An interesting foreign candidate

[billjarrett]

My wife is Korean (well, she's an American citizen now, but from there) and is visiting her family over there on vacation. I just got off the phone with her, and she says their presidential election is coming up on the 19th. It was interesting to her because they seem to have their own Ron Paul. I'm not sure where he stands politically as compared to Dr. Paul, but she says he scores low in the phone polls but wins every internet poll. However, theres alot of talk about the reliability of the polls like there is here. He also is pretty much ignored by the MSM there.

I did a quick search for english articles about him, and this is the first one I found (I'm sure there's more, but we have an election here to work on):

http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200710/200710170020.html

Her and I just thought there were some interesting similarities there, and I decided to share.

[Corydoras]

Go look at the article! He's got eyebrows JUST LIKE RON PAUL'S! lol


"If I’m covered by major press outlets, I will get everyone’s support," he said. Asked whether he was discussing choosing a single candidate with United New Democratic Party presidential candidate Chung Dong-young, he said, "People are rejecting all established political parties. Who should I discuss producing a single presidential candidate with?"

[cindy25]

this is off topic, but might be personally interesting to Bill, as it could apply to any sons he may have:

The accidental citizen soldier
Young Jin Chun is an American by birth but he's been plucked by the South Korean army for a two-year stint
By JOHN IWASAKI
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
He's a University of Washington graduate and sports fanatic, an artist and guitarist, a native of Illinois and son of South Korean émigrés.
He seems more Big Mac than kim chee. He hardly speaks Korean.
Young Jin Chun is thoroughly American, a 25-year-old Bellevue resident and Newport High School graduate who wanted to soak up his ancestral culture and learn Korean while teaching English overseas for a year or two.
Thanks to the South Korean government, he's getting that experience, but not in the way he ever imagined. The planets did not align for Chun. They collided.
Although he's a U.S. citizen, Chun has been drafted into the South Korean army -- a two-year hitch in one of the world's most tense military regions.
He is now Pvt. Young Jin Chun, splitting his time between office and linguistic work, picking up Korean by necessity, and earning a monthly salary of about 30,000 won, or roughly $25.
In a telephone interview from Daegu, headquarters of the 2nd Republic of Korea army, Chun expressed disbelief at what happened to him. "I didn't think a regular citizen, born here, living his whole life in the U.S., would have to serve in the Korean military," he said.
Besides guarding against the nuclear threat of Communist North Korea, the South Korean military is stepping up its involvement in Iraq, making it the third-largest member of the U.S.-led coalition.
Chun can barely comprehend his officers, much less know his chances of seeing action somewhere.
How an American unwittingly ended up in the Korean army is a cautionary tale of false assumptions, a foreign bureaucracy and perhaps a young man's naïveté.
Chun is no John Walker Lindh, the so-called "American Taliban" convicted for aiding the enemy after the United States attacked Afghanistan in 2002. He's the accidental soldier, plucked by the South Korean military while teaching English at a private language institute outside Seoul and unaware until last year that he held dual citizenship and was thus eligible for conscription.
As Chun belatedly learned, the South Korean government determines citizenship not by where a person is born, but by the citizenship of his or her parents.
In Chun's case, it appears a family member -- maybe his paternal grandfather or his father, who is divorced from Chun's mother and lives in South Korea -- entered his name in the nation's family census registry, the hojok.
Chun's parents emigrated to the United States in 1973 and became naturalized citizens. His father completed his doctorate in engineering at the University of Illinois-Champaign, where Young Jin, the middle of three sons, was born eight days before Christmas 1978.
His family lived in Chicago for a decade, then spent two years in South Korea. After his parents separated, his mother, Katie Chun, moved her sons to Bellevue and opened a formal wear shop in Seattle.
Young Jin Chun, an art major, graduated with honors from the UW in 2002. He wanted to be a teacher after earning a master's degree. But his mother suggested that, with college debt and no money for graduate school, he ought to join the U.S. Army to gain tuition benefits.
"You're kidding, Mom," he responded, and that ended that.
Later, she suggested he travel overseas. "You're Korean. Learn the Korean culture," she said she told him. "Then if any job opportunity comes to you, you can do it."
