U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo walks through the streets of Hanoi on Sunday. [AP/YONHAP]U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo offered North Korean leader Kim Jong-un the Vietnamese model of normalization of bilateral relations with Washington and economic prosperity, speaking in Hanoi on Sunday on the heels of a two-day trip to Pyongyang.
“In light of the once-unimaginable prosperity and partnership we have with Vietnam today, I have a message for [North Korean] Chairman Kim Jong-un,” said Pompeo at a business event at the Sofitel Metropole Hotel in Hanoi. “[U.S. President Donald] Trump believes your country can replicate this path. It’s yours if you’ll seize the moment … it can be your miracle in North Korea as well.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Maybe the Vietnamese should put statues up in front of the ROK embassy protesting South Korean killing of civilians during the Vietnam War like they Koreans have done with a comfort woman statue in front of the Japanese embassy:
Nguyen Titan, a Vietnamese victim of a massacre during the Vietnam War, speaks during a press conference at the National Assembly in Seoul on April 19, 2018. (Yonhap)
Two Vietnamese victims of South Korea’s wartime misdeeds have called on the Seoul government to apologize and take steps to verify the truth behind the alleged mass killings during the 1960-75 war in their country.
They claimed that they are still haunted by the harrowing memories of their families being killed by South Korean troops deployed to fight in support of the United States during the Vietnam War.
They came here to testify before the “People’s Tribunal” slated to convene in Seoul on Saturday and Sunday. The tribunal, a mock trial designed to look into the incidents, is led by the local progressive civic group, called MINBYUN-Lawyers for a Democratic Society.
“I want to ask … Why did South Korean troops fire guns and threw grenades at our family, then just women and children. Why did you set even our house on fire and bulldozed through dead bodies,” Nguyen Titan, a 58-year-old woman, said during a press conference at the National Assembly. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but the Minbyun group of lawyers are hard core leftists. In the past they have attacked the USFK base relocation, tried to bring back the US beef issue, and tried to have North Korean defectors forcibly returned to North Korea. So why would hard core leftists be bringing up this issue now with a left wing government in power? They are likely going to use this issue to attack and blame conservative ROK politicians for since former South Korean strongman Park Chung-hee was in power at the time.
South Korean first lady Kim Jung-sook (2nd from R) and Vietnamese first lady Nguyen Thi Hien (2nd from L) tour the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi on March 23, 2018. Kim is accompanying President Moon Jae-in on his three-day state visit to the Southeast Asian country, which began the previous day. (Yonhap)
Maybe Mike Honda can put a Vietnamese comfort women statue next to the Korean one that was put up in San Francisco:
But for a significant number of children fathered as a result of rape by South Korean soldiers, it was the start of a living hell.
Mr Nhat recalled: “Before April 1975, I had been treated well by the South Korean troops who lived on the base near my home in Phu Yen Province, central Vietnam. I was still too young to have any real sense of my identity and hadn’t yet questioned my mother about why I looked different to other Vietnamese children.
“But when the Communists declared victory, everything changed for me. Suddenly, I knew I was dangerously different.”
A period of painful bullying ensued in school. Mr Nhat said: “I was bullied repeatedly. The other children kept asking who my father was and called him a ‘dog’. I just kept suffering in silence.
“I was 18 when my mother finally sat me down and told me she had been raped by Korean soldiers – not once but three times. My two sisters are also mixed blood or Lai Dai Han as we are known in Vietnam.” (…..)
South Korean troops were not alone in their exploitation of civilian women but their country has never acknowledged the allegations or taken steps to investigate. (…..)
Mrs Ngai felt confused in the fog of war but now she is very clear about what she wants now. “I think the South Korean government should apologise for everything they did to women in Vietnam. [The Independent]
Here is another case of people being caught smuggling gold into South Korea in their underwear:
The gold bars and the underwear two Vietnamese flight attendants working for Asiana Airlines attempted to smuggle into the country. /Courtesy of the Korea Customs Service
Two Vietnamese flight attendants working for Asiana Airlines, Korea’s second largest carrier, have been detained after trying to smuggle 19 kilograms of gold into the country, the Korea Customs Service (KCS) said Thursday.
According to the KCS Incheon office, the attendants were concealing 1-kilogram-gold bars ― 10 on one and nine on the other ― in their underwear when they arrived at Incheon International Airport on June 5 from Vietnam.
The KCS said this was not their first smuggling attempt, saying it has confirmed that the two succeeded in smuggling 13 kilograms of gold into Korea on three occasions in April.
They will face charges of attempting to smuggle 32 kilograms of gold, worth about 1.5 billion won ($1.33 million), into the country. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but I wonder if the flight attendants were dressed like this?
As if the murder of Kim Jong-nam could not get any more bizarre, now the VX nerve agent wielding assassin Doan Thi Huong has been identified as an aspiring singer who appeared recently on Vietnam’s version of American Idol:
A woman believed to be Huong appeared on the Vietnamese version of Pop Idol
Doan Thi Huong’s site features pouting party pictures including a snap of her wearing a shirt emblazoned ‘LOL’ similar to the one on the fleeing suspect caught on CCTV.
The photos were released amid claims she once starred on the Vietnamese version of Pop Idol.
