2007 is shaping up to be a very historic year here in Korea.

In a few months a fiction film about the events that took place here at No Gun Ri in Korea in 1950 will rear its ugly head and with aPossible North and South Korea Summit and then this idiot

We will also have presidential elections here in Korea this year. I have no idea how this will turn out.

I will see this,SO CALLED FICTION, film about "No Gun Ri" when it comes to Korea in June 2007. It should make for one very interesting review.

Gi Korea Strikes Back

From Free Korea.

Holy Mother of Pearl — GI Korea’s dismantling of AP Reporter Charles Hanley (Part 3,Part 2, Part 1) is one for the ages.

Part 4

Please remind me to learn from the pile of cinders that was once Charles Hanley and never mess with GI Korea. On the other hand, Hanley’s own comment on GI Korea’s blog may be the most damning condemnation of his objectivity and professionalism. I responded directly to Hanley there.

Googling Mr. Hanley's e-mail address, he appears to be the real deal. I bothered to check because it's hard to believe that a "professional" journalist would post such a shrill and arrogant reponse to a reasoned examination of the facts he reports (I say so because I know a few who are worthier of that adjective). The tone of his comment certainly does not suggest authorship by an objective seeker of the truth. Furthermore, the story he pastes was old news when it was published months ago, and that's being charitable:

Free Korea Link

Mr. Hanley's choice of the term "reality based," one laden with ideological baggage in the blogosphere, is almost a signed confession to the author's "progressive," anti-military bias. Some members of his persuasion (I repeat: some) are the first to forget that this same military protects Mr. Hanley's freedom to practice his profession. Mr. Hanley misconstrues that protection as extending to an exclusive right to adjudicate truth and history. It does not.

In 1998, I was serving with the U.S. Army in Korea, as a JAG officer. Few of us who served in Korea at the time the No Gun Ri story broke could forget the incalculable damage that poorly sourced story did to our relations with the local population. We could still have accepted it had the AP simply reported what the historical record did, and did not, show. Instead, it drew every inference in favor of the worst and most sensational interpretation it could put into a headline. It discounted reports that were inconsistent with that preconceived view. We later learned that several of the witnesses supporting their story had fabricated their accounts, and that one, Ed Daly, was on so many meds for mental illnesses that he had no idea what happened or where he was at that time.

And with all that said, the most dishonest thing about the No Gun Ri reporting -- and here, I do not single out the AP -- was its downplaying or outright omission of strong evidence that North Korean soldiers intentionally disguised themselves in civilian clothing to provoke the very situation that resulted at No Gun Ri.

It was we who paid the price for the AP's sloppy reporting when we found ourselves on the receiving end of that bitterness. Some advice to you, Mr. Hanley, is that you do not immunize yourself from criticism by doing so much to validate it.

Correction to my last: the evidence does not show that the witnesses necessarily "fabricated" their accounts, but simply that they were not at No Gun Ri on the dates reported.




I used to love to read the AP reports, now I have doubt every time I see the AP because of these lies and half-truths.