As Congress passes the North Korea Human Rights Reauthorization Act, @HouseForeign Chmn Ed Royce writes, "Seoul’s recent efforts to silence North Korean human rights advocates are counterproductive and deeply disturbing.” https://t.co/TrMBfyd1ES via @houseforeign
Nobel Prize-winning American economist Paul Krugman delivers a keynote speech at a special talk on South Korea’s social polarization at the conference hall of the Federation of Korean Industries in Seoul on June 27, 2018. (Yonhap)
My usual caveats apply when it comes to anonymous sources providing stories like this out of North Korea:
A senior North Korean military officer who told colleagues they no longer needed to “suffer and tighten our belts to make rockets and nuclear weapons” has been executed by firing squad, according to reports in dissident media.
The officer was named by the Seoul-based Daily NK news website as Hyon Ju-song, a 56-year-old lieutenant general who was serving as director of the services inspection division of the People’s Armed Forces.
Lt. Gen. Hyon appears to have become excited at the possibility that the detente that has taken place on the Korean Peninsula this year will develop into full-blown peace and got ahead of official party policy.
Quoting one of the organisation’s “citizen reporters” in the North, Daily NK said Lt. Gen. Hyon had been “on the fast track to success” within the military, but was arrested after making unguarded comments during a visit to one of the regime’s most important facilities.
“While checking the oil supplies for the Sohae Satellite Launching Station during the comprehensive inspections of wartime supplies on April 10, Hyon stated, ‘We no longer have to suffer and tighten our belts to make rockets or nuclear weapons’. This was seen as an abuse of authority and a treasonous statement that opposed the Party’s military-first policy”, the site reported. [The Telegraph]
It will be interesting to see if alternative service fixes this currently problem of jailing people for not doing their mandatory service for largely religious reasons:
The Constitutional Court on Thursday ordered the revision of the conscription law to allow for alternative service for conscientious objectors by the end of next year, while upholding the criminalization of those who refuse to serve in the military, largely for religious reasons.
The nine-member panel ruled a clause in the Military Service Act, which stipulates that such objectors face up to three years in prison, to be constitutional. The court did so in all its three previous rulings, most recently in 2011.
The decision was made by four votes to four, with one refusing to judge for procedural reasons. It required at least six votes to overturn the past rulings.
“The punishment clause is meant to strike a balance between securing military service resources and the burden of military service. Its legislative purpose is just, and enforcing the military service obligation with criminal punishment is a suitable means to achieve the legislative purpose,” the court said.
The court, however, ruled that another clause in the same law that does not recognize alternative service for conscription is unconformable to the highest law. It ordered the National Assembly to amend the law by the end of 2019. Otherwise, the clause will be scrapped on Jan. 1, 2020.
The decision was made by six to three.
The punishment of objectors without the provision of alternative options is an infringement of freedom of conscience and the principle banning excessive punishment, the court said. [Yonhap]
This is an example of why the South Koreans need the US to agree to drop sanctions before they can begin any projects with North Korea:
After the two Koreas agreed on Tuesday to connect their railroads and work together on modernizing the North’s infrastructure, one question looms: Is the project even possible?
If South Korea were to provide North Korea with vehicles, machinery and other equipment for track construction, it would violate United Nations Security Council Resolution 2397, which prohibits the export of industrial equipment to the North. The sanctions, passed unanimously on Dec. 22, 2017, came after the North tested an intercontinental ballistic missile on Nov. 29 of last year.
During the meeting between officials from the two Koreas on Tuesday, both sides agreed to boost cooperation in modernizing North Korea’s rails, stating the end goal was “balanced development of the national economy and co-prosperity.”
South Korean President Moon Jae-in has espoused a grand vision of creating a single market with the two Koreas to lay the foundation for unification, job creation and economic growth in both countries. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read much more at the link, but I expect that the Kim regime will continue to play nice in order to convince President Trump to drop sanctions for little to nothing in return. I would not be surprised if the Kim regime decides to continue to play nice until after the mid-term elections in the US. This will give them an assessment of the landscape in the US moving forward in 2019.
This photo, taken June 28, 2018, shows a rain-swollen stream in Busan as torrential rains pounded the southeastern port overnight in the wake of the annual rain front, in this photo provided by local police. (Yonhap)
The patent war between the two biggest smartphone rivals has finally ended.
