I thought this article about a French photographer in Seoul was kind of interesting

Having devoted himself to taking aerial pictures for the last 10 years, he said, ?I am taking pictures that are not beautiful but ones that makes people think.? Among pictures displayed are eight photographs of Seoul also taken from the sky on February 18 and 19. About those pictures, he said, ?It was difficult to take pictures in Seoul due to dust and fog and there were also not many magnificent views to take.?

It seems like he could of found some nice shots around Pukhansan or the Korean palaces but then again he was taking pictures in February which is when I think Korea looks its ugliest because everything is gray and brown. The pollution however must be from all those USFK vehicle polluting the air again.

According to Dr. Andrei Lankov Christianity is spreading in North Korea and may influence eventual reunification with South Korea.

However, there are signs of a genuine Christian revival in North Korea. From the mid-1990s an increasing number of South Korean missionaries have been going to northeastern China, adjacent to the almost uncontrolled border with the DPRK. These missionaries are overwhelmingly Protestant, of various denominations. They preach among the refugees, and their mission is remarkably successful. This is understandable: Christian organizations are among the few organizations that take note of the refugees and work hard to help them – much to the annoyance of the North Korean authorities. Newly converted North Koreans often go back to their country, taking Bibles and religious literature there. The North Korean authorities take the problem very seriously. As mentioned above, defectors extradited from China and then interrogated by North Korean political police are always asked whether they have been in contact with Christian missionaries.

There are reports about the growing Christian underground. Alas, these reports cannot be verified. Still, it seems that some sort of catacomb church is fast developing in North Korea – a development that has nothing to do with the elaborate performances staged by the authorities in the officially approved churches.

Who would of thought that Bible toting ajummas could be used as a secret weapon against the Norks. Interesting reading worth checking out.

Apparently President Roh thinks that the US should not be in command of ROK Army forces if war should break out on the Korean peninsula.

Roh further appealed to a long-standing South Korean irritation, which is U.S. command of South Korean forces in combat. “Within 10 years,” he said, “we should be able to develop our military into one with full command of operations.” That would include, he said, “the capability for planning independent operations.”

The newspaper said Seoul and Washington had not agreed to revise the security treaty. The editorial concluded: “We thus ask Mr. Roh to study the issue in earnest and enhance mutual trust between the two countries rather than just mentioning it openly.” That was a polite way of saying maybe Roh should have kept quiet.

The US-ROK Alliance states that the USFK commander who currently is General LaPorte would be the single commander of all ROK and US forces if hostilities should break out on the peninsula. One could make a strong arguement that a ROK Army general should be in charge since initially the overwhelming majority of troops on the peninsula are ROK Army troops. The US has about 20,000 troops here now compared to the ROK Army’s 800,000 soldiers.

However, the problems of having a ROK Army general in charge is that a ROK Army general is not trained in the hi tech modern warfare that the US is able to employ on an enemy with cruise missiles, stealth bombers, electronic warfare, Patriot missiles, submarines, aircraft carriers, Aegis destroyers, etc. etc. A US general is needed to ensure all these elements of modern warfare are implemented and coordinated effectively without causing fratricide and maximum destruction to the enemy. The ROK Army is highly proficient in infantry and artillery skills and will lead the fight on the ground. I can’t imagine the USFK commander would intefer with the ROK Army war plans without close consultation with the ROK Army chain of command.

I guess the simple solution if President Roh really wants to have the ROK Army in charge is to withdraw all the American forces out of Korea. He apparently may already be thinking about this:

In a little noticed speech, President Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea has once again disparaged his nation’s alliance with the United States and cast doubt on whether this partnership should continue. Roh told graduating cadets at the Korean Air Force Academy that South Korea was fully capable of defending itself against North Korea, thus undermining the reason for posting American combat forces in his country.

With the current down sizing of USFK forces going on now, President Bush may be in more of hurrry to remove US troops from Korea than President Roh is.

It appears my hunch that the whole Dokto crisis is about fishing rights may in fact be correct. Andy over at the Flying Yangban has things covered from Korea while the Japundit has things covered from Japan. The Marmot has also put together some quality information on this topic.

A further development was that the city of Masan just declared Daemado Day. From the Marmot:

The city council of the port town of Masan, South Gyeongsang Province just passed ? by a vote of 29 to 1 ? an ordinace declaring June. 19 ?Daema Island Day.? June 19, as everyone knows, is the day in 1419(1st year of the reign of King Sejong) when Gen. Lee Jong-mu left Masan Harbor to launch his expedition to conquer Daema Island, known to those cretins on the other side of the East Sea as Tsushima. I don?t have time at the moment to translate the ordinance or go into the history, but suffice it to say it appears the crafty city councilmen borrowed the language of Shimane Prefecture?s ?Takeshima Day? ordinance.

