Once again the hype about protesting the US military here in Korea was just that hype. Two weeks ago during the two year anniversary of the death of the two girls we were warned of massive protests and the Korean National Police presence was tripled in front of every 2ID installation. You know what happened? Nobody showed up to protest. Not one person.

The last two days the Korean National Police presence was also tripled to prepare for the massive protests in result of the beheading incident. Once again nobody showed up. I kind of feel bad for the policeman that have to stand around and guard our facilities every day because of stuff like this. They are all draftees doing their mandatory service for the government and for serving their country they get beaten by protestors. Plus they stand 24 hour vigil around my camp in standing in rain, heat, cold, and snow. There is times I see them standing out there in the rain and I just think to myself that they must be miserable. They even go out to the field with us when we train to guard our training area.

I think the places where the police need to go guard from reporters is the home of the family members of Mr. Kim who was beheaded a few days ago. I just thought it was sickening that reporters were in the family’s home taking pictures of them during this time of great tradgedy and then post it on the front page of the newspapers. It seems like a alot of anger is still resonating with in the general Korean population still because of this terrorist incident. My KATUSA’s were talking to me about how angry they were about Mr. Kim’s kiling but I told them in America we lost 3,000 people, two buildings, 4 airplanes, and part of the Pentagon destroyed, think how angry we are. Plus we lose soldiers every day fighting these terrorists. We lost two more soldiers last night.

However, the death of one person like Mr. Kim is a tragedy, the loss of 3,000 people is a statistic unless you are an American. Korea needs to do more than just be angry about this. They need to send a message that they will not cower to terrorists. Imagine the terrorist’s reaction if next month 3,000 highly pissed off ROK Army troops showed up outside of Fallujah demanding the killers of Mr. Kim be turned over.

That would send a message of strong leadership. Strong leadership in Korea now adays is hard to come by. So they will probably stick with dispatching the troops to Kurdistan where they are not needed to rebuild an area that does not need rebuilding. I don’t even really consider Kurdistan part of Iraq because they are such different areas. Korea might as well deploy their soldiers to Turkey. Kurdistan and Turkey are about an equivalent of each other and don’t see anybody jumping to rebuild Turkey.

Korea is now in the global spotlight and President Roh always said he wanted Korea to be a stronger international presence and be held equal in America’s eyes like the Japanese are. Here is his chance to display the strong leadership he campaigned on and show the power Korea can wield globally. Or will Korea fall back on the old and tired we are victims of everybody elses bad deeds mentality. In the next week we will see which way Korea is going to go.