Category: Uncategorized

Journalist Norimitsu Onishi has been very diligent in featuring articles about North Korean defectors in the New York Times.  Today his latest article has been published which portrays another example of the alienation North Korean defectors feel once they arrive in South Korea:

“Everything’s about money here,” he said, dragging on a Dunhill Slim, a popular cigarette here. “You go to work in the morning — you can’t even take phone calls on your cell at work — then you go home and go to sleep. In North Korea, there is a fence around people to control them. But it’s very collective, so people help one another out. In that system, people do find ways to have meaningful relations with one another.”

As with many North Koreans, Mr. Lee’s nostalgia about the North increased in direct proportion with his sense of alienation in the South. At a small noodle shop, he asked the owner to turn on the fan but got only a puzzled look because he referred to it with a word used only in the North.  <…>

“It was so hard to get here,” he said. “Before, I thought that once I got to South Korea, everything would be all right. But now I know that I’ve just opened the front gate and come in. The journey’s just begun.”

South Korea currently has over 10,000 North Korean defectors living in the country and the alienation of North Koreans in South Korean society is a common problem for them.  Can you imagine what it will be like for South Korea if it has to absorb 23 million North Koreans if the North was to collapse if the country has a hard time absorbing 10,000 defectors?

Despite this fact it seems little attention is made into developing successful programs to help North Korean defectors learn job skills and educate themselves.  They are treated as nothing more than another 3D worker in Korea.  Treating 23 million North Koreans one day as nothing more than 3D workers will lead to disastrous consequences.

Seriously I may need to start a category dedicated to the numerous leftist plants and fraudulent claims of being in the military because here is another one that has been exposed by Greyhawk this time.

Our leftist plant in question is Private Marc Train. After deserting his unit before deploying to Iraq he has become the anti-war movement’s latest hero. Our newest anti-war hero in all of his published accounts pretty much covers every leftist talking point since the war began. I don’t think he left anything out at all. This guy has even gone further then other leftist plants and converted to Islam as well (see comments section of Milblogs post here).

The only problem with the anti-war movement’s latest hero, as Greyhawk very clearly pointed out, is that Private Train was already part of the leftist anti-war movement before he even enlisted. Guess who he was affiliated with? Well our friends from Appeal for Redress who I and other exposed before. You can read my two postings here and here on Appeal for Redress and their Amnesty International plants, George Soros connection, and their promotion by the largest liberal public relations firm in the country, Fenton Communications.

Oh by the way the Appeal for Courage site which was set up to counter the Appeal for Redress site 6 months after Redress was launched. Despite its late start the site overtook Redress’ petition signatures in just a few short weeks and has continued its surge past Appeal for Redress which as of this writing has 3,214 signatures compared to Redress’ 2003 signatures. Yet Redress continues to make headlines while Appeal for Courage makes none. I guess it helps to have big liberal money and Fenton Communications on your side to make media news but it definitely hasn’t helped them gain signatures.

So everyone can now add Marc Train to the infamous leftist list that includes the names like Hutto, Burnett, Key, Massey, Macbeth, Randall, etc. etc. The politicization of the military continues.

The MP involved in the assault of Uijongbu taxi driver last March is now on trial and the typical Korean court room theatrics are taking place:

An exasperated prosecutor repeatedly raised his voice at the elderly victim, Yoon Boon-ha, while questioning how Pvt. Michael Curtis Adams, 21, beat him and then stole his taxi.

Yoon wrote in a statement to police that Adams punched him, but didn’t write that Adams struck him with a 16-ounce bottle.

Yoon told the three-judge panel Tuesday that he felt the bottle strike his right eye but never saw the bottle.

Yoon said he was agitated while making his police statement.

The MP denies using a beer bottle in his crime and says he just punched him and stole the taxi.  It should be real easy to determine if the taxi cab driver was hit with a beer bottle because I have seen people hit with beer bottles before and it is not pretty.  If the cab driver didn’t have any big lacerations then he wasn’t hit over the head with a beer bottle.  The cab driver is trying to get the soldier convicted for a using a weapon during the crime instead of just punching him and stealing the cab.  If he can convince the court a weapon was used against him then he can get a bigger compensation payment.  Look at what the cab driver is already demanding:

Adams now faces up to seven years in prison. A financial settlement could mitigate the sentence, but Yoon is asking for 50,000,000 won, or about $54,000. Such settlements are common in South Korean court, but Yoon’s asking price is far higher than most similar settlements.

