Seasons in the Kingdom

1970 Korea

2014-11-13T15:27:00.001-05:00

Pictures of 1970 Korea, as described in Seasons in the Kingdom. Click here for photo link.

1969 Korea Video from YOUTUBE.

2014-11-13T15:23:00.002-05:00

Great video of 1969 Korea, in color!

November 1 - Global Stats for this week & month

2014-11-01T10:20:00.002-04:00

Pageviews by Countries this week

Entry	Pageviews
United States	63
France	57
Poland	11
Ukraine	10
South Korea	5
Canada	3
Germany	3
Japan	2
Australia	1
Indonesia	1

Pageviews by Countries this month

Entry	Pageviews
United States	314
France	71
Ukraine	51
Poland	19
South Korea	17
Germany	11
Canada	9
Indonesia	5
Australia	4
Belgium	3

AP exclusive....

2014-10-28T16:19:00.001-04:00

By Associated Press October 23

LAKE CHON, North Korea — The Kaema Plateau, the “Roof of Korea,” is a stunning, forest-covered highland nestled in such treacherous mountains that it was never taken by the Allies during the Korean War. It’s now a truck stop.

As we squatted beside our lunches of kimchi and cold rice, in the distance, almost hidden in the thick mist, a woman sold refreshments in a tarp-covered stall. A half-dozen older people put down their loads and sat on a weed-covered embankment nearby; they had arrived on foot, even though the nearest town was hours away. One member of the group, a leathery man, rolled a cigarette and drew the smoke in deeply.

It’s quite possible none of them had ever seen an American before. But our presence went unacknowledged. No glances were exchanged. No words were spoken.

see the pictures and read more here...

Last month's activity...global reach for nandupress

2014-09-20T09:40:00.002-04:00

Pageviews by Countries

Entry	Pageviews
France	455
United States	350
Romania	21
South Korea	18
Germany	15
Ukraine	14
Thailand	6
Canada	5
India	4
Japan	4

Comfort women: A final solution. Article from Asia Times

2014-09-04T14:58:00.002-04:00

SPEAKING FREELY - click on ...
Comfort women: A final solution
By Yu Bin

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.

The author's preferred title for this article, its length precluding its use on our front page, is "A Modest Proposal - For the Final Solution of the Comfort Women/Sex Slave Issue". The phrase "final solution" is deliberately used here to reveal both the horror of the issue and satiric nature of the essay, similar to Jonathan Swift's treatise centuries ago. This article was previously posted under the headline: "Healing the 'comfort women' rift".

« The Meltdown

2014-08-29T19:46:00.001-04:00

For an in-depth article on the foibles of the Obama administrations foreign policy, I recommend this article in Commentary Magazine.

« The Meltdown Commentary Magazine

Richard Bridges ROK Photos, circa 1957

2014-08-08T15:44:00.005-04:00

Click here to view more images of tankers in Korea, circa 1957.

Ascom City Map & B.Duplantis

2014-08-08T15:28:00.003-04:00

When I first began the search for information, over ten years ago, I made contact with Belford Duplantis. He had a map issued for GIs that were stationed at Ascom City so they, we, could find our way around to the other camps that made up the base in its entirety. The buildings that are in bold at about mid-page were built by the Japanese. They were in use by our forces when Ascom was at its zenith, and they were used when I was stationed there, 1973-75, at the small camp with no name at the top left, indicated only by Stockade. Below, I have included a photo of Belford, and a panorama of Ascom City as scene from the hills behind the stockade. Those hills separated Ascom City as we knew it from Inchon. They were the same hills over which the Marines came when assaulting Seoul in September of 1950.

Original Map of Ascom City, circa 1962.

L to R: Belford Duplantis, Titano, from Guam, and Luther Spivy, from Georgia.

Ascom City with the stockade in the center. This area is now covered with two story residential housing common in small Korean suburbs. The Church has been rebuilt. The village to the right in the photos remains surprisingly intact, considering that the rice paddies and the distance lands toward the horizon are now filled with 10-15 story apartment blocks.

ONE FREE KOREA - Update on our Foreign Policy - or Idiots playing with sharp objects...

2014-07-25T14:27:00.002-04:00

ONE FREE KOREA

Test something louder, Dear Leader. John Kerry still can’t hear you.

