I’ll be out in the field for the next two weeks. More bloggin when I get back.

According to the Joong Ang Ilbo the ROK Army may begin a withdrawal of forces later this year from Iraq:

South Korean military leaders in Iraq have recommended that Seoul consider gradually reducing its forces in the north of the country, starting late this summer, sources in the government and Uri Party said yesterday. The Korean military has concluded that Iraqis will be capable of assuming a larger security role as early as August.

The sources said the Roh administration has seized on the suggestion as a way to express dissatisfaction over what it views as U.S. favoritism for Japan.

What I find interesting about this is that the ROK Army isn’t providing any security in Iraq. In fact in the relatively safe Northern Iraqi Kurdistan, the Kurdish Peshmerga are providing security for the ROK Army. That is why there has been no deaths of any ROK Army personnel during the deployment. In fact the greatest accomplishment for the ROK Army was the introduction of modern bathroom culture and toilet paper. Korea is able to do so much more in Iraq but chooses not to. Many nations with smaller populations than Korea’s fought in the Korean War and gave up their lives for Korea. Here is a listing of deaths from foreign countries during the Korean War:

US – 33,629
UK – 1,078
Turkey – 717
Canada – 310
Australia – 339
France – 290
Greece – 169
Columbia – 140
Ethiopia – 120
Neth. – 111
Thailand – 114
Belgium – 100
Phillipines – 92

It’s a good thing for Korea that a country like Ethiopia did more for freedom in this country than what Korea is willing to do in Iraq.

I’m not saying the ROK Army should even take any casualties in Iraq. I’m just advocating that Korea should do more than give people toilets. Build a highway, bridge, governmental buildings, or even a dam. These are all things Koreans excel at building.

Here are some statements from the Uri party I found interesting:

“The United States has chosen Japan as its proxy to control the growing Chinese influence in the region,” a top Uri Party official said. “The United States has given full support to Japan, including Tokyo’s bid to become a UN Security Council member. That is the background of why Tokyo is pushing its territorial claims over Dokdo against Seoul, and why Washington is silent about it.” Uri representative Woo Won-shik said, “We have nothing to gain by deploying the troops in Iraq for a long time. I support the reduction.”

“To show that South Korea-U.S. relations are not unilateral, we should withdraw, or at least reduce the forces,” Uri Representative Im Jong-in said.

I’m confused, it sounds like Representative Woo wants Korea to be the US’s proxy in Asia and not Japan? Then to say that the US supports Japan’s claim on Dokto because the government chooses to keep quiet about it is absurd. Has it ever occurred to this guy maybe the US government doesn’t care about Dokto? Just like more and more Americans are beginning to care less about Korea?

It pains me to say this because I really like Korea, but why shouldn’t the US show more support for Japan in the region instead of Korea? The Japanese government has been a steadfast ally of the US compared to the constant bickering with the South Korean government over everything from the 2ID redeployment, the Yongsan garrison move, North Korea, missile defense, and now the ROK Army deployment. So if the ROK Army begins withdrawing from Iraq then so be it. I guess the Iraqis will just have to learn to use toilet paper on their own.

Here is a really funny North Korean propaganda video. Via the Japundit.

Living in Korea you are surrounded by the anti-Japanese media. However, the Japundit provides an insightful view of the whole “Great Dokto Crisis” from the Japanese point of view we rarely see here. Definitely a must read:

Give the Korea Times credit, however. They did inject some reality into their account, but you have to read to the end of the article to find it: “Only a fraction of schools – less than 0.1 percent – adopted the first edition of the Fusosha textbook in 2001, far less than the publisher’s target of 10 percent.”

After all the talk about the brainwashed Japanese youth and their failure to teach history, we finally find out that only 0.1% of the schools actually used the textbook they’re risking a diplomatic war about. Lest their readers be overly dismayed by the facts, the Times tried to buck them up: “But the publisher may be able to exploit the ongoing controversy to increase sales, analysts said.”

They should have kept going and talked about militarism while they were about it. For example: Reporting the worldwide ranking for military personnel by country.