I have never seen a settlement in a taxi cab related incident this high and it is highly unlikely the cab driver will receive that kind of money especially from a private.  The private in question seems to be a real winner:

Adams showed up in court Tuesday in a beige South Korean prison uniform and a new, spiky mohawk haircut.

The new look appeared to surprise court officials, who last saw him June 5 wearing a regulation military haircut and an Army combat uniform.

First of all he is an idiot for giving that kind of appearance in a Korean court room where a professional appearances go a long way.  Secondly his unit is still responsible for him and should be responsible for ensuring that he complies with military regulations by having an authorized military haircut, not a spiked mohawk.  He also should be wearing his Army Class A uniform and not prison garb in the courtroom.  He may be a dirtbag but he is still someones soldier that should be supervised to ensure he is doing everything possible to help his case, a mohawk is doing nothing to help his case.  His appearance in the courtroom is only making things worse than they already are for him.   

Blackfive has featured a Korean-American in his latest “Someone You Should Know” postings:

No one really knows how they will react under extreme stress until they are thrust into a situation in which they have no options but to do so. Some may collapse under the weight; others, however, rise up and meet the challenges set before them.

One Marine was confronted with a literal do-or-die situation when a roadside bomb rocked his amphibious assault vehicle north of Fallujah during combat operations, June 7.

Lance Cpl. Daniel Kim, 20, is a crew chief with A Company, 2nd Assault Amphibian Battalion, in charge of one of the three AAVs in his section. As Kim’s crew, including his section leader, Staff Sgt. Jeffrey S. Vogel, 29, of Boca Raton, Fla., executed their combat patrol, they came to a bridge overpass that was a known site for terrorists to emplace improvised explosive devices…

Click here to read the rest.  Great job by the young Marine.

The North Korean defectors that defected to Japan by the crossing the Sea of Japan Sea that Cannot Be Named have finally made their way to South Korea:

A couple and their two adult sons arrived at Seoul’s Incheon airport from Tokyo around noon (03:00 GMT) and were immediately taken by government officials to a shelter housing North Korean defectors, the witnesess said.

The family had earlier drifted to Japan after a week-long trip across the Sea of Japan (East Sea) in a wooden boat.

They initially wanted to go directly to South Korea, but changed their path due to the tight border control between the two countries.

They were held in an immigration detention facility in eastern Japan while Tokyo processed their requests to go on to South Korea.

I hope they find a better life in South Korea and they can put the poverty and deprivations of North Korea behind them.

One of the bigger news items this week was the announcement that General Peter Pace would not be recommended for a second term as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon.  The reason given was that the Democrats would fight his nomination:

On Friday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates made the stunning announcement that he would not recommend Pace to serve a second two-year term as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Marine Corps four-star general had not been a target previously of Democrats’ ire on the war, but Gates said lawmakers made it clear the confirmation process would be ugly.

“It would be a backward looking and very contentious process,” Gates said at a Pentagon news conference.

What is interesting about this is that the Democrats are trying to spin this as that they are against Pace’s nomination because of the handling of the Iraq War.  This reasoning is highly flawed when the Democrats overwhelmingly voted to confirm the current US commander in Iraq General David Petraeus and also voted to confirm General George Casey as the Chief of Staff of the Army.  Both of these generals have much more to do with Iraq War policy than General Pace and yet they were overwhelmingly confirmed.

So obviously there is another reason for the Democrats vowing to fight any nomination of General Pace and at the very tail end of this AP article is the real reason why the Democrats would fight Pace’s nomination:

Tauscher, D-Calif., a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said Pace lost standing among members in March when he said homosexual acts were immoral and that the military should not condone the behavior by allowing gays to serve openly. He later apologized, including in a personal letter to Tauscher, for expressing what he said were his personnel views.