Posted: 22 Jul 2014 05:46 AM PDT

With the world erupting in the greatest cascade of escalating conflicts since 1975 and President Obama’s approval rating on foreign policy at negative 21.2% — 11% lower than his overall (dis)approval rating — John Kerry eked out some time over the weekend to tempt fate with a dubious boast:

I just came back from China, where we are engaged with the Chinese in dealing with North Korea. And you will notice, since the visit last year, North Korea has been quieter. We haven’t done what we want to do yet with respect to the de-nuclearization. But we are working on that and moving forward. [John Kerry, Meet the Press, July 20, 2014]

If you’re in Seoul or certain parts of Washington, that clapping sound isn’t applause; it’s the smack of palms against foreheads. Kerry’s observation rubs a lamp that wiser men do not touch for fear of the genies they would rather not summon. One may as well compliment a politician’s moderate views during primary season, or announce one’s arrival in the cellblock by telling the gang leader that he seems a decent enough fellow. As if on cue, yesterday, North Korea threatened South Korea and the United States with “practical retaliatory actions of justice.”

As South Koreans are keenly aware, North Korea has not been quiet. Under the direct supervision of His Porcine Majesty, it has been testing SCUDs in violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions, along with massive barrages of artillery rockets. The U.S. and U.N. responses to this have been negligible.

At best, Kerry’s comment suggests poor coordination with one of our most important allies that still hasn’t been attacked this year. At worst, it suggests dangerously wishful and complacent thinking. It clearly means that Kerry neither knows nor cares much about North Korea. Such revelations causeunease among our allies, which is why the State Department had to “clarify” Kerry’s remarks yesterday:

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is clearly concerned about North Korea’s provocative actions and did not mean to downplay the seriousness of the issue when he said Pyongyang is “quieter” than before, a government official said Monday.

“The secretary and we all have been very clear in condemning North Korea’s aggressive actions when they occur. We’ve talked recently about the ballistic missiles and how those were in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions,” State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said at a regular press briefing.

“So I think the secretary has been very clear about our concern with North Korea’s activity,” she said in response to a question whether Kerry’s statement is a correct assessment of the situation. “He wasn’t trying to convey something different than we’ve conveyed in the past.” [Yonhap]

Concern, however, is no substitute for a coherence in matters of policy. Under Kerry’s tenure, the Obama Administration has shown a lack of seriousness about enforcing existing U.N. Security Council sanctions, even after North Korea was caught in flagrante delicto. It has imposed targeted financial sanctions on Zimbabwe, Russia, and Belarus – and grudgingly enforced tough financial sanctions against Iran – while its tepid trade sanctions against North Korea are stuck in the 1970s. Treasury has sanctioned and blocked the assets of the top leaders of these nations, but none of the top leaders of North Korea.

Our government has designated Burma and Iran to be primary money laundering concerns, a potentially devastating measure that is the financial industry’s equivalent of a sex offender registration, isolating them from a community where reputation means everything. It has made no such designation with respect to North Korea, the world’s most prolific state sponsor of money laundering, counterfeiting, drug dealing, and illegal proliferation.

Most unforgivably, it has offered no policy response whatsoever to a U.N. Commission of Inquiry’s finding that Kim Jong Un’s regime is committing crimes against humanity. Kerry is as deaf to the cries of the North Korean people as he is to roar of Kim Jong Un’s rockets. That is why North Korea continues to defy the Commission of Inquiry and all those who support its recommendations.

It’s as if this administration has no North Korea policy at all.

Meanwhile, as gravity of the threat from North Korea builds, President Park is so convinced that a North Korean provocation is imminent that she has directed her military commanders to return fire immediately if fired on by North Korea. This puts us one ill-advised temptation away from the miscalculation that could start Korean War II.

But perhaps, Koreans wonder, this isn’t what Kerry meant:

[C]ritics said [Kerry’s] assessment is far from reality.

While characterizing the North as “quieter,” Kerry might have referred to the fact that the provocative nation has not carried out a nuclear test or a long-range rocket launch — the two main types of provocations Pyongyang has used to rattle the world.

Even without such major provocations, however, the North has continued to rattle its saber in recent months, firing a number of rockets, missiles and artillery rounds off its coast with some launches in violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions.

Last week, the council issued a statement condemning the North’s ballistic missile launches. [Yonhap]

To claim success for Kim Jong Un’s failure to nuke off is to confuse coincidence with causation. There is no evidence that Kerry’s diplomacy has resulted in serious movement toward disarming North Korea. There is more evidence that the Obama Administration itself is moving away from denuclearization as an objective.

One could just as well claim that the House’s introduction last April of tough financial sanctions targeted at Kim Jong Un’s financial jugularmay be deterring him from a nuclear test. Or, it could simply be that North Korea’s nuclear tests will conform to their previous interval of three to four years. A test of something louder would at least get the attention of everyone else in Washington who would otherwise forget that North Korea exists. One can hope that this time, Congress might just respond with more credible policy options than John Kerry has to offer.

