No Gun Ri Park

The Korean government plans to build a No Gun Ri Memorial Park, says an AP story. It should be completed in 2009 and will be, of course, at No Gun Ri, about 100 miles southeast of Seoul. The No Gun Ri scandal showed that investigative journalism still matters, even in Korea. But it's not the kind of journalism that takes place often in Korea.
It took a reporter working for a foreign agency - the AP bureau in Korea - to unearth the story. I worked with the reporter, Choe Sang-hun, in the same office when I was in Seoul - after he had won the Pulitzer for the story. A quiet, unassuming gentleman, he spent hours, often late into the night, digging through documents and typing away at his desk. The piles of papers, books and files overran his desk. His stories were always interesting and he was never afraid to ask tough questions - at least from what I can gather, occasionally overhearing him on the phone from my desk a few feet away. He now writes for the International Herald Tribune as its Seoul correspondent.
- Roger in DC