String of Conscript Deaths 'Caused by Spinal Meningitis Outbreak'

A string of high profile deaths among military conscripts, which led to accusations of excessive brutality by senior officers, has been found to have been caused by a spinal meningitis outbreak and not blunt objects as biased autopsy results commissioned by bereaved families have wrongly claimed.

The retrospectively discovered outbreak appears to be a strain of spinal meningitis which is unique to Koreans, making it very difficult for foreign scientists to detect and impossible for foreign drugs to treat.

The discovery explains the latest death last week which involved a 21 year-old conscript, who was thought to have collapsed after several blows to the head from his commanding officer. "There's no doubt he would have survived the entirely justified disciplinary beating if it wasn't for his undiagnosed spinal meningitis" said army doctors. Just days earlier, another conscript accidentally shot himself in the head with his assault rifle when violent shaking caused by the unique Korean strain of spinal meningitis caused him to lose control of his arm and fatally discharge his weapon. The dizziness sometimes associated with spinal meningitis caused a third conscript to fall off a chair the same day while trying to fix a light fitting, causing him to become entangled in overhead wiring, accidentally hanging himself.

Earlier this month, a fourth conscript with undiagnosed Korean Spinal Meningitis collapsed and died after he was forced to go on a 20-kilometer march at night at the end of a 24-hour period of disciplinary 'exhaustion training'. The camp had previously been criticized in 2005 when a company commander ordered 192 new recruits to eat human excrement to solve the problem of blockages in two toilet drainage systems. The army will now investigate whether the sickness many of the conscripts subsequently complained of was caused by another previously undetected outbreak of spinal meningitis.

All able-bodied South Korean men, apart from the famous, wealthy and well-connected, are required to serve at least two years in the military - or police if they can afford the appropriate bribe. Despite the risks of contracting spinal meningitis, draftees are paid less than $82 a month in line with Japanese-born President Lee Myung-bak's goal of creating a fair society - "Our generation was paid very little when we underwent compulsory military service," explained a government spokesman, "so it's only fair that conscripts today are also paid less than $21 a week."

The spokesman was believed to be speaking hypothetically since the President, Prime Minister and a host of other prominent figures in Korean politics were exempted from military service on a variety of grounds, including medical conditions such as being spineless.

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Did Former Prime Minister Sexually Abuse Korean Flag?

Do tread on me?

Controversy has flared up over "defamation of the national flag" by the 67 year-old former Prime Minister Kim. The first and only female Prime Minister in Korea's 5,000 year history, she lasted a mere 48 weeks in the job before people thought better of the idea. Previously, Kim had also pioneered new ground as Korea's first female Minister of Gender Equality.

Despite being disqualified from running for President on a gender technicality in 2007, Kim was believed to still harbor political ambitions, but those hopes now appear to lie in ruins after a photo of her standing on the Korean national flag - which is known as Taegeukgi (pbui) in Korea - went viral on the Korean Internet last week. 'Defaming the national flag or symbol' and 'damaging the dignity of the nation' is illegal under Articles 1, 5, and 10 of the National Flag Act of the Republic of Korea and Articles 1, 2, 4, 7, 19, 58, 97, 105, 803, 19,036 and 83,342 of the Criminal Act.

Kim claims she was laying a flower at the memorial alter of former 62 year-old left-wing President Kim, who committed suicide in 2009 amidst a widening corruption investigation. The memorial stone had been placed on a large flag, and some have blamed the company which organized the event, GNP Funerals. But many saw the move as a reflection of intent to deny the Republic of Korea, which is symbolized by Taegeukgi (pbui) - a 'populist' move typical of left-leaning activists still bitter about previous imprisonments and torture under the former right wing dictatorship, such as Kim herself between 1979 and 1981.

The female former Prime Minister's act of defaming the national flag was condemned by the CJD newspaper, the Dongo-a Ilbo, as typical of "the kind of 'populists' who prefer to sing the activists' song 'March in Honor of Fighters' and make a 'silent prayer for democracy fighters' in lieu of singing the National Anthem, pledge allegiance, and make a silent prayer for patriots and fallen national heroes," although the newspaper concluded that it might have been a mistake caused by her being a stupid woman.