Seasons in the Kingdom reference: ROKDROP

2014-07-17T10:43:00.003-04:00

Women Forced Into Prostitution Sue the Korean Government for Human Rights Violations

Posted: 11 Jul 2014 07:20 AM PDT

I was wondering when this would eventually come to light:

Cho Myung-ja ran away from home as a teenager to escape a father who beat her, finding her way to the red light district in a South Korean town that hosts a large U.S. Army garrison.

After she escaped home in the early 1960s, her pimp sold her to one of the brothels allowed by the government to serve American soldiers.

“It was a hard life and we got sick,” Cho, 76, said in an interview in her cluttered room in a shack outside Camp Humphreys, a busy U.S. military garrison in the town of Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul.

On June 25, sixty-four years after the Korean War broke out, Cho joined 122 surviving comfort women, as they were called, in a lawsuit against their government to reclaim, they say, human dignity and proper compensation.

The suit comes as an embarrassing distraction for the South Korean government, which has pushed Japan to properly atone for what it says were World War Two atrocities including forcing women, many of them Korean, to serve as sex slaves for its soldiers. [Reuters]

It is pretty well known that many Korean girls were sold often times by their parents into the Korean club system many decades ago to service not only US GIs, but Korean as well. To learn more about this time period I recommend reading the book “Seasons in the Kingdom” about the GI experience in 1960′s Korea. Likewise when it comes to human trafficking many of the women from the Philippines when they first came over to Korea I think in 1998 to work in the clubs were kept locked up in buildings that had barb wire on the roofs to prevent them from escaping. I wonder if some of these Filipinas can launch a lawsuit as well for having their human rights violated?
The complaints against the Japanese for something that happened over 60 years ago seems a bit two faced when the Korean government has done nothing to address the victims of the comfort women system in South Korea that the government help to implement.

DPRK Defectors Speak out

2014-06-24T17:41:00.001-04:00

North Korean Defectors speak about life in the DPRK and the prison camps there.

1957 Korea, Sand Pit Cultural Exchange

2014-06-14T13:47:00.000-04:00

Click to see more photos.

Skosh, the orphan: Korea 1962

2014-06-13T13:57:00.002-04:00

Skosh, 1962.

The name like many probably came from Skoshi,

Japanese term meaning (roughly Speaking, soon or in a hurry.

Sokcho, Korea, 1962

Our Detachment commander was waiting in Sokcho (Korea), for one of our Korean employees on the East Coast of Korea when a tiny little boy about five years old came to his Jeep and begged for money. The lieutenant asked where his parents were and he began crying. It was raining cats and dogs and the L-T put the little fellow on his lap and turned up the heat in the Jeep. We later took him in as our mascot (this was 1962) and sent him to school, clothed him and fed him This picture is about 18 months after we "adopted" him.

A good friend of mine told me that when he went back to Sokcho in 1975, Skosh was gone and no one knew about him or heard of him. Ten years between tours in Korea was almost an eternity because the tour was only one year. My buddy said he heard that a master sergeant adopted him and took him to the US.

Skosh was very spoiled and once told me to get out of his latrine while he brushed his teeth. Normally, we'd leave him alone while he readied for school but that morning I had an emergency electrical problem in the latrine I had to deal with and the little shit kicked me and yelled again to get out of his latrine!

My friend recently told me that he was even worse as time went on. No one knew how to deal with an unruly child except his school teachers. By the time I left, I simply avoided him and often ignored him when he'd tell me to go get him a coke. The bartender knew he had a tab that we'd pay if he wanted anything.

Story as told by Richard Bridges. 2014

7th Div, Camp Hovey, 1956 - Troop C, 10th Cav. PHOTOS

2014-05-31T12:26:00.001-04:00

Greetings,

1956, 7th Inf. Div. Camp Hovey, Spec 5.

Happy to announce and exhibit of photos taken by Richard Bridges, a multi-tour veteran of the ROK. This first batch is a few I have edited this week, but many more coming as the weeks go along as I edit and post them for you to view. I have seen many of the images of men at work and also men at play. Great images and is a worthy addition to this small collection for veterans view and remembrance. Bridges was in a tank unit with the 10th Cav, 1956.

Also, coming are images from my unit taken by Phil Simms, a friend and now contributor to this site. After some delay in getting all these images updated and edited, I am back the computer again.

Just click on the guy here and it will take you to the gallery for viewing.

ROK men interested in DPRK women?

