Category: Uncategorized

 UPDATE: MCC has the latest article up on the Metzger case.  Things are getting more interesting in this case and it is becoming clearer why the Air Force is in full cover up mode.

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The Stars & Stripes today provides an update on the strange story of Jill Metzger:

Maj. Jill Metzger, the Air Force officer who went missing for three days in September in Kyrgyzstan, then said she’d been kidnapped, is to be temporarily retired from the Air Force after being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome, her father said Tuesday.

Metzger is to be on the “temporary disability retired list” starting this month, her father, retired Air Force Lt. Col John Metzger, said in a telephone interview Tuesday from his home in North Carolina.

For those who haven’t been following this case, MAJ Metzger disappeared from a shopping center in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan last fall. She was found three days later when she knocked on the door of a home in a nearby village asking for the family to call for help because she had escaped from a group of people who had kidnapped her.

(more…)

Seriously this Judge Roy Pearson needs to get over it.  After losing his $54 million dollar lawsuit over a pair of pants, he is again going after the Chungs:

He’s baaaa-ack: Roy Pearson, the D.C. administrative law judge who filed, fought and lost a $54 million lawsuit against the Korean immigrants who own his neighborhood dry cleaners, chose the Fourth of July holiday to make it clear that he will not be going away.

Despite a clear finding by D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff that Pearson’s case against Custom Cleaners had no merit and that the cleaners’ possible misplacing of a pair of Pearson’s pants was not worth a penny to the plaintiff, Pearson is back. He wrote to defense lawyer Christopher Manning this week to let the Chung family know that Pearson plans to file today a motion arguing that Bartnoff failed to address Pearson’s legal claims and asking the judge to reverse her verdict in the case.

Get this, Pearson says that he is fighting on the behalf of all Washington residents.  What an idiot and a disgrace to the legal profession.  Support the Dry Cleaners!

The International Herald Tribune’s Choe Sang-hun writes a chilling account of life in a North Korean prison camp from a NK defector:

Shin, now 24, was a political prisoner by birth. From the day he was born in 1982 in Camp No. 14 in Kaechon until he escaped in 2005, Shin had known no other life. Guards beat children, tortured grandparents and, in cases like Shin’s, executed family members. But Shin said it did not occur to him to hate the authorities. He assumed everyone lived this way.

He had never heard of Pyongyang, the capital city 90 kilometers, or 55 miles, to the south, or even of Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader.

"I didn’t know about America, or China or the fact that the Korean Peninsula was divided and there was a place called South Korea," he said. "I thought it was natural that I was in the camp because of my ancestors’ crime, though I never even wondered what that crime was. I never thought it was unfair."

Make sure you read the entire article because life in Camp 14 is extremely chilling stuff and should make you feel sick to your stomach that such evil exists in this world.  Thanks to Choe Sang-hun for putting a face to such evil that many would prefer to pretend doesn’t exist. 

To further put a face on evil I have decided to an OFK like job and see if I can locate Camp No. 14 on Google Earth.  Here is where the city of Kaechon is located:

Kaechon is in fact located just south of North Korea’s nuclear facility in Yongbyon.  If you zoom in on Kaechon you can see just to the south of the city what appears to be a possible prison camp:

As you can see the northern portion of the camp does not have a detailed view yet from Google Earth, but the southern portion does.  Here is a close up look at the southern portion of the camp:

There is a number of long barracks buildings along with some possible farming fields and possible mining activity:

The area with detailed imagery does appear to be totally surrounded with fencing of some kind.  Could it be Camp No. 14?  I can’t say for sure, but looking around the area I cannot find any other large fenced in compounds in the area besides this North Korean Air Force Base to the north of Kaechon:

Maybe some of you readers can find other possibilities for Camp No. 14, but even looking at the civilian areas around Kaechon they do not look much better than the possible prison camp.  Overall, what a bleak and horrible place. 

HT: Marmot

I blogged before about the politicizing of the body armor issue.  Notice you have heard nothing about this body armor issue any more from anyone.  If you want to know why you might want to watch this report.  HT: MM

I have never seen a brigade Command Sergeant Major get in this much trouble before.  If I had the chance to ask him one question it would be where he planned to flee to from the CID agents pursuing him in Balad, Iraq?

This is all so predictable:

The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog has clarified how to monitor the shutdown of North Korea’s nuclear facility and it is now up to Pyongyang and its five negotiating partners to decide on a date, an official said on Saturday.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) official Olli Heinonen said negotiations in North Korea had achieved an understanding on how to monitor the sealing and shutdown of the Yongbyon facility.

But he stressed the timing of the long-negotiated shutdown needed consultation between North Korea and other countries in six-party talks to iron out the details.

“The next logical step is that they talk with each other and agree on technical arrangements. The IAEA doesn’t have any role on that,” Heinonen, IAEA Nuclear Safeguards Director told reporters in Beijing after several days of talks in Pyongyang.