Pretty good move by the city of Masan. I wonder what is going to happen next? Maybe Mongolia will claim Cheju-do since they once owned Cheju during the height of the Mongol Empire. However, that is about as likely to happen as Korea ever giving up Dokto.

A New York Times article recently featured Dr. Andrei Lankov who we all know from North Korea Zone and other publications as an expert on North Korean affairs. The article focused on the changes of Kim Jong Il’s regime in North Korea due to the expansion of technology such as video players and cell phones.

The construction of cellular relay stations last fall along the Chinese side of the border has allowed some North Koreans in border towns to use prepaid Chinese cellphones to call relatives and reporters in South Korea, defectors from North Korea say. And after DVD players swept northern China two years ago, entrepreneurs collected castoff videocassette recorders and peddled them in North Korea. Now tapes of South Korean soap operas are so popular that state television in Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, is campaigning against South Korean hairstyles, clothing and slang, visitors and defectors have said.

“In the 1960’s in the Soviet Union, it was cool to wear blue jeans and listen to rock and roll,” said Andrei Lankov, a Russian exchange student in the North at Kim Il Sung University in 1985, who now teaches about North Korea at Kookmin University here in the South. “Today, it is cool for North Koreans to look and behave South Korean, as they do in the television serials. That does not bode well for the long-term survival of the regime.”

However, don’t expect the almighty cell phone to cause regime change any time soon:

Analysts are debating the importance of Mr. Kim’s visits to military bases, which accounted for almost two-thirds of his 92 publicly divulged appearances last year, compared with one-third in 2003. With North Korea closed to American journalists, it is hard to decipher whether Mr. Kim is shoring up his power base in the army out of fear of a foreign attack or of an internal coup.

Past predictions that Mr. Kim’s power was ebbing have not been borne out.

“We have very meager intelligence resources, and we’re sort of flying blind,” Howard H. Baker Jr. said on Feb. 16 in Tokyo, in his final news briefing as American ambassador to Japan. “My country has no alternative but to assume that Kim Jong Il will continue in power. There won’t be any significant change in the governance of that country.”

Reviewing North Korea’s political elite, “we see no big change,” said Noriyuki Suzuki, director of Radio Press, a Japanese government monitoring service that focuses on the North Korean media.

Things look better in the long run though:

Inside North Korea, social, political and economic controls have been eroded by two other changes over the past decade: private markets and a breakdown in travel restrictions, Dr. Lankov said.

“You have private money lenders, you have inns, you have brothels, you have canteens,” he said, adding that most North Koreans survive through a combination of foreign aid and a fledgling private economy.

Draconian controls on internal travel and on travel to China have been breaking down, he said, and hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have traveled to and from Korean-speaking areas of China, exposing them to a thriving market economy and more South Korean television broadcasts.

“They are gradually learning about South Korean prosperity,” Dr. Lankov said. “This is a death sentence to the regime. North Korea’s claim to legitimacy is based on its ability to deliver the worker’s paradise now. What if everyone sees that it is not delivering?”

Like Lankov I don’t see the cell phone causing any revolution in the North but the video tapes have to be of big concern to Kim Jong Il because the regime is centered around the lie of the “worker’s paradise” and their supremacy to South Korea. These video tapes of Korean dramas are exposing these lies that will in turn one day expose the regime. Interesting reading worth checking out.

North Korea is threatening South Korea with war because of the annual US/ROK RSOI exercise.

The arrival of the USS Kitty Hawk and other U.S. military assets has North Korea warning that joint military exercises this week by the United States and South Korea could lead to “actual war.”

Thousand of U.S. troops from bases both on and off the peninsula are participating.

So if the Norks drop an artillery barrage on you because of our little sim exercise I sincerely apologize.

Korea is going to have to pay up because the US Army cannot even afford to dump the trash at Yongsan anymore.

Still millions of dollars apart, U.S. and South Korean negotiators will meet Tuesday for the fifth round of talks aimed at cementing how much South Korea will contribute this year to support U.S. troops stationed here.

Under the Special Measures Agreement covering the 2002-04 period, South Korean government support equaled some 40 percent of the non-personnel costs of stationing U.S. forces in South Korea, Gen. Leon J. LaPorte, U.S. Forces Korea commander, said last week.

So Korea pays 40% of the cost of USFK. That doesn’t sound like such a bad price considering the security that brings to the country. They could always try to go with an independent defense of the country and see how much that costs them.

The Korean government may soon regulate the Korean dog meat industry

The South Korean government’s moves toward regulating the dog meat industry have people on both sides of the issue foaming at the mouth.

Last week, the South Korean cabinet announced it would draw up rules prohibiting the brutal slaughter of dogs for food and push laws that set guidelines on hygienic processing and sale of dog meat.

The moves are seen in South Korea as an attempt to police an industry that while drawing international scorn is a tradition in many parts of Korean culture.

To legalize the dog meat trade, the law on livestock slaughtering should be revised to include dogs, the Korea Times quoted an unnamed senior government official as saying.

