surplus

I had a friend from high school killed in 1968, not in Vietnam, but on patrol on the South's side of the DMZ.

The North still mumbles in its extended psychotic episiode, physically diminishing its people through food deprivation and shrinking them down through the generations. For anyone else to 'do something' about one of the world's last spoiled, demented, and tantrum-prone warlords would, of course, mean war.

Who will die-off first - the Glorious Leader of the North and his tiny band of sycophants, or all the ordinary people up there?

Nice photo, though, Bob; the old steel pot - ineffective against high-power rounds but better than nothin'. ROK troops always looked too small beneath them, but they are tough fellas.

Strong image!

Thanks, tomswift. Fact is, it's not an uncommon one, and you'll often see such hardware for sale at the local equivalents of flea markets or just on the random bit of sidewalk ... dunno what the story is with the M-class rifle, there - it's not illegal to own firearms here, but you can't keep them in your home, but rather you have to store them at the local police station. (Despite being less than 3 hours drive from the DMZ, I feel safer in this city than in nearly any large American one I have lived in or visited. Most cops don't carry guns, either, most of the time.)

du Tabac, the ROK sent troops to fight alongside us in Nam and the stories I hear say they were far tougher (often more violent) than our guys. Military conscription is still universal for males here, but only a few make it a career. In contrast to Nam, by the way, all the ROK soldiers sent to Iraq went solely as noncombatants, building schools and roads and such. Didn't stop violent fanatics over from taking a Korean civilian contractor prisoner to blackmail the Seoul govt into withdrawing them (and then beheading the poor schmuck on the internet when that didn't work).

I still consider myself a liberal after all these years, but unlike my Korean friends who do also, I find I can less and less support the Sunshine Policy, now a decade old or more, of opening up to the North - it just hasn't acheived any of it's goals despite the former ROK President Kim Dae-jung receiving a Nobel for it ... it is still a closed-off and secretive little kingdom, except now one or two S Korean conglomerates can exploit the cheap labor on a small scale.

S Koreans protested China recently when the Olympic torch passed through, by the way - unlike the rest of the world, it was not about Tibet but rather about China's policy of sending refugees from the North back to Pyeongyang, where they are usually either imprisoned or executed ... despite all this darkness, most of my photos about S Korea are rather pretty and nice, though, aren't they?

;-)

Korea is indeed a pretty - and photogenic - place, There is darkness, yes, as in all places. That's why we need keep pushing it back, with such humanity as we can muster.

It would be great if you would add this doc to peace.

Thank you for this peace promotion!!! I agree with alsalam... :-)