Tauscher said his comments on gays “showed his ignorance” and “had to be deeply discounted because they came from a man who had presided over a war that we got into on a lie and what I consider to be a serious dereliction of duty in having our troops and our readiness so destroyed by the policies of this administration.”

This is just another further example of the politicization of the military I have been talking about.  Now if an Army general says anything against gays that is reason to lose their job; who cares how competent he is, what matters is if he is on board with members of Congress’s homosexual agendas.

The news of an expansion to the Kunsan Air Force Base may become another front in the anti-US movement in Korea:

U.S. Forces Korea and South Korea are planning a large expansion of Kunsan Air Base.

A final decision on what will fill that expanded base has not been made, a USFK spokesman said Monday.

South Korean Ministry of Defense officials, however, expect two Army helicopter battalions to move there, and an Army Corps of Engineers Web site mentions past planning for such a move.

The 8th Fighter Wing currently is using South Korean relocation funds to build a fence around land bordering the base, USFK spokesman David Oten said Monday.

The defense ministry is clearing 315 acres for the expansion, a South Korean ministry official with the USFK relocation business division said Thursday.

92 Korean households need to be relocated due to the expansion with 31 families already agreeing to move.  However, the remaining home owners want an increased compensation package because they claim the government is offering them $65 per pyong while the land is supposedly worth $108 per pyong.   If this doesn’t get worked out it will be interesting to see if the anti-US hate groups will mobilize to oppose the Kunsan expansion just like they did to oppose the Camp Humphreys expansion. 

It is about time these camps were finally handed over:

South Korea has concluded its negotiations with the United States on the relocation of nine U.S. military bases in its country, the Foreign Ministry said Friday.

   The process was concluded Thursday as a joint committee under the South Korea-United States status of forces agreement (SOFA) approved and signed the agreement on the relocation of the bases, the ministry said.

   “After taking necessary steps for the efficent use of the land at an early date, the government plans to consult with local autonomous bodies to map out how to use the returned land,” the ministry said in a press release.

   The relocation of the bases are part of a long-term, multi-billion dollar project to realign and move the U.S. forces in South Korea further south to the rear of the inter-Korean border.

   The bases to be relocated include Camp Edwards in Paju, just north of Seoul, Camp Sears and Camp Essayons, both also just north of the South Korean capital, according to the ministry.

As OFK has rightfully pointed out the North Korean stooges usual suspects are complaining about environmental damage and cost sharing for the USFK transformation.  The pollution argument is of course bogus as I have pointed out before and the cost sharing is even more laughable considering the property value of the land being returned to the Korean government that the closed out USFK camps occupy is of much greater value compared to the price of land for some rice paddies outside Camp Humphreys.  If anything the Korean government is going to turn a profit on the land especially when it aquires the Yongsan Garrison land in the heart of Seoul. 

Here is one of the more amazing and unusual defections from North Korea I have read about:

Japan is likely to offer temporary protection to four people believed to have fled North Korea who are seeking asylum in the South after they arrived by boat at a Japanese port, Japanese officials said on Sunday.

The three men and a woman, who were taken into Japanese custody on Saturday, claimed to be a family, a police official said. They told authorities they had been out at sea in the small wooden boat since May 27 after leaving North Korea for the South.

They told Japanese officials they had left Chongjin on the east coast and headed south, but then changed course due to heavy security and ended up at Fukaura in Japan’s Aomori prefecture, 800 kilometers (500 miles) to the east, the police official added.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out considering the issue of the kidnapping of Japanese citizens by the North Koreans is still a hot topic in Japan. 

This is actually the first defection by sea by North Koreans to Japan.  This feat is quite impressive considering they survived in a small wooden boat for nearly a week to cross the Sea of Japan which is well known for its rough waters. 

You can read more over at DPRK Studies where a map of the approximate route of the defectors is posted.  Just by taking one look at that map you can see what they did was no small feat.  Hopefully Japan grants them asylum and they can find a better lives for themselves away from the hell of North Korea.

It has taken CNN over six months before they decided to report what is going on in Anbar, but at least they are now reporting it.  It is amazing how good the reporting can be if the reporters leave their hotels.  Nevertheless, a very good report by CNN.