Author: GIKorea

Of course North Korea is going to use child and slave labor, they will just be smart enough to not use it front of the cameras to give them plausible deniability.  The more slave labor they use, the more money that will be pocketed by the Kim regime to fund their nuclear program and extravagant lifestyle: 

North Korea’s economy – and construction industry, in particular – is built on slave labor. For decades, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children are dragooned into dolgyeokdae, literally “stormtrooper,” work crews for little or no pay, barely fed enough to survive and often forced to sleep in makeshift housing they built themselves, according to rights groups and reports by the State Departmentand others.
Today, South Korean President Moon Jae-in is talking boldly of building road and railway links inside North Korea as a first step toward European Union-style regional economic integration.
In September, Moon took his country’s business elite, including the head of the national railway company, to Pyongyang to persuade North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that the South was ready to invest as soon as U.N. sanctions are lifted.
But human rights activists are asking: Could Moon’s ambitious plans help undermine North Korea’s entrenched system of forced labor? Or will they inadvertently fuel and encourage that system?
“The South Korean government and companies chomping at the bit to get into North Korea need to consider the kind of reputational damage they will suffer if it’s found their investments are being supported by forced labor,” wrote Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division. “South Korea has so far been shamefully negligent in doing real due diligence on labor rights grounds for proposed projects in North Korea.”

Washington Post

You can read more at the link.

It looks like the Japanese military is experiencing a growth in female recruits:

Japan’s Self-Defense Forces are considering new female training units to accommodate an influx of female recruits that is expected to continue to climb in the coming years, Japanese media reported this week.
The island nation is finding it increasingly difficult to accept female recruits with its existing units stretched to capacity, the Jiji Press news agency reported, citing sources with knowledge of the deliberations.
As a result, the Self-Defense Forces are considering the addition of new units across the country to accommodate recruits in all three service branches.

Stars & Stripes

Here are some statistical facts about females in the Japanese military:

The Ground Self-Defense Force mainly holds female recruit training at Camp Asaka in Saitama prefecture, Jiji said. It too is considering the formation of a new unit to relieve the pressure on Asaka, but further details were unavailable.
The Self-Defense Forces have gone from 144 female servicemembers in its inaugural year, 1954, to more than 15,000 as of March 2018, or 6.5 percent of the total force, according to its website. That number is up 1.6 percent since 2008 and continues to climb, the Defense Ministry’s 2018 white paper added.
The ministry plans to eliminate quotas and raise the number of female servicemembers to more than 9 percent by 2030. 

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

These drug smugglers must have forgot to pay someone off in the Mexican government to have this tip called in against them:

The Korea Customs Service announced Monday it confiscated a record amount of cocaine shipped into the Port of Busan. 

According to customs officials, 63.88 kilograms (140.8 pounds) of cocaine was smuggled into the port, the largest amount of drugs found since the opening of Busan Harbor. Authorities estimated that market value was about 190 billion won ($168 million). 

Customs authorities said the cargo left Mexico 20 days ago, arrived in Busan on Dec. 14 and was head to Tianjin, China.  

Customs was tipped off about the smuggling by Mexican customs officials. The Korea Customs Service was told the drugs were concealed in 22 tons of recyclable copper scraps, packed in small plastic bags that were stuffed into two large black bags. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

A few immutable conditions of the confederation model NK wants: 1) a co-equal governing body (which will actually favor NK’s preferences); 2) a neutral state (i.e., no US alliance/footprint); 3) reduced military on both sides (of course, NK has nukes, so they enjoy supremacy). https://t.co/hnCt3vryC7

— Edward Oh 🇺🇸 (@EdwardHBOh) December 14, 2018

This was never going to go well and it seems President Moon has finally realized this:

Anchor: President Moon Jae-in has acknowledged problems of his key economic policies, calling for ways to break the shock of minimum wage hikes and reduced work hours. This comes as the government forecasts the economy will be sluggish next year as well.
Kim In-kyung has the details.

Report: The government has decided to revise the minimum wage decision-making system by February and implement it from 2020, adjusting its pace of increase. It will also spend a record-high 61 percent of its budget in the first half of the year in 2019. 

KBS World Radio

You can read more at the link.

This probably should be considered a good thing that the Trump administration is not in a hurry to cut a deal with North Korea for little to nothing in return:

U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that the U.S. is “in no hurry” to negotiate with North Korea.

On Twitter, Trump wrote that “many people have asked how we are doing in our negotiations with North Korea” and that he “always reply by saying we are in no hurry.”

Trump added there is “wonderful potential for great economic success” for North Korea and its leader Kim Jong-un “sees it better than anyone and will fully take advantage of it for his people.”

He maintained an optimistic outlook, saying “we are doing just fine.”

KBS World Radio

You can read more at the link.

If North Korea is threatening to go to a Plan B, I imagine the Trump administration’s Plan B would involve Secretary Mattis: 

North Korea could decide to live under sanctions, rather than seeking rapid economic growth through a nuclear deal with the United States, if Washington insists on keeping sanctions until Pyongyang’s denuclearization, a former unification minister said Friday.
Lee Jong-seok made the remark during a conference in Seoul, saying North Korean leader Kim Jong-un wants to rebuild the country’s economy and that’s why he decided to pursue a nuclear deal with the U.S., but he’s unlikely to make “unilateral concessions” to the U.S. just for sanctions relief. 
“While I think the possibility is low for North Korea to break off from the denuclearization negotiations, I do think that it could prepare a Plan B,” Lee said, warning that the nuclear talks could be trapped in a long-term deadlock.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

At least one enemy of the Moon administration has been able to keep his job and avoid jail for now: 

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) President Shin Sung-chul will keep his post after the board decided Friday to defer the voting on whether to suspend him.

The board meeting was in response to a Ministry of Science and ICT’s demand to suspend Shin for allegedly embezzling money from the national research fund when he was Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST) president in 2014.

Shin denied the accusations, but the science ministry also filed a complaint with the prosecution.

“During the board meeting, the claims of the two sides from the government and the school were in opposition to each other, but they agreed to postpone the suspension voting,” a KAIST spokesman told reporters at the Eltower in southern Seoul. 

The school said the issue would be discussed at the next board meeting. KAIST is scheduled to hold its regular board meeting in early 2019.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but what Mr. Shin is really being attacked for is being friends with former President Park Geun-hye.