Some netizens are also angry over her choice of flower - a chrysanthemum, which is the symbol on the Japanese Emperor's seal. "This was clearly a call for a return to the Japanese colonial rule under which she was born in Pyongyang" said one Internet user. But for some the sight of a woman walking on the national flag held a much deeper symbolism "It was a sexual act." said one netizen, "Some men enjoy being walked on by women and this is exactly what the former prime minister did to Taegeukgi (pbui)".

Many agreed that Kim had indeed sexually abused the Korean flag. While numerous so-called 'Taegeukgi porn' images can be found on the Internet, and many right wing Korean men are believed to regularly engage in sexual acts with the Korean flag after their wives and parents have gone to bed, this is thought to be the first case involving a woman in public. The only previously issued legal proceedings involved a member of VANK and the case was dropped after he agreed to wash the flag in question properly.

Earlier this a 63 year-old man was set free by the Changwon District Court after throwing human excrement at the tomb of the allegedly corrupt former President Kim, after he explained it was to bring attention to the "negative consequences" of his liberal rule. However, those who defame the Korean flag can be subject to a maximum of five years in jail. When the late President Kim's liberal collaborator, former Prime Minister Kim, is finally found guilty of sexually abusing Taegeukgi (pbui), it is not known if the judge will take her previous two years in prison being tortured into account in sentencing her, but prosecutors will be requesting a jail sentence which ensures she is unable to damage the dignity of the nation by stepping on any more flags until after the next presidential elections.

A few minor 'liberal', 'populist', 'progressive' individuals have suggested that making standing on a piece of cloth a worse criminal offense than abusing children is what really hurts the 'dignity of the nation', but right-wing child abusers dismissed the idea as ridiculous.

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Han Myeong-sook
Chrysanthemum

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Government Official Admits to Taking Money, But Denies Bribery

Korean Banking System

A former inspection commissioner at the Board of Audit and Inspection, which is tasked with ensuring financial propriety in the banking sector, has admitted accepting money from the now suspended Busan Savings Bank, but said it wasn't a bribe. "They just gave it to me" said 54 year-old Kim, explaining how he went to the bank one day in the course of his job and was shown a drawer full of cash which the manager said he was giving away because 'there was no space for it in the bank vault'.

With arrest warrants about to be issued, defense attorneys are expected to argue that money given freely by failing banks to government auditors can only be classed as bribery if anything is asked for in return. However, in this case there appears to be some evidence that Kim exchanged e-mail and Prada smartphone messages with the bank's major shareholders to prevent the failing bank from being suspended.

Before its collapse, Busan Savings Bank was known for its generosity, saying it paid savers rates of 8% - 4% above the Korean base rate - "because it cared". However, less generously, some have accused the bank of being part of a massive pyramid scheme which involved taking money from customers, with the promise of extraordinarily high interest rates, to fund construction companies at even higher rates of interest that were building apartments for customers that no longer wanted to buy them - because they were earning so much interest on their money in Busan Savings Bank.

The scheme eventually collapsed when nobody was left to pay the inflated apartment prices the construction companies needed to ask for due to the high loan rates, and now vast swathes of apartment blocks stand empty, mainly sold to investors outside Busan who haven't realized that the population of Korea's second-class city is declining and Realtors have taken to placing dummies in apartment windows to create the illusion of habitation.

Busan Savings Bank was one of several financial institutions that had to be suspended by the Financial Services Commission earlier this year, and many of them are believed to have generously donated free money they didn't have space for to government officials and politicians, who have sought to characterize the payments as 'token appreciations for all the honest hard work we do'. However, when the Criminal Investigations Unit of the Supreme Prosecutor's Office started to look into the payments, lawmakers voted to abolish it for wasting taxpayers' time.

Under a banner reading "No corruption in Korea", a government spokesman said that levels of bribery were very low compared with several other countries, although if anyone could persuade him otherwise he might be willing to accept it.

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