Here is the Korea Times on Uri Party using the handover of US bases to regain some favor among the voting public.

I wish I were rich.

And I wish my Korean language skills were fluent and I were in a position to do some research.

If I were rich, I'd fund a small team of knowledgeable people, probably graduate students, who know about pollution and such ---

----- and I'd send them all around Korea.

I'd target random places in the biggest cities and then the big cities in each province and then just a couple of totally random places.

I'd target several of the factories of the largest conglomerates.

Then I'd target some apartment buildings here and there.

Then I'd target some small to medium sized businesses.

I already know what I'd find ----

that by Korea's standards used to judge USFK's bases ---

the whole of Korea is a big polluted mess.

We all know this.

But I'd like to have a good researched, bulky report about it

so I could bash it over the heads of a good number of people.....

Your frustrations are duly noted; however, Korea is not doing anything any other country would not try. I am sure there are some in this forum who can tell stories of the damage caused during military training exercises in Germany. Through personal experience I can assure you some of charges are warranted.

It is all politics.

If you want to write something, try writing to your Cogress representative and ask how government employees are allowed to get away with GPC (Gov Purchase Card) abuses.

a DHS response to the GAO findings:
DHS wasted no time firing back. In a statement also issued July 19, the department said the instances of misuse that GAO cited make up 0.14 percent of all purchase card transactions. Of the $435 million DHS spent using the cards in 2005, only about $600,000 has been questioned, DHS wrote

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06957t.pdf

I should have also mentioned DHS claims they are investigating <LOL>

The one I like is the microbrew kit the Coast Guard purchased.

Their defense: Used to break the ice prior to meetings!

I wish I could attend those meetings.

A friend who works in a high level position within the organization told me a while back when Katrina hit and the cards were issued the first items a suoervisor purchased were new workstations, although the others were only a year old.

We need to clean up the abuses in our own house first.

__________________

Chill

But a difference from Korea's government trying to manage the costs of taking over US bases and putting them to some other use by shifting costs to the US and how other nations would do the same is ---

---in Korean society - this BS gets much play in the society as a whole.

And it does not just peter out.

Since the Great Water Dumping case of 2000 --- which is an absolute mind-boggling example of how Korean society, when it is in the right mood, can go absolutely batshit over the tiniest thing ---- and I am not exaggerating with the word tiniest or absolute or absolutely --- it was bizzare - so bizzare many of the Canadian and other expats found they were complaining about Korea's ranting and raving over that tiny event -

throughout each year, there have been frequent "USFK destroying Korea's environment" stories --- one after another after another.

But if you search the TV news archives looking for stories on specific stories of pollution by Korea's heavy industry leaders, good luck. Seriously.

You will find stories about how polluted Korea's air and water and soil is in general. In the newspapers, you will find in the period of a year or two years stories about specific cases of pollution involving small business. But not the primary pollutors.

In short ---- unlike in other places --- Environmental Degradation - as a way to exercise and generate anti-US in Korea feeling is strong and constant in South Korean society - absorbed by the masses through yearly (often monthly) preaching.

It is one of the best tools that the rabid anti-US groups exploit to reach out into mainstream society ---- and the press and government aids and abets them.

The Korean news has and does report events where illegal dumping by individuals other than USFK.

I understand from talking to enviromental employees there are some vast differences in establishing testing standards between Korea and US.

__________________

Chill

My Korean language skills are way to weak to give any much of an opinion, but from a little research, I tentively believe this isn't exactly true.

I started looking at the MBC and KBS news video archives. I searched for the Korean terms pollution and oil.

I only looked for a couple of hours, but it covered a couple of months, and the stories I found on pollution matched what I could remember from periodically watching Korean TV while I lived there and what I found in extensive research into the English language press coverage of the environment:

There were plenty of stories about polluted air, waters, and other.

There were a few stories about unknown groups doing illegal dumps.

There were a few stories about small buisnesses getting caught and fined.

But, I found nothing on Korean big businesses connected to pollution - except for a few positive stories talking about how much money they were spending to prevent it or what measures they were taking.

I wish I could find the link. I might have posted here at the forums, I'll have to check.

But I linked to one report that was very much like the majority of the others I've seen and found:

It was a reporter with a researcher on a hill in a stunted growth forest near a large series of industrial complex buildings in the distance.

The story covered how the pollution in city was causing the damage to the trees.

But --- funny thing ------

they never showed anything but long, long shots of the factories and they did not identify whose factories they were.

I had to do a google search for the industrial city to find out it was a stronghold of Hyundai.

Put these reports up against the plenthora of ones specifically on USFK or the US Embassy.....

I should have mentioned one shot in particular -- it was of a closer up shot where the cameraman was in the street near the group of factories, and he was shooting the smoke stack of the factor and the building, but ---- funny thing again ----

------ he had adjusted the focus so it was all a blur -- so you couldn't read the name of the factory......

I've covered the search term "pollution" or "오염" in the KBS archives for the months Jan through June 2006. It was like I had found with the English versions of the newspapers:

A good number of stories about pollution in general. A significant number of stories that targeted in a negative light - Korean government projects effecting the environment. A couple of stories about small business pollutors.

But, no story on any of Korean conglomerates -- like a Hyundai factory.

But, I did find - not an extensive amount of items on USFK in these 6 months - but 3 or 4 or more specifically on USFK bases, which is more than enough to keep the idea about USFK being a cancer on Korea fresh enough in the public's mind.

At a certain point, the fact the major chaebol are not attack becomes more and more interesting.