By Jamie Grimwood and John M. Rodgers CONFLICTING STATEMENTS The Three Wise Monkeys is in possession of new evidence suggesting firstly, that PVT Andre Fisher was incarcerated largely based on what was perceived to be conflicting testimony and that secondly, there is a crucial witness to events of the 18 and 19 November 2010, the [...]

By Iwazaru How do you stop a scammer? You contact the police, present evidence of the scam and wait for justice to be served, right? Unfortunately that justice may be–and usually is–slow to arrive, if it ever does. The system has to do its work as the judicial machine chugs or sputters along. Such is [...]

By Allen Smithee As you the reader knows, no teacher ever plans to end up in a failing academy. However, shit happens in this increasingly dicier job market. The dicier the economy the more threadbare are English teacher choices: you’ll grab at anything, even potential stinkers. You do your Internet background check, if the place [...]

By Seon-Myung Yoo

At 10 p.m., when Jin-Pyo gets up to leave, his older sisters see him out to the door, bombarding him with advices on how to find his way back home. He vigorously explains to them that his smart phone has a navigation application and that there is no need to worry. The mass of harsh intonation of Kyeongsang dialect move out the door to where his car is parked. Then, after the car has driven away, the mass of the sound rolls back into the house as the sisters bring out the special board with blades embedded to cut the radishes in thin strips for the peppered spice to go into the cabbages.

By Mizaru

Part 1

I’m in Love with modern moonlight

And the neon when it’s cold outside

I’m in love with rock ‘n’ roll and I’ll be out all night

To Sinchon Rotary from Incheon International Airport. Airport BusLimousine # 6044. I’m just back from an E-2 visa run to Japan and, yes, it feels like I have been on some sort of public profile tour. I get off the plane, bob and weave through immigration and set feet on solid ground. And it’s not just in my head that Korean Immigration is clocking me and to the best of my knowledge it has nothing to do with making 3WM. I am up to about 10 delays, missed trips, rescheduled flights skittered boat crossings and the like which when all combined should add up to about two months of ‘overstayed visa’ time. Of course it’s a melodrama involving officials and a back-packer, “Why have you overstay?” “I didn’t know, Mr Kim at Immigration office told me to get a bigger passport. I need more pages.”

By Mel Joyce

“If any of [Joe]‘s relatives are reading this page, please contact me. I am one of his friends in Korea.” This is what I found on my brother’s Facebook page on May 31st, 2009. I was stunned. My heart skipped a few beats; this was the reason that I had joined Facebook. My worst fears were taking shape before my very eyes.

I respond to my brother’s friend Jill as quickly as possible. She tells me that he hasn’t been at work in several days. People have seen him in bars drinking, dirty, talking to himself and throwing things. We discuss the situation and his friend says she’ll get a group together to go searching for him. They can’t find him. One friend finds him and he tells her that he has been locked out of his apartment and he doesn’t have a bed. She brings him a mattress to sleep on, but it doesn’t make him stay.

By Jamie Grimwood and John M. Rodgers

3WM first met USFK-appointed Attorney Lee in July at Seoul District Court following the first appeal hearing of PVT Fisher’s trial. Lee, 59, graduated Seoul National University with a Law Degree and also completed the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) School in 1986.

After exchanging business cards and introducing ourselves, Attorney Lee was genuinely and generally courteous. He asked of the origin of our relationship to and interest in, the case. 3WM informed Lee at the scene that we had been informed of some unease regarding the initial sentencing of PVT Fisher from his supporters, that we were an online news service largely for the expatriate community and that if he did not object, could we please take his contact details.

Lee obliged.

By Iwazaru and Peter Ward

What comes next is where it gets very interesting. Successor designate Kim Jong-un is now in the unenviable position of having to preside over his father’s funeral and then attempt to consolidate his grip on power. What follows is seemingly likely to take one of three paths.

Kim Jong-un, with or without the help of his aunt Kim Kyong-hee and her husband Chang Song-taek may succeed in consolidating his power. This might not happen straight away. He may not simply leap into the shoes of his father and start going on tours of the country, giving disciplinary speeches to the high-level cadres that turn up in the newspaper and be the centre of a fanatical personality cult all of his own. The above mentioned has already begun in the North—he was reported to have gone on tours with his father several times, and has his own (still nascent) personality cult. He may take his time, behind the scenes consolidating his power, whilst in public mourning his father’s passing, much like Kim Jong-il did in the three years after the death of his father.