2014-02-15T14:21:00.000-05:00

Most S.Korean Men Would Marry N.Korean Women

Seven out of 10 single men in South Korea are open to the idea of marrying a North Korean woman, but no South Korean woman would marry a North Korean man, according to a straw poll.

The poll perhaps reflects the popular belief here that beautiful women come from North Korea and handsome men from the South.

Matchmaking company Bien-Aller polled 558 single South Koreans online, and 68.8 percent of men said they are "somewhat positive" about the idea of marrying a North Korean woman, while 84.2 percent of women were "somewhat negative" and 15.8 percent "very negative."

"Women in this country are so picky in choosing their husbands that men are considering North Korean women as an alternative," a spokesman for the company said. "But women place prime importance on educational background, income and manners and have very negative views of North Korean men, whom they associate with soldiers or starving people."

Men are usually are more interested in looks and associate North Korean women with beauty, perhaps from looking at pictures of North Korean performers. In contrast, women here usually picture North Korean men as short, skinny and clad in ill-fitting uniforms.

North Korean Leaders Rewrite History At Their Own Will - Andrei Lankov from Radio Free Asia

2014-01-31T18:32:00.000-05:00

http://www.rfa.org/english/commentaries/purged-01062014151151.htmlNorth Korean leader Kim Jong Un delivers his New Year's Day address in Pyongyang, hailing the execution of his once-powerful uncle as a resolute act to remove "factionalist scum."

AFP PHOTO/KCNA VIA KNS

The purge of Jang Song Thaek has brought about many changes in North Korea. One of these changes has been the disappearance of news articles from North Korea’s state media websites concerning Jang. North Koreans are in the dark about this, but KCNA and Rodong Shinmun post articles on their websites that can be seen by anyone abroad.

These articles include those that were published recently, but also ones that were uploaded years ago. It is from these articles that the North Korean authorities have deleted any references to Jang.

They have also removed pictures with Jang’s face, and have edited out scenes from videos where Jang appeared.

A similar thing happened to Lee Young Ho after he was purged last summer. Lee was the most powerful man in the North Korean military before being purged. Soon after he was removed from his position in July 2012, any mention of him was deleted from the North Korean media and history textbooks.

Lee had stood in the first line with Kim Jong Un during Kim Jong Il’s funeral, but now even this photo cannot be seen anymore in North Korea.

This history of purging is a unique characteristic of the country and has led the world to believe that history does not exist in a country like North Korea. North Korea’s leaders may remove or distort the country’s historical facts and truths at their own will.

Removed from view

That being said, there is no denying that Jang, Lee, and others like them—regardless of whether they were good or bad—played tremendously large roles in recent North Korean history.

Now, however, North Koreans are not even allowed to mention their names.

There are many forces in this world that aim to distort history. Political forces of every color and stripe tend to distort historical facts in order to suit their own interests or values. However, the act of distorting historical fact cannot mean refusing to acknowledge truths that are already well known by the people.

Moreover, all societies have political forces that are in competition with each other, so political forces that attempt historical distortion face criticism from other political forces. It is common for rightist scholars to attack leftist scholars, whether it be in Korea, Germany, or Russia.

In such countries it is impossible to completely distort historical fact. Even if, with the intent of removing certain facts from collective memory, historical facts are not reported, the other side emphasizes and spreads those facts regardless.

'Perfect control'

North Korea is in a completely different situation, however. North Korea has no conflicting political parties, and only a very small minority of the population has a complete hold on power. The leadership has perfect control over history.

North Korea’s supreme leader may remove all mention of Jang, Lee, and other purged party members, and can choose not to talk about important historical events. North Korean leaders are also free to concoct events that never really happened and spread them as historical fact.

I will give you one example here.

North Korea’s official propaganda machine argues that Kim Il Sung commanded the Chosun People’s Revolutionary Army (CPRA) in the 1930s. A look at records from the time, though, shows that there is no written evidence that this organization existed. Kim did fight against the Japanese but fought as an officer in the Chinese Communist Party’s armed forces.

But nationalism and the need to paint Kim as a heroic leader have led the North Koreans to ignore this fact and turn the existence of the CPRA into a historical fact.

This kind of shameless distortion of history is one reason why the outside world completely ignores the North Korean version of its own history.

Translated by Robert Lauler.

Andrei Lankov, a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul, is a Russian historian, North Korea expert, and regular RFA contributor.

North Korea Photos 1950s

2014-01-31T11:33:00.001-05:00

click here for great article and photos about North Korea in the 1950s.