China: 2,930,000
United States: 1,547,300
India: 1,457,800
North Korea: 1,120,000
South Korea: 600,000
Japan, where “militarism is poised to resurface” is not even in the top 15, with military forces that total 239,500. In every category surveyed, either China or one of the Koreas is in the top five. The only category in which Japan is in the top five is total military expenditures, coming in 5th. South Korea is 10th.

China has nuclear weapons. They provoked a military incident with the United States in 2001. They constantly threaten to use military force to incorporate Taiwan. South Korea has universal male conscription. They scrambled fighter aircraft to drive away reporters in a business jet taking pictures of the Takeshima/Dokto islets. North Korea is a de facto military dictatorship with nuclear weapons and a belligerent attitude. The average news broadcast in North Korea is delivered in a martial tone that sounds like George Orwell translated into Hangul.

But one of Japan’s smaller prefectures passes a bill calling for a memorial “Takeshima Day”, and 0.1% of Japan’s schools use a rightwing textbook, and militarism is “poised to resurface in Japan”?

No wonder the “Japanese Remain Silent on Roh Statement”. Laughing would be an inappropriate diplomatic response.

The Japundit definitely brings out some good points that Korea is probably over reacting to the whole “Great Dokto Crisis.” President Roh is just trying to build up his popularity through Korean nationalism by confronting Japan. Koreans have an inferiority complex when it comes to the Japanese so it seems to make people feel good now that Korea is strong enough to stand up to Japan even if it has gone overboard now.

However, Japan does have some responsibility for creating these tensions by starting the whole Dokto, biased text books, no-apology for WWII, etc. etc. issues to begin with. Politicians in Japan are using some of these issues for their own political reasons (ie-fishing rights at Dokto) just like President Roh is taking advantage of it for his own political reasons. I don’t see how any of this will do any of them any good in the long run but I guess we will see.

The fears of Japanese militarism are definitely blown out of proportion. Japan may have a much smaller army than Korea but they do have a technologically advanced military that makes up for their lack of numbers especially their naval forces. However, no advanced military is much good without large numbers of boots on the ground to hold territory. 239,500 soldiers in the Japanese military isn’t nearly enough to start a war in Asia and begin occupying countries like Korea and China. Even if the Japanese attacked Korea, Korea is more than capable of defending themselves and defeating any Japanese attack.

The fact that the Japanese are becoming more and more able to rapidly deploy their forces is of concern to a country like China who could face a joint US-Japan counter attack if China uses military force on Taiwan. This creates the need for China to curtail the deployability of the SDF in Japan. That is why China likes to bring up past Japanese atrocities and that is also why China protests any UN peacekeeping mission or the deployment to Iraq of Japanese soldiers.

So here in Korea I doubt we need to fear a Pearl Harbor style of attack on Pusan amy time soon. Great reality check from the Japundit.

A Korean woman earned herself $1.2 million dollars by illegally signing people on to the installation, according to the Stars and Stripes:

A 48-year-old South Korean woman was arrested Tuesday on charges of using her access to Yongsan Garrison to charge entrance fees in exchange for signing in almost 180 South Koreans during the past three years to gamble, according to Seoul police.

The woman has been accused of charging each person 30,000 won ($30) for access an estimated 900 times between April 2002 and January 2005, and the numbers could be higher, said Chief Detective Jang Sung-yoon, who works in the foreign affairs section of the Seoul Police.

The woman is officially charged with running an illegal currency exchange business, in which she charged interest while exchanging won and dollars, Jang said. The police found a bank account in her name containing more than 1.2 billion won, or $1.2 million, he said.

The woman, whom Jang would identify only by her last name, Kim, gained access to base through her membership in the Korean-American Association, Jang said. He said Kim never had worked on base or for U.S. Forces Korea.

To gain access to a USFK facilty an ID card holder only needs to sign that guest on to post and the guest gives up their ID card until they are signed out by midnight that same night. This whole scam is really amazing. The fact that illegal gambling is going on isn’t amazing, what is amazing is how much money she made signing people on to post. $1.2 million dollars and signing in 900 people in 3 years!? How the heck didn’t anybody notice she was signing in all these different people all the time?

