May 12th, 2013 at 10:08 pm » Comments (32)

PBS has another interesting documentary that ROK Heads may find of interest. This one explores ‘Yellow Fever’, but really turns into a documentary about a relationship trying to survive culture, language, and age differences between the two people profiled in the film: Steven is an aging white man obsessed with marrying an Asian woman, dreaming of a devoted young wife. Sandy is the young, feisty, ambitious Chinese woman he finds online. This engaging documentary follows their tumultuous love story. For years, twice-divorced airport garage attendant Steven has been writing to
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May 9th, 2013 at 10:31 pm » Comments (38)

That is what this Marine Lieutenant believes: The service branches say that endurance and other standards won’t be lowered, and perhaps there will be special training programs to prepare women who wish to become infantry. Yet there may be a better way to bring them into combat units—one that could serve as a test and steppingstone toward tighter integration. In professional sports and in the Olympics, men and women perform separately. In boot camp and officer-candidate schools—the entry points for all service members—men and women also are separated, with placement
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January 25th, 2013 at 2:30 am » Comments (67)

The media has been in a frenzy todayy over the recent Pentagon announcement ending the combat exclusion policy barring women from certain combat positions: Outgoing Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta plans to announce Thursday a lifting of the ban on female service members in combat roles, a watershed policy change that was informed by women’s valor in Iraq and Afghanistan and that removes the remaining barrier to a fully inclusive military, defense officials said. Panetta made the decision “upon the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” a senior defense
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January 7th, 2013 at 8:24 am » Comments (45)

This is something that I have been saying for a long time that when women are allowed to serve in the infantry few will even try: If or when the Pentagon lets women become infantry troops — the country’s front-line warfighters — how many women will want to? The answer is probably not many. Interviews with a dozen female soldiers and Marines showed little interest in the toughest fighting jobs. They believe they’d be unable to do them, even as the Defense Department inches toward changing its rules to allow
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November 27th, 2012 at 3:57 am » Comments (7)

This doesn’t seem to be a very scientific way to determine a statistic but regardless it is a lead story in the Chosun Ilbo: Korean women first have sex at the age of 21.5 and hope to have their first child at 31.9, according to a straw poll marking 2012 World Contraception Day. The poll by 11 international NGOs among 100 women in their 20s or 30s each in eight Asian countries and sponsored by Bayer HealthCare was released on Monday. The Asia-wide average age when women first have sex is
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October 26th, 2012 at 3:19 am » Comments (28)

Via the various reader tips I got on this article, here is the latest on the Marine Corps attempt to allow women into the infantry: The first two female lieutenants to volunteer for the Marine Corps’ Infantry Officer Course failed to complete the program, the Marine Corps said Tuesday. The first woman did not finish the combat endurance test at the beginning for the course in late September. Twenty-six of the 107 male Marines also did not finish the endurance test. The second woman could not complete two required training
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October 4th, 2012 at 1:00 pm » Comments (6)

I saw this on Facebook from Weird News Asia that has a newspaper advertisement for Vietnamese women: I wonder if Koreans get the same runaway guarantee?

June 18th, 2012 at 1:00 pm » Comments (4)

Via the Cornell University Library.

May 29th, 2012 at 5:31 pm » Comments (70)

With the Marines announcing that females would soon be attending infantry training it was only a matter of time until females would begin to be allowed into the US Army infantry as well which also means they will have to attend Ranger School: Army leaders have begun to study the prospect of sending female soldiers to the service’s prestigious Ranger school — another step in the effort to broaden opportunities for women in the military. Gen. Raymond Odierno, Army chief of staff, said Wednesday that he’s asked senior commanders to
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May 14th, 2012 at 3:24 am » Comments (8)

Long time Korea correspondent Donald Kirk has a good article published in the Christian Science Monitor that continues to highlight the often ignored human rights abuses going on in North Korea: The price for a North Korean woman named Kim Eun-sun, her mother, and sister, to escape to China was 2,000 Chinese yuan, slightly more than $300. Like thousands of North Korean women before them, they crossed the Tumen River into China and met a woman who said she would help them escape –only to discover that they’d been sold to a Chinese farmer who wanted
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