with Americans so who knows how many negative stereotypes they may have had before were changed and vice versa between the soldiers and the Koreans. However, the comment about the strength of the ROK Army is a common one I have heard from Koreans here before, but Koreans should feel confident that the ROK Army is a highly trained and capable force that can competently defend South Korea.

Overall, I think the visit is a good idea and I’m sure they will continue because many Korean schools contact the Army to have us setup displays like this. Like I said before as long as they are handled professionally it should be an interesting learning experience for everyone involved.

This gave me my biggest laugh of the day. The Japundit reports that the new Japanese professional basketball league will call itself Basketball Japan League or the BJ League for short. You need to check out some of the comments from the Gaijin Biker website for some more laughs. Here is a sample.

1) The league features an in-your-face style of play.

(2) The players really suck.

(3) League motto: “Get your head in the game.”

Will the fun ever stop with Dokto? Now comes this piece from the Japan Times about 26 Japanese claiming domicile residency on Korea’s Dokto islets.

Twenty-six Japanese have registered their family domicile origins on a group of disputed islets in the Sea of Japan under South Korea’s control, the government revealed Tuesday.
Seoul has lodged a protest with Tokyo over the move. It claims the islets, known as Takeshima in Japan and called Tok-do by South Korea, are part of South Korean territory.

The “honseki” family domicile origin is the place where the family register is recorded on paper at the local government level. Unlike resident registration, a Japanese national can choose any address for honseki, regardless of their current place of residence.

In response Korea has registered their own people:

Seoul has reportedly allowed more than 800 South Koreans to register their domicile origin on the islets.

Tokyo has demanded that the decision be annulled if the reports are true, but Seoul has refused to disclose any information, according to a Foreign Ministry official in Tokyo.

I have been to Dokto and there is only one way I can see these people fitting on the isles. High rise apartments will need to be made, one on each islet. One for the Koreans and one for the Japanese could be constructed. Could this end the Dokto dispute?

(Hat tip to the Japundit.)

The San Diego Union Tribune is reporting this interesting article about the North Korean gulag system. The article has interviews with defectors from North Korea who served time in the gulags. They provide a insightful look into the gulag system. Here is a fact I found amazing:

The concentration camp is a kind of closed town where a number of camps are linked together by a road. At least two of the camps, Hoeryong and Hwasong in Hamkyong Province, are larger in area than the District of Columbia.

A prison larger than Washington, DC? That is one large prison. Here is another piece of the article I found interesting:

In the 1990s, imprisonment befell some North Korean students and diplomats who had been studying or posted in the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe and had been exposed to the collapse of socialist rule. According to Yong Kim, he saw some old white men in his gulag who he believed were American POWs from the Korean war of early 1950s. Also believed to have been placed in the prison system were a large number of South Koreans, including many fishermen, captured or abducted by North Korea over the years.

This would be absolutely horrible if we abandoned POW’s from the Korean War to a life of hell in a North Korean gulag. They white prisoners may be Russians or people who have defected to North Korea who needed to be reeducated. Hopefully these claims will be investigated by the government. Personally I find it hard to believe they could have survived so long in a gulag. Anyway interesting reading about the every day life of your average prisoner in North Korea, worth checking out.

Kaechon, a mining camp of about 15,000 prisoners, is about 25 to 31 miles long by 19 miles wide. According to Kim Yong, one of the camp’s survivors, daily meals consisted of 20 to 30 kernel of corn and watery cabbage soup. This image was provided by Space Imaging Asia, courtesy of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.

(Hat Tip to Simon’s World for the link.)

A large cave was discovered recently on Cheju Island by utility workers installing a new power pole.

A pseudo-limestone cave, the world’s largest of its kind, was found on Cheju Island last Wednesday.

“(The cave) is at least 2.5-kilometer-long and rich in formations of mineral deposits such as calcite stalactites and stalagmites. As far as we know, there is no other pseudo-limestone cave like this in the world,” Son told The Korea Times in a telephone interview. So far, 120-meter Hwanggum cave on the island was considered to the largest of its kind.

If you have plans to go to Cheju Island make sure to check out the different caves on the island. They are really amazing to see and worth the hike to explore them. This may become yet another worthwhile cave to explore on the island if they open it up to the public.