The biggest question I am concerned about is force protection. If USFK has a curfew because of all the terrorists lurking in Itaewon just waiting to get us than you would think access to the camp would be much tighter. Heck the terrorists can get on camp for $30 and bomb us there too unless they get caught up to long on a slot machine. Maybe soldiers are safer in Itaewon after all?

The “Great Dokto Crisis of March 2005” continues to be blown way out of proportion. The Dokto issue has now been featured in the NY Times. The NY Times overall takes the Korean side of this issue by bringing up Japan’s past war time atrocities and relating those to the current Japanese government.

For older South Koreans, like Mr. Heo, the bitterness of the past resurfaced. His father had told him of working in a stable where he watched Japanese soldiers eat.

The dispute comes as Japan, urged on by the United States, has been building up its military and taking a hard line against China and North Korea. A nationalism not previously seen in postwar Japan has emerged, with Mr. Koizumi unapologetically praying at Yasukuni Shrine, where 14 Class A war criminals are enshrined, and with teachers in Tokyo being punished for not forcing their students to stand and sing the national anthem during graduation ceremonies. It was also disclosed recently that senior members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party pressed the public broadcaster, NHK, to soften a 2001 documentary on Japan’s wartime sex slaves.

The NY Times seems to also think that the “Great Dokto Crisis” will cause Korea to unite with North Korea and China to oppose Japan:

“Japan should understand that its actions regarding Tokdo have regional repercussions,” said Park Cheol Hee, a specialist on Japanese politics and diplomacy at Seoul National University, in an interview on Monday. “If South Korean-Japan relations become twisted, the result will be that South Korea and North Korea will become united against Japan. And as China and Korea share the same historical perspective toward Japan, the unintended consequence will bring China and the Korean peninsula against Japan.”

The NY Times article concludes with this:

“I strongly urge the Japanese foreign office and Japanese government to take a much more independent and much more positive policy toward Asia,” Makoto Taniguchi, a former Japanese ambassador to the United Nations who now teaches at universities in Japan and China, told reporters in Tokyo last week. “Otherwise, there is no future for Japan. Japan will be totally neglected in Asia, and, in the future, if Japan’s position and economic power go down, what is its use to the U.S.?”

Some how I don’t think the “Great Dokto Crisis” will cause Japan to lose political, cultural, or economic influence over the long run. I think if Japan is smart about this, which is debatable since they caused this crisis to begin with; that they should just keep their mouths shut and the Koreans will naturally forget about it and the special interest groups will move on to bashing English teachers or GI’s to get people pissed off again.

I do have to say that we, the army, have gone almost a year now since the “Great Shinchon Stabbing” and nobody talks about that any more. Unfortunately we are due for somebody to do something stupid again. It seems like every year around this time somebody does something stupid that gets people pissed off at the army over the summer and then everyone forgets about it come fall time. Hopefully this year we can break that trend. However, with 32,000 USFK forces on the peninsula going out more because of the warm weather, odds are somebody will do something stupid. I just hope Koreans don’t set themselves on fire or chop their fingers off over it.

For those who have been in Korea for a while and have spent time in a PC cafe the thing you will notice right away is how Koreans are fascinated and addicted to online games. Young Koreans will sit in dark and smoky internet cafes for hours playing their games and stopping only momentarily to order ramen noodles from the cafe clerk to eat or to take a drag from a cigarette. The one game they play the most in particular is Starcraft. Why this game is so popular continues to allude me because I have played the game before and it is a fun game but not fun enough to play for 24 hours at a time. There are many newer games that are much better real time strategy games (RTS) than Starcraft.

For whatever reason no other game seems to resound with Koreans quite like Starcraft. They even have professional Starcraft leagues here, with top players receiving salaries similar to baseball players. On my Korean cable TV service, I receive two 24 hour online games channels that features Starcraft games 70% of the time. Starcraft has become as much of a cultural trait of Korea as kimchi.

