Here are the the USFK court martial results for the month of February from the USFK website.  As you can tell below it was a pretty slow month for GI incidents:

Court-Martial Results for February 2010

At a summary court-martial on 3 February 2010, PVT Nichlos S. Duke, Delta Battery, 6th Battalion, 52d Air Missile Defense, 35th Air Defense Artillery, 8th Army, was convicted of disobeying a lawful order, two specifications of disobeying a lawful general regulation, and being drunk and disorderly.  He was sentenced to confinement for 30 days.

At a special court-martial on 12 February 2010, PFC Kyle G. Tavel, 55th Military Police Company, 94th Military Police Battalion, 2d Infantry Division, was convicted of indecent acts and dereliction in the performance of his duties.  He was sentenced to reduction to Private E1, confinement for 90 days, and to be discharged with a bad-conduct discharge.

ROK Criminal Prosecution Results for February 2010

In Gunsan Branch of Jeonju District Court on 29 January 2010, Captain Michael Kwon, 8th MDOS, was convicted of DUI.  His adjudged sentence was a 1,000,000 Won fine.

In Seoul Central District Court on 3 February 2010, SPC Stacy L. B. Bernard, HHC, 524th MI Battalion, was convicted of infliction of bodily injury.  Her adjudged sentence was a 2,000,000 Won fine.

In Seoul Central District Court on 4 February 2010, SGT Gary D. Rhodes, A Btry, 1/15th FA, 2d Infantry Division, was convicted of infliction of bodily injury.  His adjudged sentence was a 1,000,000 Won fine.

In Seoul Central District Court on 5 February 2010, MSgt Solomon B. Plummer, SOCKOR, was convicted of traffic law violations resulting in personal injury.  His adjudged sentence was a 3,000,000 Won fine.

In Suwon District Court on 24 February 2010, SFC Vicente B. Lalap, 3d BCD-K, was convicted of infliction of bodily injury.  His adjudged sentence was a 3,000,000 Won fine.

I looked around to see this report because I would be very interested on who else the added to it:

A conservative group has released a preliminary list of what it says are pro-North Korean figures it will include in its official register of offenders.

The “Committee for the Normalization of the State” held a news conference on Friday to disclose a list of about 100 names from various fields including opposition lawmakers Kwon Young-ghil and Kang Ki-gap and novelists Jo Jung-rae and Hwang Suk-young.

Former presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun were among the five-thousand candidates who were considered for inclusion on the preliminary list.

The group said that all those included on the register have conducted antistate, pro-North Korean activities  [KBS Global]

I want to see the list just to see how many of my useful idiots have made the list.

I haven’t really had much of an opinion yet on this whole Eric Massa controversy raging in the US, but after reading how he is yet another VoteVets tool, I would be very careful to believe anything this guy has to say:

Massa was endorsed by the tough guy Veterans Political Action Committee (PAC) VoteVets. VoteVets is led by tough guys like Jon Soltz, a veteran of four months of duty in a division extended for fifteen months in Iraq. So far since 2006, VoteVets (click here for the This Ain’t Hell breakdown) has lied about Body Armor issues in a multi-million dollar campaign commercial used against Senator George Allen, had another veteran lie about his service in a Missouri Senate campaign commercial for Claire McCaskill.  Still following? VoteVets used a veteran who lied about being a veteran in Denver. A veteran who is not a veteran. There are lies and then there are VoteVets’ Richard Strandlof who is now facing jail time for claiming to be a wounded warrior.

For the past week,  Massa has further disgraced VoteVets in a gay scandal.

This is the legacy of VoteVets. You can’t blame them. When you are so desperate to prove your argument, even though you are absent factual truth or first hand testimony, you tend to get that guy on camera quick. So when you meet a fellow defeatist, pro-victimizing veteran, you grab them with both arms. Sometimes vetting these liberal “war heroes” would a good idea. But if Jon Soltz and VoteVets vetted everyone in their group claiming to have served in a combat zone, hell even Jon Soltz wouldn’t be a member of VoteVets.

Eric Massa is the new mascot for everything that is VoteVets.  [David Bellavia via This Ain't Hell]

Make sure to read the rest from David Bellavia because he pretty much destroys any creditability that Massa has.

For those that don’t know VoteVets is not really a veterans group.  It is a really a liberal advocacy group that claims to speak for the military. The VoteVets.org site, just like the Amnesty International fraud Appeal for Redress group was formed before the 2006 Congressional elections. This site was backed by former Democratic Presidential Candidate General Wesley Clark and the group of retired generals that made headlines before the 2006 Congressional elections by running ads funded by the site speaking out against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as well as a change in strategy in Iraq by sending in more troops.

