Category: International Headlines

If all these countries join it makes me wonder of the AUKUS is turning into a Pacific version of NATO to counter China:

The United States, Britain and Australia are considering South Korea, Canada and New Zealand as potential partners for cooperation on advanced capability projects of their AUKUS security partnership, a senior U.S. official said Tuesday.

The remarks came a day after the defense chiefs of the three countries issued a joint statement noting their consideration of Japan as a partner for Pillar II projects of the partnership.

Launched in September 2021 in an apparent move to counter China’s assertiveness, AUKUS consists of two key pillars. Pillar I is to support Australia in acquiring conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines, while Pillar II is for cooperation in high-tech areas, including quantum computing, artificial intelligence and hypersonics.

“The AUKUS partners are considering a range of additional partners who may bring unique strengths to Pillar 2, including the ROK, Canada and New Zealand, in addition to Japan,” the official said in response to a question from Yonhap News Agency. ROK stands for South Korea’s official name, the Republic of Korea.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but China is of course complaining about this announcement. If China would quit trying to forcibly take over other nation’s territory there would be no need for AUKUS in the first place.

This is actually surprising that the ROK issued a statement against China on this issue. It will be interesting to see if China responds:

South Korea’s foreign ministry expressed deep concerns Thursday over the collision between Chinese and Philippine coast guard vessels in the South China Sea, a region long plagued by persistent territorial disputes.

“Our government is deeply concerned about the dangerous situation caused by the collision between the Chinese and Philippine vessels and use of water cannons against the Philippine vessels in the South China Sea,” the ministry spokesperson, Lim Soo-suk, said in a press briefing. 

“We support the maintenance of peace, stability and rules-based order in the South China Sea, as well as the freedom of navigation and overflight based on the principles of international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.”

The Philippines Coast Guard earlier said a Chinese Coast Guard ship caused damage to one of its ships attempting to deliver supplies to Second Thomas Shoal, known as Ayungin Shoal, by Manila on Tuesday. China’s use of water cannons also caused injuries to four Filipino crew members.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but from a ROK perspective it would not be in their interest for China to gobble up the entire South China Sea and claim it as Chinese territory. This is because the majority of ROK energy imports comes through the South China Sea and if China takes it over it could stop energy and other exports through the waterway.

The COVID madness may be returning to a country near you:

A man takes pictures of a mask wearing a face mask in front of the Marina Bay Sands hotel and resort in Singapore on Feb. 18, 2022,. Governments across Southeast Asia are bringing back measures to limit a rapid resurgence of respiratory infections. (Roslan Rahman, AFP via Getty Images/TNS)

Governments across Southeast Asia are bringing back measures to limit a rapid resurgence of respiratory infections such as COVID-19, including installing temperature scanners at airports and encouraging people to wear masks again.

The goal is to slow the spread of a variety of germs, as a confluence of COVID, flu and other respiratory pathogens may set off wider outbreaks that ultimately stretch healthcare systems.

But it can be a fraught process, with the public highly attuned to the risk of draconian measures, which were put in place early in Asia at the start of the pandemic in 2020 and which lasted for much longer than in other parts of the world, coming back.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

It seems there was enough South Korean volunteers that joined the Ukrainian military to warrant putting out a press release on their status:

 Some volunteer soldiers from South Korea were deployed in Ukrainian front-line units fighting against Russia, an official from Ukraine’s military has said.

Damien Magrou, a spokesperson for the International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine, confirmed the activities of South Koreans during a recent interview with Yonhap News Agency.

Ukraine has claimed that it established the Ukrainian foreign legion on Feb. 27, days after Russia’s invasion, and over 20,000 people from 52 countries have joined the brigade-level unit.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but interestingly Rhee Keun the former ROK Navy Seal turned Youtuber who volunteered, they say has not been sent to a frontline unit yet.

Here is the latest on the Kim Jong-un health watch:

 U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday he does not know about the health condition of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un but hopes he is doing well amid unconfirmed reports that the young leader may be seriously ill.

“These are reports that came out, and we don’t know. We don’t know,” Trump said at a White House coronavirus press briefing. “I can only say this: I wish him well. Because if he is in the kind of condition that the reports say, that the news is saying, that’s a very serious condition, as you know, but I wish him well.”

Trump said he doesn’t place “too much credence” in any report put out by CNN. Citing an unidentified U.S. official, CNN first reported that the U.S. is looking into intelligence that Kim is in “grave danger” after a surgery.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

As the article states, Asia has long been right about the wearing of masks, I just think the CDC did not want to have a rush on these masks by the general American public when hospitals needed a chance to stockpile them:

Debate over masks ends: Asia was right all along

“There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit,” said Dr Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s health emergencies programme, as recently as Monday.

All that changed this week. On Friday, both the US and Singapore switched to advising citizens to wear masks when they leave their homes. The WHO also made a U-turn itself, with Ryan saying: “We can certainly see circumstances on which the use of masks, both home-made and cloth masks, at the community level may help with an overall comprehensive response to this disease.”

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but this will be a huge cultural change in the U.S. where walking around with a mask could be confused for criminal activity.

Here is some important context about the coronavirus statistics that very, very few in the media ever mention; they are not accurate and should not be trusted:

In between the rushes, data fatigue would sink it and I would promise myself I’d be better … until another surge of coronavirus figures hit the streets. 

Then one morning, in what can only be described as a moment of revelation, my rational brain punched through the haze and made me look at what I’d become.

I had elevated numbers and statistics to a position of power and influence. But worse, I had awarded them a legitimacy that they neither earned, nor deserved.

Numbers and statistics had become my master and I their slave. I had begun to follow them as if they were worthy of my trust and deserving of my full attention. (………….)

“The statistics that we see in print or online depend entirely on the number of confirmed cases, but as every international expert agrees, in most countries the number of undocumented cases of infection far exceeds the number of ‘confirmed cases.’

“We do not report all the cases. In fact, we only usually report a small proportion of them. If it were possible to identify every case of infection, only then would we be able to arrive at an accurate rate of case fatality”. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but the coronavirus is highly contagious and likely has infected far many more people than the reported cases. From the article one scientific study concluded that 86% of the people infected in the Wuhan province of China went undetected.

However, I expect the media to continue to highlight inflated mortality rates to keep people in panic and thus continuing to tune into their news reports and clicking their articles.