Search Results for: tara o

Is anyone surprised this issue hasn’t been corrected yet?:

Korean sailors’ sexual exploitation of teenage girls in Kiribati, a small island country in the Pacific Ocean, is continuing despite major international reports about the sex trade a few years ago, the National Youth Commission said yesterday.

Three girls even gave birth to babies of Korean sailors because the men refused to use condoms, it said.

The commission interviewed 24 women who had sex with Korean sailors during an investigation in Kiribati last December. One-third of them were under 19, the legal age of consent in Korea, and one girl was 14 years old.

As most of such girls live in extreme poverty, they fall into commercial sex for money, it said.

In Kiribati, young sex workers associated with foreign fishing vessels are called “te korekorea,” referring to the Korean sailors to whom the girls provide most of their services.

The commission estimated about 40 to 50 women were involved with Korean sailors last year and the age that they entered the business was getting younger.

You have to be one jacked up person to want to have sex with a 14 year old. 

What is interesting is that Kiribati’s main island is the island of Tarawa.  Tarawa during World War II was the site of the US military’s second offensive against the Imperial Japanese military.  After the Battle of Guadalcanal the US Marines launched an attack to secure the island of Tarawa.  Over 1,000 Marines died securing the island.  Over 4,700 Japanese and Koreans died defending the island.  Even more interesting is that only 17 Japanese and 129 Koreans survived the battle. 

Terrorists have struck again on the Indonesian tourist island paradise of Bali. Almost three years to the day the Islamic terrorists bombed Bali night clubs in 2002 the terrorists now struck a popular shopping and dining area on the island:

The blasts struck the seaside area of Jimbaran Bay and the bar and shopping hub of Kuta, 30 kilometers (19 miles) away at about 8 p.m. Saturday night (8 a.m. ET).

In addition to the 26 fatalities, hospital officials said 102 people were wounded. One of those who died was a 16-year-old Australian boy, officials said, while South Koreans, Americans, Japanese and Britons were among those wounded.

There was in fact six South Koreans injured in the blast:

Six South Korean tourists were injured in a series of bomb blasts on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali Saturday, South Korean Foreign Ministry said Sunday.

Lee also added the 28-year-old South Korean, identified as Shin Eun-jung, underwent eye surgery, but she was listed in stable condition.

It is not official yet that this was an attack carried out by Islamic terrorists yet, but it is more than likely an operation carried out by the notorious Indonesian Islamic terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah:

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono condemned Saturday’s bombings as an act of terrorism. There were no claims of responsibility.

The 2002 bombings were blamed on Jemaah Islamiyah.

So why are the terrorists striking Bali? Bali is a mainly Hindu enclave in the world’s most populous Muslim country. The terrorists have no qualms killing Hindus and foreign tourists on the island. Plus terrorism on Bali dries up one of the main sources of tourist income for the Indonesian government. Less money the government has in it’s coffers means less money to keep a stable democratic government functioning.

However, not everyone thinks that the attacks may have been carried out by Islamic militants. This from Chinese Xinhua News Agency:

Saturday night’s bomb blasts in Bali could have link with fuel oil price hikes which were felt by the people as a very heavy burden, the official news agency Antara quoted a political observer as saying.

“They pressured (the government) by resorting to terrors. Their message is to lower the fuel oil price or else the terror acts will continue,” the observer added.

Sounds pretty outrageous to me to resort to terrorism because of fuel prices. Why Xinhua would even give this theory creedence is beyond me. However, it is going to be interesting to see if the Indonesian government is going to take the strong measures necessary to crack down on the Islamic militants within Indonesia. So far they have been using the kid gloves on them hoping they would just go away. It is clear now that the terrorists will not go away and will continue to strike within Indonesia to undermine and weaken the democratic government of the world’s most populous Muslim nation.

I went to the COEX Mall yesterday with my wife to do some shopping and to check out the aquarium there. Like many things in Korea the experience at the COEX was hampered by the enormous crowds.

Just to get in the aquarium you have to wait in a long line. This was familar theme all day at the COEX. By the end of the day we felt like we were at Six Flags instead of a shopping mall with all the line waiting we had to endure.

