Undermanned US Military Attempts to Press-Gang Koreans

U.S. Forces Korea has unveiled an initiative to counter reductions in troop levels by abducting Korean civilians from city streets and forcing them into service on military bases.

The troop reductions, announced by President Obama in January as a series of 'redeployments' and a 'leaning of numbers', are said to be already compromising USFK's ability to defend themselves and South Korea in the event of an attack by the North.

The cutbacks have caused unease in Seoul because while South Korea has a large army of adequately trained conscripts they only have access to a small supply of inadequate but generally locally-made weapons. But a Pentagon source said that in the event of an attack by the North, South Korea will "probably be alright, as we weren't really ready last time either and that turned out OK in the end."

But now the U.S. army in Korea has decided to bolster its declining numbers by taking a page out of the British Royal Navy's book - forcibly drafting or 'press-ganging' Korean civilians into military service. However, the first group of Koreans to be captured and handcuffed on the streets of Pyeongtaek last week by seven American military policemen argued against being taken to the nearby Osan Airbase, on the grounds it was actually against the law. In South Korea it is illegal for the U.S. military to press-gang Korean civilians - only the Korean military are permitted to do this.

The American soldiers have protested their innocence, and it is not certain they will be charged; prevailing legal opinion - and increasingly precedent - in the United States is that American laws apply globally superseding those of 'non-exceptional' nations, and the practice of extraordinary rendition by the U.S. government - colloquially known as 'kidnapping' - is well established.

The protest has now put the initiative on hold and forced military chiefs to apologize until the legal position can be clarified.

The new abduction policy comes at a sensitive time for U.S. Forces Korea. Hostility towards American soldiers among Korean citizens is running even higher than normal at the moment as the 10-year-and-one-month anniversary of the girls killed by a U.S. armored vehicle approaches. Last week a U.S. military MH-53 helicopter was burned after an emergency landing in a Pohang rice paddy, and Americans continue to take drugs and teach in Korean kindergartens, angering parents who say it gives the teachers an unfair advantage in connecting with their children.

About 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea as a legacy of the three-year Korean War that ended in 1953. Despite their long absence, Washington says it does plan to eventually bring them home.

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South Korea Joins War on Whales Following Military Pact

The Dokdo Times can exclusively reveal that the controversial military pact agreed between Japan and South Korea recently has been invoked for the first time at the request of Tokyo.

Local sources indicate that on Wednesday the Japanese government formally requested Seoul's assistance in its war on whales. Tokyo accuses the mammals of harassing its fishing fleets despite repeated warnings, and has fought a war of attrition against the sea creatures which may have begun as long ago as the 12th century, but which recently it seems to have been losing.

When Seoul signed the mutual defense treaty with Tokyo it was generally believed it was to counter threats from North Korea and China, but the rapidity with which Japan has requested help in defeating the whales suggests that once again it may have had an ulterior motive.

South Korean defense officials say that now the agreement has been signed they have little choice but to commit their forces to helping the Japanese in their war on whales, although to begin with this will mostly be limited to coastal waters and the area around the Korean territory of Dokdo. The move will mark a resumption of hostilities against the creatures, as in the past the people of the polluted industrial city of Ulsan fought against them until a peace treaty was signed in 1982.

A whales' spokesman, Dafydd Iwan, condemned South Korea’s intervention in the conflict, comparing Japan's current aquatic oppression with the oppression Japan inflicted on Koreans after their annexation of the Peninsula.

It is likely to prove an uncomfortable comparison to leaders in Seoul, who are already said to be deeply concerned by Japan's treatment of its prisoners in the war on whales - there are persistent and grotesque stories that contrary to the Fourth Geneva Convention some have been eaten or even used for sexual purposes, echoing Japanese atrocities committed against Koreans previously in wartime. Officially, Japan has already admitted it has conducted scientific experiments on captured whales - it is believed in the hope that certain types of whales might be used to help address the problem of low birthrates in the declining nation.

There are also fears that Japan's request for assistance could drag Korea into a deeper conflict; China claims the waters normally inhabited by the whales belong to it and the whales are therefore its citizens, which its military has the peaceful right to defend using force if necessary.

But the Ministry of Culture is hoping that once Korean whaling resumes it will help promote tourism. In an effort at rapprochement since 1982 the Ulsan Whale Festival had invited the mammals to participate in cultural activities including the "Dancing Whales Performance Parade", the "Drinking Whales Food and Drink Festival", the "Whale-Themed Open Air Drama", the "Whale Boat Race" and the "Whale Literary Feast", but attendance by the creatures has been poor and much like the Busan Motor Show organizers have often had to use plastic models during the event. A move back to something bloodier and less intellectual generally fits a cultural trend which has seen the popularity of K-pop explode both domestically and internationally in recent years.

The official peace between whales and Korea has also been a troubled one. Between 1999 and 2003, 800 whales launched suicide attacks against the Korean fishing fleet and their bodies reluctantly had to be eaten. As such, ironically, the whales losses have been higher than they were before the peace treaty came into effect, so much so that a whale meat factory and entire restaurants specializing in whale meat had to be opened to get rid of the evidence.

Now, with open war once again declared, participatory exhibitions in the polluted industrial city of Ulsan such as "Whales Are my Friend" can be dropped and instead children can once again be taught the Madangnori - a traditional cultural activity which demonstrates the art of whale slaughter culminating in the reluctant consumption of the popular whale meat delicacy. The government is already being pressed to expand the war to the whales' allies, the dolphins.

Ministry officials are said to be pleased at the international reaction the whaling plan has provoked, with people in a large number of countries now talking about Korean culture.

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Revisionist Researchers Claim Hangeul is only 3,000 Years Old

'Proof'

Despite the fact that 2012 marks the 5,000th birthday of Hangeul, the written Korean and increasingly global language, revisionist researchers are now dubiously claiming that it is 2,000 years younger than evidence from caves near Daegu has previously conclusively proven.

For a long time, Japanese colonialist propaganda tried to wrongly portray King Sejong the Great of Joseon a Korean Territory (李裪) as the inventor of the written Korean language in 1446, in order to deceive people into believing it was younger than Japanese. While King Sejong may have occasionally claimed to be the inventor of Hangul, rather than just a promoter of it, this must be seen in a historical cultural context where claiming credit for the work of others was considered perfectly acceptable unless you were caught.

Incredibly, apparently taunting the academic establishment, in his accompanying book explaining the new writing system - the Hunminjeongeum - King Sejong the Great of Joseon a Korean Territory (李裪) allegedly revealed that Hangeul is an imitation of ancient Korean characters used by his forefathers, although few people picked up on this as the book was written in classical Chinese which Hangul immediately replaced.

But this entire historical manipulation by the Japanese has been widely discredited, not least because there is clear evidence that the predecessor of The Dokdo Times - The Dokdo Parchment - was written using both Hangeul and a subset of more complex and ultimately unwieldy characters which China later went on to copy as the basis of its own written system.

While the claim that Hangul is only 3,000 years old rather than 5,000 already seems discredited, the researchers have made at least one interesting discovery which appears worthy of further investigation, namely that early Korean characters were being stamped on Chinese money, indicating that historically China was effectively an economic vassal state of Korea, as has long been suspected. If it wasn't, it would surely have printed its own currency.

While sticking to their claims that Hangeul is more youthful than believed, the researchers point out that whether the world's first truly scientific language is 3,000 or 5,000 years old, its age still conclusively proves that it is not a copy of Mongolian or 'other countries' (China's) characters.

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