The Korea Times has an interesting take on the Starcraft phenomenom. The paper believes Starcraft may be so popular due to Korea’s capitalist culture:

A new book, “When Games Talks to You (Keimi Marul Kolool Ttae),” claims that no computer game has exerted such an impact on people as the online game, which mirrors aspects of contemporary culture.

The authors point out its speedy movement of units and relatively short game duration as major traits appealing to quick-tempered Koreans.

The idea of the capitalist culture causing people to play Starcraft never occurred to me. However, short games that are appealing to quick tempered Koreans I found interesting because that seems like such a stereotype being thrown out there about Koreans. But incidents like the outrage and protests over the latest “Great Dokto Crisis of March 2005” only serves to feed these stereotypes. I just don’t buy that Starcraft is so popular because of “quick tempered Koreans.” Does anyone else got any better theories why Koreans are so addicted to Starcraft?

According to the Asahi Shimbun the US will now actively stop North Korean counterfeit money and drug smuggling operations.

The Bush administration intends to squeeze North Korea on drug trafficking and counterfeit money operations, activities that are suspected of funding Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear ambitions and which often involve the reclusive state’s diplomats, says a high-ranking U.S. official.

Rice, who arrived in Tokyo Friday for a two-day visit, will ask the leaders of those countries for support in smashing North Korea’s illicit money-making ventures.

Drug smugglers and counterfeiters are usually low life criminals while in North Korea they tend to be the priviledged regime higher ups that are making a load of money selling drugs:

How much Pyongyang is actually earning from drug trafficking, counterfeit dollars and other illegal activities is not known, say U.S. officials.

In June last year, two diplomats with the North Korean Embassy in Cairo were caught trying to smuggle 150,000 tranquilizer tablets. By putting the squeeze on such illegal fund sources, Washington hopes to encourage Pyongyang to rejoin the six-nation framework.

I can’t help but have this picture in my mind of North Korean diplomats peddling drugs in the hallways of the UN. I have wondered at times what those suits at the UN were smoking. Now I know.

Contractors working for USFK were denied their request to be compensated for back pay due to the USFK curfew policy.

An Army colonel has rejected a request from nine Army Corps of Engineers civilians for five months of “standby pay” for complying with a mandatory overnight curfew.

The letter from Army Corps of Engineers Far East District commander Col. Janice Dombi dated March 11 and delivered to a union steward on March 15 states the curfew didn’t require Defense Department workers in South Korea to maintain a state of readiness, a requirement to receive standby pay, according to Dombi.

In her response, Dombi refers to orders from U.S. Forces Korea commanders issued last year defining the curfew, which in September began to include not just servicemembers but civilian workers, contractors and their families. That mandatory compliance for civilians and private workers was lifted March 1; the curfew remains in effect for servicemembers.

The contractors may have lost the battle of receiving back pay but they did win the war against USFK because the curfew has now been lifted on them. The curfew for all the soldiers is now 0100 on weekends extended by one hour from the prior midnight curfew. The army maintains the curfew is necessary for force protection reasons due to credible terrorist threats. I don’t know why the army doesn’t just come out and admit the curfew is in place to curtail prostitution which the army has been able to reduce dramatically. I guess protecting soldiers from “juicy girl” can be considered a form of force protection depending on one’s perspective.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is reported to have a secret mistress and daughter living in Japan according to the Chosun.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has a mistress and a daughter named Mieko in Tokyo, the Monthly Chosun reports. The magazine said Mieko buys gifts for her father and visits North Korea on Kim’s birthday every year.
Quoting Korean and Japanese intelligence sources and a Japanese business partner of Kim’s son, Kim Jong-nam, the monthly made the revelation in its April edition published Friday.

Now in her late 20s and living in Tokyo, Mieko is “pretty and well-dressed, though not as beautiful as her mother, and looks affluent,” the magazine said quoting a Korean-Japanese businessman. He described her as amiable and said she got on well with her half-brother Kim Jong-nam. The two are said to be exchanging emails.

How many mistresses does this guy have?