What is so interesting about this is that there is already a date set for the reactor shutdown that was agreed upon in the February 13th agreement between the US and North Korea. In the deal North Korea agreed to shutdown their reactor 60 days from signing the deal. April 13th came and passed with no signs of North Korea shutting down their reactor without receiving first $25 million dollars in money frozen by the US Treasury Department in a Macau bank due to the money being obtained through counterfeiting and money laundering. The return of the money was never in the original agreement and was something North Korea added after signing the February 13th deal.

The US government desperate to cut a deal with Kim Jong-il bent over backwards to return Kim Jong-il’s ill gotten money, but no banks wanted to do business with North Korea; that is how dirty his money is. The US government was so desperate they asked the US Wachovia bank to launder North Korea’s money for him. Unsurprisingly Wachovia declined. So the US government was left to use the US Federal Reserve to launder his money through a Russia based bank. Even with the Federal Reserve laundering the money the Russian bank was still very hesitant about accepting the deal. Incredibly the US government went through all this hassle to launder money for Kim Jong-il and circumvent US counterfeiting laws in order to meet a demand by North Korea that was not even in the original deal. Even more incredible is the fact that the US government agreed to these demands due to a vague promise from North Korea to use the money to buy humanitarian aid. The odds of Kim Jong-il using this money to buy humanitarian aid is about equal with the odds of him dismantling his nuclear program, which is none.

It didn’t take a prophet to know that when this agreement was signed in February, Kim Jong-il had no intention of keeping it. At some point when Kim Jong-il cannot get any more concessions from the US and other six party talk members he will then shut down his reactor. This current ploy for more six party talks is just a tool for further delay and to test the waters to see how desperate the US is to get him to comply. The North Koreans know the US government is desperate for a deal and will thus demand a premium price for any concessions on their part. To the North Koreans shutting down the reactor is not a big deal because they can always kick out the IAEA inspectors and restart the reactor any time they want. They have already done it once before.

Now getting them to dismantle their nuclear program is going to be the impossible part of the February 13th deal. It is unlikely North Korea will admit to their secret uranium program as well as it is totally unlikely they will actually dismantle the nuclear weapons they currently possess. A second goal of the North Korean strategy for using the six party talks is to buy time. The more the North Koreans delay the more time they buy for their scientists and researchers to further develop their infant nuclear program and improve the capabilities of their tactical ballistic missile program. In just the past few month the North Koreans have been conducting regular missile tests of their newly developed missiles. Once the North Koreans have developed their nuclear and missile programs to a level they feel would ensure the regime’s survival from external attack they will then begin to implement the policy of Strategic Disengagement.

So why is the US government so desperate to keep this deal at all costs? The reason is to keep the myth of “progress” alive. The Bush administration is desperate for a non-military foreign policy success in order to bolster their diplomacy credentials once the eventual showdown with Iran over their nuclear program materializes. So in order to keep the myth of a “diplomacy success” alive, the Bush administration is willing to appease the North Koreans and mortgage the North Korean problem for the next US presidential administration to handle. It is 1994 all over again and this time Jimmy Carter wasn’t even needed.

However, the big difference from 1994 is that when North Korea decides to act up again under the next US presidential administration to test and see what they can get out of them, they will be playing with a much stronger hand with possession of nuclear weapons and a tactical ballistic missile program to deliver them. The payoff next time for appeasement will come at a much higher cost.

This is actually quite incredible, the Korean Prime Minister has attended the memorial yesterday of the six sailors murdered by the North Koreans during the West Sea Naval Battle five years ago:

Navy sailors who survived a sea battle with North Korea’s navy on June 29, 2002 pay tribute yesterday at a memorial service in Pyeongtaek, South Chungcheong, to six fellow sailors who died. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo attended, the most senior government official ever to do so at the annual event.

President Roh is still missing in action of course, but I do have to give recognition to Prime Minister Han for attending the ceremony.  He is fairly new to the job having taken over the Prime Minister job just three months ago.  Before that he was a finance minister.  It is good to see that at least one person in the ruling government has not forgotten the six sailors who were murdered while serving their country. 

I posted before about a Korean-American hero in Iraq and now Wangkon has a great write up on a Korean-American hero in Afghanistan.

I never knew Inchon Airport had this much stuff in it. 

President Bush last year began efforts to encourage nations allied with the US like South Korea to join NATO.  Now the US Congress is making the same efforts to expand NATO globally:

NATO should seriously consider expanding into a global alliance including democratic countries such as Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Israel, a senior member of Congress said on Friday.

Rep. Tom Lantos, a California Democrat, noted some non-member countries have carried big responsibilities as partners with the 26-nation North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

This is just another example of how little the US government understands the Korean peninsula just like the CSIS report released last month suggests.

Why would Korea want to join NATO in the first place?  What benefits would Korea get out of it that it isn’t already getting from the US-ROK Alliance?  NATO membership would just mean more global responsibilities for South Korea, would piss off China, the lunatic left in South Kora, backed by their North Korean puppet masters would come out in full force against it, and NATO membership would give no financial benefits to the country.