At the aquarium you have to push your way through the crowds just to see any fish. People just seem to stand in place forever gawking at fish with no regards for people behind them wanting to see them too. So I had to use my basketball skills and box out for position. I have never seen so many people excited and jockeying for position to see guppies before.

I really wanted to see the sharks that were being advertised all over the COEX. During the tour I saw plastic sharks, balloon sharks, paper sharks, video sharks, and lego sharks. I was beginning to wonder if I would ever see any real sharks. I didn’t see any real sharks until the very end of the tour and had to fight through the crowd to see them. The sharks were pretty cool especially the hammer head shark but I was so tired and claustrophobic by then I just wanted to get out of that aquarium.

The final area you experience at the aquarium is the tunnel that runs through the aquarium that makes you feel like you are walking through the ocean which was pretty cool. In the tunnel they had a moving sidewalk to stop the crowds from congregating in one area. They needed this sidewalk for the entire aquarium to stop the free for all shoving and bumping you need to do to see the other fish in the aquarium.

Overall, the aquarium has a good variety of fish, is interesting to see, and is English friendly. However, the admission fee is a little expensive at 14,800 won compared to other tour spots in Seoul. It is probably much more pleasant to visit the aquarium on a weekday instead of a weekend like I did. I have lived in Korea quite a while and I expect big crowds on the weekends but I am still not comfortable moving through them. But that is life in a city with the population density of Seoul.

Outside the aquarium there was a pretty cool store that sold a wide variety of puzzles. I noticed puzzles of city sky lines of New York, London, Paris, etc. I went and asked the lady at the store if she had any puzzles of the skyline of Seoul. She looked at me with a look of, “Why would anyone want to buy a puzzle of the sky line of Seoul?”, before replying that the store had no such puzzle. This I found surprising since they even had a puzzle picturing Tokyo. I then asked her what puzzles she had of Korea. Of all the puzzles in the entire store the only one they had related to Korea was one lone puzzle that featured a classical Korean painting that I decided to buy. Of all the beautiful sights in Korea you would think they would have puzzles picturing these places.

We did some more shopping and looking around the COEX. The place is just such a massive complex with a huge amount of stores. A definite place for foreigners to check out is the huge bookstore at the COEX. I have never seen a bookstore that big before, plus it features many books in English.

Walking through the labryinth of stores can really wear you out. So we decided to go watch National Treasure at the movie theater at the COEX, so we can sit down and relax. However, we had to do some more standing before we could sit down. The line to get tickets was extremely long and we were apprehensive about standing in another line, but we decided to anyway. Surprisingly the line moved fairly quickly considering how long it was. We were able to buy our tickets after standing in line for only 30 minutes.

The movie was actually pretty good, though it got a little corny after a while with all the secret artifacts and hidden passages the treasure hunters had to find using American history and documents as clues to find the final hidden treasure.

When the movie ended, a couple of college aged girls asked my wife if they could have our ticket stubs because their history teacher said he would give them extra credit in their US History class if they watched the movie, but they had misplaced their ticket stubs. We gave them our stubs but I just hope they don’t take the fictionalized US history in the movie as being real. However, if their history teacher told them to go see the movie, they probably will take it as gospel.

After the movie we tried to get something to eat at the many popular western style restaurants like Bennigans, Uno’s, Outback, etc. they have at the COEX. Coming from 2ID eating in one of these restaraunts is a real treat. However, the wait to get into every one of these restaurants was over an hour. With the midnight curfew we didn’t want to take the chance of not having enough time make it back up to 2ID land. If you are late for curfew for any reason you receive a field grade article 15 which is severe punishment. It doesn’t matter if your bus broke down or the taxi driver got lost, you still get in trouble. So you have to budget extra time for unforeseen things that can happen.

I wouldn’t want to be out past curfew and kidnapped by all the terrorists roaming the Korean streets looking for American soldiers between the hours of midnight to 5:00 AM. Couldn’t the terrorist just kidnap me before midnight? Well, people smarter than me make these decisions, so we decided to get some Burger King instead and head back up to 2ID land before the terrorists come out. Obviously I avoided any terrorist ambushes and safely made it back to 2ID land with an hour and a half to spare. I guess the Army is right about the terrorists not coming out before midnight after all.