Robert Egan has a pretty good feel for how desperate the CIA is for scraps of information about North Korea.

Egan has served barbecue to North Korean diplomats at his restaurant in Hackensack, N.J., for 15 years, and he has visited Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, several times. He also has fed details about his customers to U.S. authorities, even plucking stray hairs off their suits so American officials could trace the DNA. Not surprisingly, he has found FBI surveillance equipment hidden in his office.

U.S. intelligence is “using a guy who flips burgers for a living” to understand North Korea, said Egan, a 53-year-old high school dropout whose odd role as a citizen ambassador has been optioned as an HBO movie.

U.S. officials downplay their interest in Egan, but they don’t deny that they are hungry for insight on a nuclear armed nation that is possibly the world’s toughest to spy on, a virtual black hole for most intelligence agencies.

The latest evidence: U.S. officials apparently were unaware for 51 hours that longtime leader Kim Jong Il had died Dec. 17, hearing the news only when it was announced on North Korean TV. They now are scrambling for the skinny on his youngest son and appointed successor, Kim Jong Un, a chubby 27-year-old known to enjoy playing video games.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link about US intelligence failures in regards to North Korea such as the 2007 nuclear reactor the North Koreans were building in Syria that the US did not detect.  This event find more surprising then not knowing Kim Jong-il was dead for two days.

Included in the president’s deficit reduction plan unveiled Monday are plans to re-examine the military retirement system, calling the current 20-year requirement “out of line with most other government or private retirement plans.”

The document calls for the creation of a commission similar to the controversial 2005 Base Realignment and Closure commission to look at broad reforms to the retirement system. In particular, it takes aim at the idea that troops must remain in the military for 20 years to receive any retirement benefits, giving “generous benefits to the relatively few members who stay.”

The move comes just weeks after officials from the Defense Business Board outlined similar plans to changing how military retirees are paid, abandoning the 20-year service target.  [Stars & Stripes]

I do find it interesting that the President is calling military retirement “out of line” when he is given a lifetime annual pension of $193,400, staff and office allowances, travel expenses, Secret Service protection and more for his retirement package for a minimum of four years of work.  Why doesn’t the President set the example and turn his retirement package into a 401K?

I also don’t appreciate the class warfare like rhetoric of trying get Soldiers who serve less than 10 years to be jealous of those who serve the full 20.  Those who only do one enlistment in the military receive the very generous GI Bill that pays not only for their college, but pays them room and board as well.  These Soldiers are well compensated as it is.  Like I have said before this is simply theft of the military retirement to keep Congressional defense pet projects going.  It is better to steal military retirement than to lay off workers making defense systems that are not needed.

The big question is whether the ending of the 20 year retirement is going to include currently serving servicemembers?  If current servicemembers are grandfathered it still doesn’t do anything to stop the biggest issue which is future retention.  Without the 20 year retirement a decade from now is when the impacts will be felt when the US military has a hollow force. The very generous GI Bill actually encourages people to get out and thus unit leadership needs big incentives to retain people.  Monetary bonuses and the promise of a 20 year retirement were two big incentives to get people to stay.  Bonuses are now drying up and taking away the 20 year retirement will make retention extremely difficult especially after the economy improves.  It will be difficult to convince quality servicemembers to stay in and subject their family to NTC rotations, multiple deployments, etc. for the promise of a 401k when their 59 years old instead of taking the generous GI Bill now.

Than who knows what will be left of your 401k after Wall Street gets a hold of it.

Steve House visits the U.S. military facility Camp Carroll in Chilgok, 300 kilometers southeast of Seoul, where he and two other U.S. veterans claimed they secretly buried hundreds of drums of Agent Orange in 1978. House came to South Korea to testify about the Agent Orange burial. The toxic defoliant, widely used during the Vietnam War, can cause serious health problems, including cancer, genetic damage and birth defects. (Yonhap)

Via Yonhap News.

Congratulations to the Japanese women’s World Cup soccer team.  Definitely a great win for their team and hopefully it will be something to further inspire their country as they continue to deal with the massive cleanup of this years earthquake and tsunami.

It is the national game, and is played only during the first fifteen days of the year.

A level place is selected at the foot of a hill, or, better still, between two hills, so that the spectators can occupy the hillsides and be near enough to see without endangering their lives from the flying stones.

The game usually takes place between two villages or two different communities…The two companies of men and boys take their places, being well supplied with stones of the proper size, and, facing each other at a distance of fifty yards, the contest begins.

Two or three of the braver ones come out from one side and slowly advance toward the opposing party till they come within easy range, when they are attacked and the stones are let fly with all possible force from both sides.

…This is the great national game, and must be played to the finish even if a few slight accidents follow as the result of the same.  To be honest, it is nearly as brutal as the American football, though I believe that fewer people are killed or crippled for life in stone fights each season than in the football games of Christian American.

 

Japanese people from Osaka take part in the 970th weekly Wednesday protests outside the Japanese Embassy in Seoul calling on Tokyo to resolve the issue of Korean sexual slaves who served the wartime Japanese Army. (Yonhap News)

Via KBS Global.

South Korean pitcher Park Chan-ho, who signed a one-year contract with the Osaka-based Orix Buffaloes after playing in Major League Baseball for 17 seasons, meets the press on the first day of his career with the Japanese club in Miyakojima, Okinawa, on Feb. 1. (Yonhap)

Rhythmic gymnast Son Yeon-jae holds an autograph session for her fans at a department store in Seoul on Friday. [Chosun Ilbo]

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s son and heir says the impoverished country needs food more than bullets. “In the past, it was all right to have bullets and no food, but now we must have food even though we don’t have bullets,” Kim junior, who was recently promoted to vice chairman of the Workers Party’s powerful Central Military Commission, was quoted by sources on Monday as saying.

Quoting a source familiar with North Korea-China relations, the Yomiuri Shimbun said Kim Jong-un made the remarks during a visit to Kimchaek city in North Hamgyong Province in late September, when the Workers Party congress took place. The Japanese daily said the comments are confirmed in documents recently disseminated to party officials.  [Chosun Ilbo]

It seems like stories like this are thrown out in the media just so the useful idiots in the western media can continue to claim that Kim Jong-un is some kind of reformer.

Bong-hwang-eo-jin-chan (meaning a meal offered at the royal court for guests regarding them as if they are kings and queens) (Courtesy of the Korea House) (Source: Han Style)