Samsung Electronics and Apple have settled a seven-year legal dispute over each other’s design patents. Neither disclosed the amount of the settlement.
The two giants informed the district court in San Jose, California, “they have agreed to drop and settle their remaining claims and counterclaims in this matter,” according to an order signed by Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern District of California. The settlement means all suits will be dismissed and no further case will be filed on the same claim.
“We can only say that we have settled with Apple and cannot offer any comment,” said a Samsung spokesman.
The dramatic turn of the lengthy legal battle came a month after retrial jurors in the Northern District of California handed Apple $538.6 million in damages for Samsung violating design and utility (technical) patents that included the infamous “rounded corner” patent. Samsung at the time vowed to consider its options including another appeal. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
That sound you hear is the shattering of a cherished Democratic orthodoxy: race-based preferences in education.
Mr. Adams is an African-American who serves as Brooklyn’s borough president and aspires to run for mayor. On almost any issue, he lands where you would expect a big-city black Democrat to land. But when he cheered Mr. de Blasio’s bid to replace the Specialized High School Admissions Test with criteria meant to sneak in a racial rebalancing, he suddenly had a rebellion on his hands.
Asian-American moms and dads made their displeasure known. So after hastily convening a meeting with angry constituents (and, according to the New York Post, threats from Chinese-American donors), Mr. Adams announced that he wasn’t with the mayor after all.
He’s not alone. Every elected Asian-American in New York City politics has now blasted Mr. de Blasio’s plans. At the City Council, Peter Koo and Margaret Chin are against it; in the state Assembly, Ron Kim and Yuh-Line Niou are opposed; and in Congress, Grace Meng —a graduate of Stuyvesant, one of the affected schools—says she’s “disappointed” by the mayor’s proposal and was particularly “insulted” by the way his schools chancellor framed the issue. What makes this drama so unusual is that every last one of these pols is a Democrat, part of a larger community that overwhelmingly votes Democratic.
Whites have traditionally been the losers from affirmative action. Proponents sometimes justify this as the price to be paid for the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. Whatever the merits of this argument, the Asian-American experience is hard to squeeze into the box of racial privilege.
In the 19th century, the Chinese Exclusion Act was the first U.S. law to deny immigration and naturalization based on race. In the 20th century, during World War II, Japanese-American citizens were confined in internment camps. To this list the 21st century adds racial discrimination at our most elite universities, which, as they did with Jews a century ago, limit the number of Asian-Americans they admit. (……)
As Ms. Chin points out, even if you are an Asian-American with little education, work as a manual laborer, and have no political connections, you understand that an objective exam represents opportunity and upward mobility. You also understand that if merit is replaced by softer (“holistic”) criteria designed to tilt the racial balance (e.g., Harvard has given Asian-American applicants lower “personality” ratings), it will be your children who pay the price. In other words, Democrats are now dealing with an Asian-American community that doesn’t buy the argument that racial justice requires discriminating against a racial minority. [Wall Street Journal]
You can read more at the link, but yet despite all the discrimination that Asian-Americans have faced in the past and even now by affirmative action policies in colleges, they have still been able to have by far the highest per capita household income of any race, even higher than whites.
Leave it to General Brooks to dispel media hyperbole about the cancellation of UFG:
Gen. Vincent Brooks, the commander of U.S. Forces Korea, speaks during a forum in Seoul on June 27, 2018. (Yonhap)
The chief of U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) on Wednesday dismissed concerns that the recent decision by Seoul and Washington to suspend their combined military exercises would lead to an end of all other allied drills and weaken deterrence capabilities.
Gen. Vincent Brooks defended the decision, noting that the suspension appears intended to help the allies build trust with North Korea and add “greater effectiveness” in ongoing diplomacy on the communist state’s denuclearization.
“I don’t anticipate that this is an end of all exercises and training as we know it, but rather these visible exercises that are right up front that may cause unnecessary irritation at a time when the need for trust building is so important,” he said during an alliance forum in Seoul.
“I will eliminate the doubt and concerns about all military training going away. I don’t have any such instruction coming my way. I don’t feel that is the spirit of our leaders but rather to create a room for them to be able to navigate the way forward … to give them room if this helps set the conditions for them to have greater effectiveness in their dialogue and discussions,” he added. [Yonhap]