But last week’s decision is only intended at thoroughly controlling the hygiene standard of dog meat, which is considered as food in reality.

While South Korea has laws against several methods of killing dogs, it doesn’t outlaw dog meat sale or consumption.

Not everyone is happy about this:

The issue flared during the 2002 World Cup, when soccer’s international governing body called on South Korea to stop the practice.

Animal-rights groups reacted swiftly to the government’s move to regulate the trade.

Setting a hygiene standard on dog meat means nothing but legalizing the dog meat industry, the Korea Animal Protection Society stated in a news release.

We cannot believe the government is moving to legalize the dog-eating practice of some Koreans, which is not only harmful for national interests but also disgraceful and reproachable.

I don’t eat dog meat and probably never will but I think that eating dog meat here is something paticular to Korean culture just like eating beef is part of American culture. In some areas of the world such as India eating beef is frowned upon. In other areas eating pork is frowned upon. Other countries eat horses. There is a lot of differences in cuisine all across the world. So if Koreans want to eat dog they should not be prevented from doing so and those of us who do not eat dog meat should not judge Koreans negatively for doing so. It just something particular to their culture.

However, something we can judge them on is how they butcher the dogs. It is really inhumane to beat a dog to death just to get the adrenaline flowing into the meat before butchering. In the 2ID area of northern Kyongi province there are a lot of farms that butcher dogs and it is sickening to hear the dogs getting beat to death while in the field pulling night time guard duty. So if the Korean government wants to regulate something they should regulate the treatment of the dogs but should allow people to eat dog if they want to as long as the butchering process is humane. I however don’t expect much to change. I’m sure the next time I go to the field I will hear more yelping dogs.

This here is actually a pretty good idea. The Warrior Replacement Center at Camp Mobile near Camp Casey has had it’s name changed to the Warrior Readiness Center and it focusing more on educating soldiers on Korean culture.

The division recently announced that its newcomers’ orientation now will include more on Korean culture and an extra two days of briefings at the facility, formerly known as the Warrior Replacement Center. Last week, for example, dozens of new 2nd ID soldiers ended their five-day orientation with a tour of northern Gyeonggi Province, where 2nd ID is based. Starting at Camp Mobile, it included lunch at a South Korean restaurant, shopping at the Home Plus department store in Uijongbu and visits to the Gyeonggi provincial government’s northern headquarters and the Odusa Unification Observatory near the Demilitarized Zone.

Before all the WRC did for soldiers was provide assistance to fix pay problems, give you your field gear, and send you on your way. Now they are educating soldiers about Korea. I find it amazing how many soldiers know little or nothing about the Korean War, don’t know who Kim Jong Il is, or even spot Korea on a map. Well hopefully this is a step in the right direction.

Something the article did not point out was that leaders who are inprocessing (NCO’s and Officers) will actually spend two weeks at the WRC learning convoy safety, risk assessments, touring the entertainment establishments where soldiers get in trouble, and looking at the off limits area along with a host of other safety classes. This should be really informative for new comers. Serving in Korea is unlike any other duty assignment with all the weird stuff that goes on around here and hopefully the new comer training will get new leaders up to speed quicker and also keep them out of trouble because a lot of officers and NCOs get in trouble too for stupid stuff here. So overall a great idea from BG Anderson.

This here is actually a pretty good idea. The Warrior Replacement Center at Camp Mobile near Camp Casey has had it’s name changed to the Warrior Readiness Center and it focusing more on educating soldiers on Korean culture.

The division recently announced that its newcomers’ orientation now will include more on Korean culture and an extra two days of briefings at the facility, formerly known as the Warrior Replacement Center. Last week, for example, dozens of new 2nd ID soldiers ended their five-day orientation with a tour of northern Gyeonggi Province, where 2nd ID is based. Starting at Camp Mobile, it included lunch at a South Korean restaurant, shopping at the Home Plus department store in Uijongbu and visits to the Gyeonggi provincial government’s northern headquarters and the Odusa Unification Observatory near the Demilitarized Zone.

Before all the WRC did for soldiers was provide assistance to fix pay problems, give you your field gear, and send you on your way. Now they are educating soldiers about Korea. I find it amazing how many soldiers know little or nothing about the Korean War, don’t know who Kim Jong Il is, or even spot Korea on a map. Well hopefully this is a step in the right direction.

Something the article did not point out was that leaders who are inprocessing (NCO’s and Officers) will actually spend two weeks at the WRC learning convoy safety, risk assessments, touring the entertainment establishments where soldiers get in trouble, and looking at the off limits area along with a host of other safety classes. This should be really informative for new comers. Serving in Korea is unlike any other duty assignment with all the weird stuff that goes on around here and hopefully the new comer training will get new leaders up to speed quicker and also keep them out of trouble because a lot of officers and NCOs get in trouble too for stupid stuff here. So overall a great idea from BG Anderson.