Life under the first Kim: Snapshots found in antique shop give rare insight into North Korea in the 1950s

Grainy black and white photos taken in North Korea in the late 1950s
Rare pictures unearthed in an antique shop in Pardubice, Czechoslovakia
Taken by a doctor who travelled through country from 1955 to 1959
Fascinating glimpse into everyday village life in post-Korean War years
North Korea was ruled by 'Great Leader' Kim Il-Sung at the time

Inside North Korea - Frontline

2014-01-16T13:01:00.001-05:00

Click this link INSIDE NORTH KOREA - a frontline video and very interesting.

DPRK & Dennis Rodman, Crazy & Crazier

2014-01-08T14:22:00.004-05:00

Can Dennis Rodman Change North Korea?

Despite the ex-basketball player's eccentricity, he has got something few others have, access to Kim Jong-Un.

12:58pm UK, Wednesday 08 January 2014

Dennis Rodman at Beijing Airport on his way to North Korea

Mark Stone

China Correspondent

Is It Remotely Plausible That Kim Jong-un Had His Uncle Eaten By 120 Dogs?

2014-01-04T13:02:00.001-05:00

Click here for article.

Little Kim, the Executed Uncle, and the Future

2014-01-04T12:20:00.001-05:00

What does Jang Song-thaek's ousting mean for North Korea? – Q&A

Key questions answered on the very public purge of Kim Jong-un's hitherto powerful uncle

- Tania Branigan
- theguardian.com, Monday 9 December 2013 05.25 EST

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at a politburo meeting in Pyongyang: it is unclear whether the purge is a move to consolidate his power. Photograph: Kcna/Reuters. Click on image for full article.

North Korea Executes Singer & former Girlfriend of the Dear Leader

2014-01-02T13:26:00.002-05:00

Executed North Korean Singer - click on image for article

Preparing for Reunification?

2014-01-02T13:16:00.002-05:00

How Reunification Cost Is Calculated

The Unification Ministry on Monday explained how the government estimates the cost of reunification, saying the estimates factor in "all expenses needed in the process, from unifying two different political systems to integration and stabilization." The announcement follows President Lee Myung-bak's proposal of a "unification tax" on Sunday to prepare for what could be an astronomical outlay.

The total includes the estimated cost of crisis management in the initial stage of reunification for emergency food and medical supplies for North Korea. For example, if all North Koreans are to be provided with grain for two months, that would require 13,000 tons of grain per day for 23 million people to take in at least 1,600 calories a day. The cost would be about US$500 million, including transportation and incidental expenses, to supply North Koreans with 700,000 tons of corn at $420 per ton for two months. An additional $250 million would be needed supposing that medical expenses and costs for daily necessities account for 50 percent of the minimum food expenses.

The cost of integrating the political, military, economic and social systems of the two Koreas after reunification would also be huge. A government official said money will be needed, for instance, to provide soldiers in both parts with the same uniforms. But the biggest issue would be the currency union.

After German reunification, West Germany allowed East Germans to exchange their money for Deutschmarks at a rate of 1:1. In fact East German marks were officially valued at a mere one-third of the West German currency, with the black-market exchange rate at 1:8. The total cost of German reunification was estimated at 2 trillion euros between 1990 and 2009.

Then there would be the enormous cost of closing the income gap between South and North. Money will be needed to raise the North's per capita income of $1,000 to 70 to 80 percent of South Korea's $20,000. Infrastructure spending is also included in this segment.

German reunification prompted South Korea to start researching reunification costs in the 1990, but unsurprisingly researchers have produced wildly different estimates.

This year, the RAND Corporation predicted that it would cost $62 billion to double North Korea's GDP in five to six years, but $1.7 trillion to raise it to the South Korean level -- a 27-fold difference depending on what the target is presumed to be.

In 2000, Goldman Sachs predicted that it would cost W1.7 trillion (US$1=W1,188) to raise North Korea's labor productivity to 50 percent of the South's in 10 years after reunification, and W3.55 trillion to increase it to South Korea's level. It was based on an assumption that Korea would be reunified in 2005.

Researchers have different approaches to gauging the cost of reunification using different categories. Kim Suk-woo, a vice unification minister during the Kim Young-sam administration, has seen a number of estimates. "There was a large gap in those estimates based on different assumptions of timing and conditions of the reunification. But really we shouldn't worry so much, because the added value created in the process of developing North Korea will offset reunification costs as time goes by," he said.

Why did Kim Purge his Uncle - or a family unglued in North Korea

2013-12-27T14:16:00.001-05:00

Click for article by Andrei Lankov

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (C-front) applauding at a concert in Pyongyang as his uncle, Jang Song Thaek (front L), looks on, April 15, 2013.

AFP PHOTO/KCNA via KNS