Chun took a job teaching English in Boondang City near Seoul, leaving Seattle in December 2002 on a one-year work visa. The next month, he tried to upgrade to a two-year residential visa. That's when he discovered he had dual citizenship.
In September, during a brief visit to Seattle, he accompanied his mother to the South Korean Consulate to renounce his Korean citizenry.
Too late.
"The problem is, he didn't make a choice between Korean and U.S. nationality before he turned 18 years old," as stipulated by Korean law, said South Korean Consul Byung-ha Chung.
Chung said his government does not force foreigners to serve in its military. But Chun is a Korean citizen, he said, and like all male citizens ages 18 to 35, is required to perform military service. Even those who live outside Korea are obligated if they stay in the country for an extended time.
"It's just a normal application of the law," the consul said. "Even though it's an embarrassing situation (for Chun's family), the law should be applied."
Veronica Taylor, director of the Asian Law Center at the UW, concurs.
"The sad reality, as far as the legal system is concerned, is that ignorance is no excuse," she said. "It does not sound like the Korean government had done anything illegal or untoward from a strictly legal point of view, even though (the outcome) was harsh."
More broadly, "the problem is not unique to Korea," she said. "It happens in places like Israel. Men traveling to countries (with compulsory military service) have to be careful."
The U.S. State Department knows of several instances in which young American men of Korean descent have been drafted when visiting South Korea.
Katie Chun said that when she asked the consulate's office what else she could do, a clerk handed her a form that referred to management of military duty. Her son filled it out, believing it was a military waiver.
Young Jin Chun and his mom didn't know it at the time, but submitting the paperwork may have sealed his fate.
In October, shortly after returning to Seoul, Chun received his draft notice. His mother said a military official in Korea told her that the army hadn't known he was in Korea until it received the form from Seattle, in which he used his Korean name -- Chun Young Jin, with his surname given first -- which matched his name in the census registry. He had apparently gone undetected under Young Chun, the name on his passport.
"Even then, I thought, 'There's no way I have to do this,' " he recalled. "I thought I'd be able to work it out. But here I am."
Chun contacted the U.S. Embassy in Seoul and a lawyer. He told his story to the Korea Times, a daily Seoul newspaper. Nothing could relieve him of duty.
One of Chun's co-workers suggested he talk to the U.S. military. In desperation, he enlisted at the Eighth U.S. Army base in Seoul. He was willing to serve twice as long -- four years -- in the American armed forces compared with the Korean military. He said a recruiter told him the Army "probably could get me back home."
In late January, Chun stood at Osan Air Base in Seoul, ready to board a military flight home. He never stepped on the plane. Korean immigration officials stopped him, claiming they had first dibs.
When a U.S. enlistee has not yet been shipped to basic training, but has been inducted into the Korean army, "the laws of Korea are honored," said Douglas Smith, an Army recruiting spokesman. "That appears to be what happened in this case."
Chun telephoned his mom with a gloomy message: "I got caught."
"I cried," Katie Chun remembered. "I told him, 'Don't run away from the problem. You've got to make it work.' "
Two days later, Chun entered the Korean army.
Chun said his officers speak only Korean. Some of his fellow soldiers speak English, including those who went to college in the United States. Some also grew up overseas. But Chun is the lone American.
"I'm sort of like a curiosity here."
Chun's mom wrote to top South Korean authorities, including President Roh Moo-hyun, pleading her son's case.
The government replied that her son would have "a safe and comfortable military life" and would "maximize his ability," noting that he already spoke Korean much better.
Elliott Kim, a member of the Washington Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs, has called for the Korean government to give clear notice to visa applicants that they might be subject to military service under certain criteria.
"If anyone was in a similar situation," responded Chung, the South Korean consul, "probably someone on our staff would notify them."
As for Chun, he is resigned to his stint in a foreign army.
"What's done is done," he said. "I don't want to waste two years of my life. At least I'll learn Korean and try to pick up skills."
He thinks about his mom, his brothers Charlie and Jason, and even Mangne (Korean for "little runt"), a pug kept on a leash in his mom's shop.
"I miss my family. I'm just going to try my best," Chun said wistfully. "Hopefully, in two years, I'll be back."
BEFORE YOU GO
The State Department recommends that before traveling outside the United States, especially for extended stays, citizens should read warnings and other information posted online at travel.state.gov.