Ten Day Roundup

I have been out of the loop for the last ten days due to my increasingly busy day job. When blogging about Korea missing ten days causes one to fall way behind on events because as those who follow Korea know, a lot of crap can happen in ten days in Korea, and the past ten days has been no different.First of all Robert Neff has an interesting article in the Korea Herald which was cross posted on the Marmot’s Hole about the disinterment of foreign graves in Seoul:

The Latin expression ?requiescat in pace? or ?rest in peace? is a prayer for the repose of the dead, but for many of those buried at the Foreigners? Cemetery in Mapo-gu, their continued peaceful rest is uncertain.

There is mounting concern among members of the foreign community about the future sanctity and security of certain graves at the Yangwhajin Foreigners? Cemetery. Those not classified as missionaries face the possibility of being disinterred, or possibly even worse, having the grave markers removed and the ground put to other use.

At the center of the controversy is the 100th Anniversary Church (HAC), which claims to be the caretaker of the almost 550 graves containing the remains of missionaries, diplomats, soldiers, businesspeople and expats from 16 nations.

This is pretty sickening but really not surprising when one considers the rate of development in Seoul that proceeds at all costs, even it means building over the bodies of some foreigners. There are more than 67 American soldiers, State Department and contractors and their families buried in this cemetery and one of the mentioned targets of possible removal were American soldiers and their families. Hopefully the attention brought to the issue by Mr. Neff will cause the US Embassy to get involved in this issue.

Another recent issue was the latest US soldier shenanigans in Uijongbu. The video of the incident doesn’t look good, but there wasn’t much context in the video of what happened. Since this will most likely go to a Korean court the soldiers will be found guilty no matter what the circumstances are because in Korea GI’s are guilty until proven guilty. Anyway, the soldiers involved will not have much money to buy anymore alcohol once they have to make their “blood money” payments to the bus driver and passengers. It will be most interesting to see if the soldiers receive jail time for this incident. From personal experience I do have to say from riding the buses in Uijongbu quite frequently that I have never had any problems with the bus drivers and found them quite nice unlike their taxi cab counterparts in Uijongbu. So I tend to think that bus driver did no do anything to instigate an incident, which the Uijongbu taxi cab drivers are well known for. As a general rule that I advise GI’s in Korea with, is that being drunk and public transportation don’t go together. These guys are about to find that out the hard way.

Nomad has linked to a Stars and Stripes article where the bus company manager didn’t seem to troubled by the incident after receiving a USFK compensation payment for the damages:

The manager said he couldn?t understand why the case had garnered so much media attention. ?Drunk Korean male passengers are generally making a far bigger commotion and violence on the bus, twice a month on average,? he said. ?The last time I saw U.S. soldiers disrupting this bus company was two years ago. ? It is a very rare case for the U.S. soldiers to be involved in this turmoil.? The soldiers were singing loudly when they boarded the bus, before they began breaking the door, the manager said. No one was hurt and the soldiers have formally apologized to the company, the manager said.

I wonder if that quote ever got printed in a Korean language newspaper?

Then in further news Dokdo II is happening this time with China, Kim Dae-jung is officially unhinged, while another Uri Party lawmaker shows his true colors. Then who can blame the world’s worst kidnappers for kidnapping her, the Camp Humphreys expansion is actually beginning with no violence so far, and more prostitution “crackdowns” from Korea’s keystone cops. Same old, same old news from Korea.