If you want to see real citizen journalism, check out Middle East Journal by Michael J. Totten. On the other hand, fair and balanced it ain’t. His latest piece is on the rapid development in the Iraqi north (AKA: Kurdistan).
Iraqi Kurdistan is technically occupied by a foreign power, but this occupation surely ranks among one of [...]
Well, it didn’t take long for Pressian and the Hankyoreh to start blaming the United States for the recent death of a Korean soldier in Afghanistan…
Sgt. Yoon Jang-ho, the Korean soldier killed in Afghanistan yesterday, actually returned to Korea in May 2005 to fulfill his mandatory military duty (in Korean) after spending 11 years in the United States. He volunteered for service in Afghanistan in June of that year.
27-year-old Sgt. Yoon Jang-ho, a soldier with a Korean engineering unit in Afghanistan, was killed today during the suicide bombing attack on Bagram Air Base (in Korean).
Yoon was the first military fatality Korea has suffered in the War on Terror. Korea has some 200 engineers and medics based at Bagram.
Condolences go to the young [...]
The Chosun Ilbo is pissed that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney will bypass Seoul when he comes to the region to meet with Japanese and Australian leaders to, among other things, relay GW’s appreciation for their support in the War on Terror.
Personally, I think it would have been better for Cheney to come to Korea [...]
The Kyunghyang Shinmun recently sparked a shit storm by reporting that Yonsei University professor and former presidential committee chairman Moon Chung-in claiming during a 2004 lecture that the Bush administration broke a promise to offer North Korea written, multilateral security guarantees in return for South Korea sending troops to Iraq. The lecture, attended by [...]
The government has decided to send 400 peacekeepers to Lebanon, reports MBC.
The internal decision to accept the UN request for troops was made after a recent survey of the local situation and discussions with relevant ministries.
The size of the deployment will reportedly be battalion-strength, with the bulk of the battalion composed of infantry with some [...]
Pressian reports that according to a Pentagon report made public today on security and stability in Iraq, Korean troops are no longer needed in the Kurdish state of Arbil in northern Iraq.
According to the report, Arbil was designated “Ready to Transition” in the June 2006 Provincial Security Transition Assessment. In fact, in the case [...]
Iraqi lawmaker Amar al-Hakim, son of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and a high-ranking member of the Iraqi National Assembly, visited the family of the late Kim Sun-il, the Korean who was slain by Iraqi militants in 2004. Al-Hakim apologized to Kim’s family on [...]
You absolutely have to check out Michael Fumento’s latest reporting from Ramadi, Iraq—the “graveyard of the Americans,” as the city’s graffiti proclaims. Fumento, embedded with the 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, provides an invaluable glimpse of the situation the troops face in the field. Don’t forget to watch his [...]
I guess you’re a better man than me when you can find the death of the man who cut off your son’s head “tragic.” And no, I’m not being sarcastic when I say that.
Don’t think it will change a lot, but this is probably good news nonetheless.
Col. (ret) Robert Killebrew suggests that Korea, not Vietnam, is the best parallel for the U.S. situation in Iraq. Read the whole thing on your own; here just a sample:
There are, of course, many dissimilarities between the Korea of 1953 and the Iraq of 2006; history repeats itself only in outline, not in detail. [...]
The fascist Korean imperial plan for Iraq–in pictures!
The National Police Agency’s Cyber Terror Response Center warned Wednesday that it has received intelligence that Muslim hackers have placed Korea on its list of targets for cyberattacks around March 20, the third-year anniversary of the start of the Iraq War.
An official from the center said that since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, six [...]
The Foreign Ministry said Sunday night that an Iraqi group calling itself “al-Jihad” claimed on an Arabic language website (www.alezah.com) that it had kidnapped two Koreans in Iraq and threatened “Allah’s judgment” upon them if Seoul did not withdraw its troops from Iraq in 72 hours. It also said it would soon provide photos [...]
President Roh Moo-hyun, center, cheers with South Korean soldiers during his surprise visit to the Zaytun unit in Irbil, northern Iraq, Wednesday. / Korea Times
Read about Roh’s surprise trip here. Must have been pretty wacky for the press corps — most everyone on the flight, including most of Roh’s aides and the aircraft crew, [...]
The Hankook Ilbo apparently agrees with me that going around Iraq waiving Bibles and Korean flags is just plain wack:
In Iraq, Korean missionaries are shouting “Hallelujah!” and “Viva Korea!” An insurgent says to himself, “Must be suicide terrorists!!”
Hot on the heals of that dumb-ass Japanese kid getting his head cut off in Iraq, more evidence in support of Einstein’s axiom that “only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity.” Courtesy the Korea Times:
A group of five Christian leaders returned home safely from a risky missionary excursion into Iraq Tuesday [...]
With the threat of kidnappings of Koreans on the rise even in Arbil, where Korean troops are based, the soldiers of the Zayitun Unit stand guard with tense expressions during a civil-military affairs operation in downtown Arbil on Friday afternoon (local time)./Yonhap
Pressian, the Chosun Ilbo and others are reporting that a bounty of 10kg of [...]
