Tag: Pyeongtaek

Condolences to the friends and families of these firefighters:

Three firefighters that went missing Thursday at the scene of a fire in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi, were found dead Thursday afternoon.   
   
Two were found at 12:22 p.m. on the second floor of a seven-story refrigeration warehouse construction site and the other at 12:41 p.m. nearby, according to the fire department.   
  
Communication with the three was cut off around 9 a.m. after they searched for people inside the construction site for about an hour. Two other firefighters with them got out and were sent to the hospital for smoke inhalation.  
   
The three were found with emergency safety equipment including an air tank that could last up to 50 minutes. They are believed to have been trapped by flames. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Apparently some woman in Pyeongtaek got angry at the owner of a MiniStop in Pyeongtaek for not submitting her daughter’s picture for some art contest MiniStop was holding. You can see the shop’s owner at the end of the video try to fight the woman after she is apprehended:

Just imagine how this situation would have ended if she would had tried to smash her car into a police car in the United States. The police in Pyeongtaek showed a lot of restraint by not escalating the situation. Also talk about a great commercial for the Hyundai Genesis, that car appears to be indestructible inside that MiniStop.

Via reader tip comes this odd story of USFK apparently pulling a fast one on a Korean lab testing people for the coronavirus:

A Seoul-based lab tested 72 American troops positive for the novel coronavirus, but the US military in Korea said they belonged to soldiers stationed elsewhere, a local report said Sunday. 

A US hospital at Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, where the US military here is headquartered, sent clinical specimens to the lab, and it shared the results with the city of Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, as it was bound by law to do so.

The city pressed the US Forces Korea for more details, but it only confirmed that those diagnosed with COVID-19 were US troops on duty elsewhere and not in Korea.

The local report said the specimens sent to the lab for testing were all numbered, rather than named, so the examinees were not identified.

Upon learning the news, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered every lab in the country not to run virus tests on unidentifiable samples. 

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link, but but what doesn’t make sense to me is that USFK has been stating that the hospital on Camp Humphreys can do its own coronavirus testing. The hospital can supposedly do up to 80 tests a day so has it reached maximum testing capacity by also testing soldiers from outside of USFK?

The article also says that the city wants every soldier, family member, DOD civilian, and contractor living off-post in Pyeongtaek be tested for the coronavirus. How come the city isn’t forcing every Korean in Pyeongtaek to be tested? Why just USFK personnel? Are they saying USFK personnel are somehow more susceptible to be infected by the coronavirus compared to a Korean? This seems discriminatory to me.

Another USFK soldier being a Good Neighbor:

A soldier with the 2nd Infantry Division will be recognized Thursday by the city of Pyeongtaek for diverting an aggressive dog away from a Korean girl and taking the brunt of the canine’s attack.
After the Feb. 12 attack, Spc. Jonathan Roman Rios received preventative rabies treatment after the attack at Master Sgt. Henry L. Jenkins Patient Centered Medical Home on Camp Humphreys.
The dog — described by Roman as a white, medium-sized husky — fixated on a Korean woman and a young girl on the street outside the camp pedestrian gate, he said.
Roman, a native of Puerto Rico assigned to the 2nd Combat Aviation Brigade, had just gotten off duty for the day and was headed to a barbecue with friends when he noticed the dog barking at the woman and girl.
“I just saw a dog, but I saw that he was acting crazy,” he told Stars and Stripes on Monday. “I thought maybe he was just playing, but as I got closer I could see he was mad and agitated.”
Roman, the father of two children, believed the girl was in danger and said he felt he had to act.

He described what happened next:
Using his backpack as a decoy, Roman managed to attract the dog’s attention. It bit into the pack and hung on while the woman and girl ran off.
Roman fought with the dog for several minutes, trying to retrieve his backpack in one piece and make a run for it. He also shouted to nearby pedestrians to get back. Then the dog struck.
“The dog was either too fast or I was too slow, but he bit into the backside of my leg just below the calf muscle,” he said.
Another woman nearby saw the attack and began screaming; Roman said he quickly tried to calm her.
He used his backpack once more to push the dog away and escaped. Putting a brick fence between himself and the dog, he warned other pedestrians to stay away.
Roman said someone who may have been the dog’s owner came and secured the animal to a chain.

Stars and Stripes

You can read more at the link, but good job SPC Roman!