Interestingly enough even though Rumsfeld was removed and the new surge strategy in Iraq brought an increase in troops there, VoteVets was still not satisfied.  Instead of this group recognizing the changes it had advocated for, it instead become an anti-war organization calling for the removal of US troops in Iraq. Since then none of the retired generals has been heard from, but the person we have continued to hear a lot from (for no good reasons) is VoteVets President Jon Soltz who was one of the people willfully fooled by fraud veteran Rick Strandlof.  Incredibly the media still calls this group a grassroots movement despite its George Soros connections.

I get a lot e-mails from Korea vets looking for help in regards to processing agent orange claims from their time stationed in Korea along the DMZ where agent orange was sprayed.  Just judging by the interest I get on this site about agent orange claims, it leads me to believe that there is a serious issue at the VA in regards to processing these claims and it will be interesting to see if this new automated system does anything to fix it:

Faced with a crushing influx of disability claims from Vietnam War veterans exposed to the toxic defoliant Agent Orange, the Department of Veterans Affairs said Tuesday it would automate part of the cumbersome system that has left many thousands of veterans waiting many months and sometimes years for payments.The announcement from the VA is a tacit admission that the 80-year-old department is close to being overwhelmed by the volume of claims not only from Vietnam veterans but from those of more recent wars in the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq. The backlog of unresolved disability claims has exceeded 1 million, and the department last year cleared the way for at least 200,000 more when it said it would consider claims of Vietnam veterans suffering from Parkinson’s disease, hairy cell leukemia and ischemic heart disease, all of which the have been linked to Agent Orange.

The VA has reached a breaking point in terms of its ability to handle the claims of more than 3 million veterans and this plan would be, at best, an initial step aimed at the most time-consuming claims, according to the department. As the Chicago Tribune reported in December, service-related disability payments to Vietnam veterans soared more than 60 percent from 2003 to 2009, reaching $15.4 billion, or 45 percent of the $34 billion the VA paid in veterans’ disability claims last year. With other diseases being linked to exposure to Agent Orange, the numbers of veterans and the cost to treat them will continue to increase and the VA will be increasingly hard-pressed to handle the demand.  [Stars & Stripes]

Shinseki is a good guy that I believe is working hard to continue to improve the VA, however I have to wonder why the Stars & Stripes journalist had to include some irrelevant Bush bashing in the article?:

The VA said it plans to shorten the average time it takes to consider claims to 90 days or less; with the current bureaucratic logjam claims can take 200 days, not counting appeals. Paul Sullivan, executive director of the advocacy group Veterans for Common Sense, said that if Shinseki “failed to act…the VA benefit claims processing system may have collapsed.”

Sullivan said the “underlying cause” of the problem has been building since the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it was the “failure of the Bush administration… to beef up the VA” that forced Shinseki to act.

So who are these guys from the Veterans for Common Sense?  According to their webpage one of their two major contributors is the Ploughshares Fund, which is an organization created by San Francisco based woman to advocate for the end of nuclear weapons.  This organization has its funding linked back to you guessed it, George Soros’ Open Society Institute.  So this Veterans for Common Sense group is nothing more than yet another George Soros linked front group, which the Stars & Stripes just throws a quote in their article to bash Bush with.

Even better yet take a look at what the group’s leader Paul Sullivan had to say immediately after the Ft. Hood shootings.  Is this guy a tool or what?

Here is an article some of you may find of interest:

Same-sex teaching couples are eligible after all for joint job transfers this year at Department of Defense schools, officials said Wednesday.The policy is meant to protect couples from separation during reassignments and was already available to heterosexual married teachers.

An attempt to extend the benefit to gay teachers by the department’s Education Activity and two unions last month was initially rejected by the DOD.

The groups rewrote the policy Feb. 21 and it has since been approved to cover transfers this school year, said Michael Priser, union president of the Federal Education Association.

“The Pentagon had some concerns over the [original] agreement management had proposed,” he said.

A routine labor contract review by the DOD Civilian Personnel Management Service found that the agreement violated the 1993 Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.

The policy no longer allows same-sex couples to present civil union certificates as proof of an exclusive relationship.

The revised policy was approved by the Defense Department on Feb. 25 after it was deemed to comply with the Defense of Marriage Act, according to Air Force Maj. April Cunningham, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

To apply for the benefit, couples must sign an affidavit saying they are in an “exclusive and committed relationship,” according to a copy of the new policy and affidavit form obtained by Stars and Stripes.

