Friday, August 25, 2006

Coast Guard or Navy?

I've seen many articles that I felt like blogging about and I even have time, although this is my the end of my free time for a while. It's just that reading the crap recently about foreign english teachers has made me sick. For my mom and possibly other readers from outside-of-korea, you can read that whole, sorry tale Here, with some background here, and here.

Wow. That bit is just about as big as the main point of today's post.

To get my mind off that mess, let me write about something that is merely weird.
According to the Joongang Ilbo, the Korean Coast Guard is expanding it's fleet. I don't actually know how well they manage their current duties so I can't say if I think the expansion is neccessary. Last year, there were reports of Chinese fishermen in Korean waters that attacked Coast Guard officers so beefing up the Incheon fleet might be wise to prevent further attacks.

No. The increase in ships (eight new 1000tonne ships) is "primarily designed to counter the size of Japan's Coast Guard."

I can't really guess why. Conflict between nations is normally settled by naval fleets, not Coast Guards fleets. I understand that Dokdo is a contested island but I cannot imagine the Coast Guard ships duking it out over the place.

Japan has more coastline than Korea so it's natural that they have a larger force patrolling it.

I am not completely against expansion of the Coast Guard; Canada should look into it.

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