I just have little sympathy for these bar owners complaining about the fact that USFK has eaten way at their juicy girl model which at one time brought them huge profits:

Pyeongtaek has embraced U.S. Army Garrison Camp Humphreys on its soil for many years. And under a relocation plan, more U.S. troops ― the 8th Army headquarters and the 2nd Infantry Division ― will move into the city by 2017, making Pyeongtaek a centerpiece of Seoul-Washington military ties.

All appears to be peaceful and harmonious there. But just beneath the surface of the relationship is growing anger toward the United States Forces Korea (USFK).

While massive construction work for the relocation is under way, the U.S. military in the region has been blamed for prejudicing local business owners’ sovereignty and hurting their livelihoods with what they call “off-limits” action.   (………)

“The current off-limits restrictions clearly infringe on our sovereignty and autonomy,” an official surnamed Park, from the Pyeongtaek branch of the Korea Foreigner Tourist Facility Association (KFTFA), told The Korea Times.

Park said bars have been declared off-limits without warning. The regulation takes effect right after the owners receive a written notice from the U.S. military that briefly explains the reasons for the ban. The owners are not provided with further evidence or details of what provoked the order.

In addition, there is no route to confirm the validity of incidents because “off-limits” are issued based on anecdotal evidence provided by service members or military police of the USFK. This is why bar owners are calling it “absurd.” [Korea Times]

You can read much more about the bar owner complaints at the link, but the argument that their sovereignty is being violated is ridiculous.  They can have all the juicy girls and prostitution they want in their business.  USFK isn’t telling them how to run their business.  However, USFK is under no obligation to allow its servicemembers to patronize such establishments.  Putting businesses off limits to servicemembers is not something that is only done in Korea; in fact in the United States each US military installation has a list of businesses that are off limits to servicemembers as well.

Shouldn’t a Chinatown have Chinese that live and work in it?  This sounds more like a Chinese themed shopping district than a Chinatown:

South Korea will build a new Chinatown near Seoul to serve as an international shopping and tourism hub, the operator of a free economic zone said Wednesday.

 

The Chinatown, expected to be over 2.3 million square meters in size, will be built in Pyeongtaek, some 70 kilometers southeast of Seoul, according to the Yellow Sea Free Economic Zone (YSFEZ) authority.  The YSFEZ is one the country’s several free economic zones (FEZs) located near the capital area.   The project, proposed by a special purpose company (SPC) established with major investment from Chinese firm Legions Group, has been reviewed by the related bodies as of March and is waiting official approval from the authorities.

 

The company, capitalized at 50 billion won (US$43 million), is 50-percent owned by Legions, 20 percent by Chinese individuals and 20 percent by South Korean private investors.  The plan is to build hotels, recreation and convention centers, as well as large-scale shopping facilities with duty-free shops in the newly envisioned town, named China Castle. The company said it will also establish medical centers, an international school and apartments in the area.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Hopefully the spread of MERS is contained so the people in Pyeongtaek can get back to normal lives.  Fortunately the ROK Air Force servicemember who tested positive for MERS recently has recovered:

PYEONGTAEK, South Korea—A city best known by many for its nearby U.S. military base and surrounding rice paddies became ground zero as a deadly virus rarely seen outside the Middle East began to spread through South Korea.

At St. Mary’s Hospital in a newly developing industrial area of Pyeongtaek, about 35 miles south of Seoul, doctors puzzled for three days in mid-May over the flulike condition of a 68-year-old man, who hadn’t disclosed at that point that he had recently returned from the Middle East.

The man left St. Mary’s and was later admitted to a larger hospital in Seoul, where he was ultimately diagnosed with Middle East respiratory syndrome and was quarantined. But during that time in St. Mary’s, the man spread the MERS virus to more than 30 people.  (…………………………)

A South Korean Defense Ministry official said one Korean man stationed at the Osan Air Base near Pyeongtaek who tested positive for MERS would be released on Thursday. The air base is close to the main U.S. military base of Camp Humphreys for which Pyeongtaek is known.

St. Mary’s was the first hospital named by the government as being part of the MERS outbreak. All patients, including MERS sufferers, have been moved to other hospitals.  [Wall Street Journal via reader tip]

You can read more at the link, but it is going to be interesting to learn why MERS spread so widely in various hospitals as well as why so few people have died compared to outbreaks in the Middle East.