Those who are eligible could get higher priority for some jobs when DODEA is deciding how to fill openings in the coming weeks.  [Stars & Stripes]

So just because a gay couple is in an “exclusive & committed relationship” means they get higher job priority?  So if a heterosexual couple turns in a affidavit claiming that they are in an “exclusive & committed relationship” does that mean they would get priority as well?  If gay couples have a legal civil union they should have the same rights, benefits, and responsibilities as a heterosexual married couple, but coming up with an easy work around to complying with an assisting law is frankly concerning to me.  If there is concerns about violating an existing law by giving these teachers certain benefits then the law should be worked to be modified.  The legislative and executive branches of the government are both overwhelmingly controlled by Democrats who are allegedly pro-gay rights and yet they cannot update an existing law to address this?

It will be interesting to see where this sei whale meat came from:

Federal authorities have charged a trendy Santa Monica sushi restaurant with serving whale meat — an investigation that was spurred by the team behind the Oscar-winning documentary, “The Cove.”

Prosecutors charged Typhoon Restaurant Inc., the parent company of The Hump, and one of its chefs — Kiyoshiro Yamamoto, 45 — with the illegal sale of a marine mammal product for an unauthorized purpose.

While it is considered a delicacy in Japan and some other countries, meat from whale — an endangered species — is illegal to consume in the United States.

The misdemeanor charge carries a federal prison sentence of up to a year and a fine of up to $200,000 for the company, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Lawyers for Typhoon could not be reached for comment. But the restaurant told the Los Angeles Times it accepts responsibility and will pay a fine.  [CNN]

You can read the rest at the link, but I would not be surprised if the whale meat came from the Japanese whalers because they have an IWC permit to hunt 100 sei whales.  However, the sei whale meat should not be exported to the US in violation of the law and I’m sure this restaurant will be punished.  What I will be most interested to see is if the Japanese government prosecutes who ever smuggled this meat into the US if in fact a Japanese company did this.

Who knows what this picture is of?:

Here is this year’s Korea Finder Leadersboard:

1. Lemmy – 2
2. Leon Laporte – 2
3. The Korean – 1
4. Sonagi – 1
5. Mark – 1

The person with the most points at the end of the year of the weekly Korea Finder contest will be rewarded with a book or DVD of their choice from Amazon.com.   Also note that if you have a picture that you think would make a great Korea Finder feel free to send it in to me.

Via a reader tip comes news that a website has been setup by the Korean government in recognition of the 60th anniversary of the Korean War.

Here is the welcome from the co-chairs of the commemorative committee:

As the year 2010 marks the 60th anniversary of the Korean War, the Commemoration Committee is promoting a variety of commemoration programs under the theme of remembrance and legacy, honor and gratitude, and harmony and cooperation. The programs are part of our efforts to help the postwar generations have correct views on a nation and security by educating them on the lessons of the Korean War. We are also endeavoring to express gratitude to the Korean War veterans home and abroad for their noble sacrifices and provide an opportunity for mutual understanding and cooperation for global peace.

The Republic of Korea today was made possible by the noble sacrifices of the Korean War veterans. We remember their contributions and are now exerting every effort to transform our nation into a mature nation that gives back the help we received.

We would like to ask for your keen interest and active participation in the commemorative programs.
Thank you.

The site isn’t too bad and has a number of historical pictures from the Korean War that I have seen on display at the Korean War Memorial.  However, what I found of the most interest is what events the Korean government has planned to commemorate the anniversary with.  There is a number of good ideas to include bringing Korean War veterans to Korea for the anniversary.  However, I would still like to see some of the ideas I have advocated for implemented such as Andrew Salmon’s Parade of Heroes idea.

I been saying this for months how interesting it is the similarities between the prior Roh Moo-hyun government in South Korea and the current Yukio Hatoyama government in Japan.  Well like Robert Koehler mentions over at the Marmot’s Hole, not even the Roh government was as wacky as this:

YUKIHISA FUJITA is an influential member of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan. As chief of the DPJ’s international department and head of the Research Committee on Foreign Affairs in the upper house of Japan’s parliament, to which he was elected in 2007, he is a Brahmin in the foreign policy establishment of Washington’s most important East Asian ally. He also seems to think that America’s rendering of the events of Sept. 11, 2001, is a gigantic hoax.

Mr. Fujita’s ideas about the attack on the World Trade Center, which he shared with us in a recent interview, are too bizarre, half-baked and intellectually bogus to merit serious discussion. He questions whether it was really the work of terrorists; suggests that shadowy forces with advance knowledge of the plot played the stock market to profit from it; peddles the fantastic idea that eight of the 19 hijackers are alive and well; and hints that controlled demolition rather than fire or debris may be a more likely explanation for at least the collapse of the building at 7 World Trade Center, which was adjacent to the twin towers.  [Washington Post]

To be fair Fujita’s views as nutty as they are actual makes him qualified to become a member of the US Congress.