"Ex-guerrillas say US veteran was adviser; Question why he would go to North Korea now" by Hyung-Jin Kim and Foster Klug | Associated Press, December 04, 2013
SEOUL — Merrill Newman’s detention is just the most recent point of tension on the Korean Peninsula.
(Blog editor's chin drops to chest as he is once again confronted with an agenda-pushing paper that is just itching to get a war started anywhere. Tensions have been dropping, but never you mind the faithful reader here who hasn't forgotten past articles. Just throw more war-promoting s*** on the wall so some will stick and provide justification for another war. I'm sorry I'm so sick of this stuff, folks. Just damn tired of it every damn morning)
North Korea has detained another American for more than a year, and there’s still wariness in Seoul and Washington after North Korea’s springtime threats of nuclear war and vows to restart its nuclear fuel production.
Yeah, I waved bae-bae to all that stuff already, sorry.
According to his televised statement, Newman’s alleged crimes include training guerrillas whose attacks continued even after the war ended, and ordering operations that led to the death of dozens of North Korean soldiers and civilians....
They call them "partisan groups," which means insurgent terrorists established by the US-military in my intelligence operation known as a newspaper.
And I don't understand the big deal; it's all standard for a destabilization campaign against recalcitrant or enemy governments.
The guerrillas say most of the North’s charges were fabricated or exaggerated.
Well, I got a pre$$ and government that do it all the time so I really don't know what to say.
Newman oversaw guerrilla actions and gave the fighters advice, but he wasn’t involved in day-to-day operations, according to the former rank-and-file members and analysts.
Looks like complicity in crimes to me.
He also gave them rice, clothes, and weapons from the US military when they obtained key intelligence and captured North Korean and Chinese troops. All Kuwol guerrillas came to South Korea shortly after the war’s end and haven’t infiltrated the North since then, they say, so there are no surviving members in North Korea....
When the US Eighth Army retreated from the Yalu River separating North Korea and China in late 1950, some 6,000 to 10,000 Koreans initially declared their willingness to fight for the United States, according to a US Army research study on wartime partisan actions that was declassified in 1990.
The report says the US Army provided training and direction to the partisans, who had some ‘‘measurable results.’’ But ultimately the campaigns ‘‘did not represent a significant contribution,’’ in part because of a lack of training and experience of Korean and US personnel in guerrilla warfare....
Either that is a lie (the campaign was effective), or all the money poured into these types of operations (up to those that now span the globe under Obomber) are colossal wastes of money because they are failures.
Didn't train our guys good enough -- again?
The guerrillas aren’t alone in questioning Newman’s trip to North Korea.
‘‘Newman was very naive to discuss his partisan background with the North Koreans,’’ Bruce Cumings, a history professor specializing in Korea at the University of Chicago, said in an e-mail.
The University of Chicago is a well-known neo-con school of thought, from economics to foreign policy.
But analyst Cho Sung-hun with the state-run Institute for Military History Compilation in Seoul said it’s ‘‘not weird’’ for war veterans to try to visit former battlegrounds before they die.
Trying to come to some sort of peace with the immortal soul, I think.
--more--"
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Korean Confession
I just made one.
UPDATE: North Korea says it has deported American veteran