By 3WM

By Mizaru

I took my first real teaching job in Prague at the Gymnasium Jana Nerudy, and at any chance I got, I used to read and drink at The Golden Tiger with Jiri Pavel. He was an original signer of the Czech civil rights initiative Charter 77 and revealed of himself, “I was a minor poet in a major time.” I didn’t have to mention anything much about my admiration of Havel for Jiri often revealed,

“Yes I drank bear with him 20’s of times.” And after we had a few Pilsners together he confided,

“We all wanted to be Havel but not just anybody could be for everybody like him.”

He had his own part of a table at “The Tiger” and when I met him on late weekday afternoons he always asked, “So have you met Havel yet?” Never a question of the obvious like do you want a beer but always had I met Havel yet. It was our inside joke. And inside jokes are a natural contour in the Czech personality. Jiri was mildly fascinated at all the Americans who were turning up in Prague in the 90’s, but really he knew the score, “Czech beer, Czech architecture, Czech women: now everyone can enjoy.”

By Conor O’Reilly

Imagine, one morning during an English teaching adventure you wake up, smell for the cleanest t-shirt, eat the usual breakfast of ramyeon and toast, and leave for work.

The streets, damp and cold with December, are a little quieter than usual. At the front door of your school the usual hubbub of the morning is absent. Close by, the yellow buses are parked, silent, dark, and empty—not a joyous scream or shout from a child can be heard. You push the door but it holds firm. Just to be sure you give the door a firm pull. It doesn’t budge. Confused, you rattle it then peer into the dull lobby for a reason why the door is locked.

The old guard shuffles towards you, his hunched and padded silhouette growing larger in front of the glow from his electric heater. Looking through the plate glass door, he gives you a confused look as you hunch your shoulders over exaggeratedly, hands held up at your sides to express your confusion at the situation.

By Iwazaru

Seven full days into the more than 400 kilometer pilgrimage across the Korean peninsula in an attempt to trace the footsteps of 7th century Buddhist monk Wonhyo, the members of the trek have changed, the leader, Tony MacGregor, has taken a dangerous fall, Koreans have stepped forward with immense generosity and the road has provided its good share of challenges and rewards. All the while Macgregor, Chris McCarthy and Sangmin sunim, a Buddhist monk who’s joined the pilgrims, have pushed on sometimes joined by professor David Mason.

On Saturday, December 10, MacGregor was happy enough to answer some questions about the journey while settling in after a dinner at Muryang Buddhist Temple in Yeongyang. Among the many things he said, one stood out toward the end of the interview when he offered that each day was a “stepping into the unknown” which he was actually enjoying.

See here for the original story about the pilgrimage and visit the official Site where the pilgrims post pictures and words each day.

Editor’s note: Over the past few months 3WM was in contact with a volunteer at an Korean orphanage who offered to submit an article about the goings on at the center itself. Yet, as she conducted her research for the article, she found herself under increasing pressure from the staff. Below is the article she was able to submit under the circumstances. Following that is some of the correspondence that took place between 3WM and the author during the course of the research and composition process. 3WM is withholding the name of the author and the orphanage.
By Jane Doe

I do not blame the children at the orphanage for being wary of new tutors. The children become very hurt when a tutor fails to show up or when his teaching contract is finished and returns back to his home country. My students adored the previous teacher and felt deeply saddened when she left. After several months of going to the orphanage, I had to leave to teach English on Jeju Island for a month. Dae Kwan was a bit disappointed to see me leave and stopped attending the class taught by my replacement. When I returned to the orphanage in March, Eun Jung chose another volunteer to be her tutor. I tried to not take the rejection personally and wished Eun Jung the best.

By Iwazaru

The pilgrimage began in the southeast Korean city of Gyeongju and will end, if all goes well, in the city of Pyeongtaek more than 400 kilometers away near the western coast just south of Seoul. Four years in the making, the journey is an attempt to retrace the path of Wonhyo, an eclectic Buddhist monk and wayfarer during the 7th century who set out on his own pilgrimage to China but abandoned it near present-day Incheon after experiencing an epiphany of sorts (he allegedly drank maggot-filled water from a broken skull in the dark of night which caused vomiting followed by a vision). Wonhyo’s realization that the refuge he’d sought during a storm had been a tomb and the gourd he’d seen, a skull, led him to develop the philosophy Ekayana which asserts that all things in the universe are connected and that the inner journey is essential. He returned to spread the revelation.