Author: GIKorea

It seems like we have been talking about North Korea conducting a possible nuclear test for the past two years and for whatever reason they haven’t done one yet. I am not convinced that a food crisis is what is going to cause them to conduct a new nuclear test:

Defense Minister Shin Won-sik speaks during a visit to the command center of the Army’s 1st Infantry Division in Paju, 37 kilometers north of Seoul, on Oct. 9, 2023, in this photo provided by his office. (Yonhap)

 North Korea may stage various provocations, including a nuclear test, to divert its public’s attention from the country’s ongoing food crisis, South Korea’s defense ministry said Tuesday.

The ministry made the assessment in a policy report for a parliamentary audit amid growing tensions after North Korea revised its constitution late last month to stipulate the policy of strengthening its nuclear force.

“In order to pass on internal complaints of food woes and failures in economic policy to the outside world, there is a possibility of (the North) conducting various strategic and tactical provocations, including a seventh nuclear test,” the ministry said in the report.

The isolated regime, which has faced chronic food shortages, last conducted a nuclear test in September 2017.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This is an interesting historical footnote from World War II:

Deep in the forests of southwestern Oregon is a redwood sapling — a peace offering at the site of an act of war.

Friday marks the 81st anniversary of the end of the only enemy aerial bombing campaign to strike the continental United States during World War II. 

The plan was to firebomb the vast forests of America’s northwest in retaliation for the April 18, 1942, Doolittle Raid on Tokyo. The Japanese hoped their modest effort would torch millions of acres of trees and deprive the U.S. defense industry of tons of wood crucial to the war effort. The Americans would have to send thousands of troops to fight the fires.

Nobuo Fujita, a veteran Japanese Navy pilot, advocated the attack and was given the honor of taking the war to the American home front. 

Twice he would fly his submarine-launched floatplane over the forests near Brookings, Ore., release his bombs and make his way to a rendezvous with the I-25 transport submarine waiting for him off the coast.

Though Fujita did not know it at the time, nearly all the bombs fizzled. An alert student forest ranger stomped out one small flare-up. The wet forest floors took care of the rest.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

This is a great program that the ROK continues to run for Korean War veterans that has now expanded to include post-Korean War USFK veterans:

Former soldiers who served in U.N. Command (UNC) and U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) after the 1950-53 Korean War, will visit South Korea on Tuesday upon the invitation of the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs.

Six of them are sons of war veterans who fought for South Korea under the U.N. flag. They include Dennis Michael Bullard, 67, James Edward Truman, 66 and David Lee Nutter, 67.

Two war veterans ― Robert Eugene Jenkins, 88, and Kenlym Hinshaw Moy, 92 ― are also on the invitation list, the ministry said, noting that a total of 91 people ― 87 U.S. nationals, two Swedish nationals and two Italian nationals ― including families of the former soldiers will visit and stay in Korea until Oct. 15.

During their visit, the guests will tour Osan Air Base, Camp Humphreys, the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjeom, Seoul National Cemetery and the War Memorial of Korea.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

I forgot these people were still being held in North Korea because it has been so long. It seems unlikely the ROK will be able to get them back considering how much the Kim regime hates Christian missionaries:

This file photo, provided by Yonhap News TV, shows Kim Jung-wook, a South Korean pastor who has been detained in North Korea since 2013. (Yonhap)

The unification ministry on Sunday urged North Korea to immediately send a South Korean pastor and five other nationals back home, condemning their yearslong detention as “illegal and inhumane.” 

The ministry made the appeal in a statement marking 10 years after South Korean pastor Kim Jung-wook was arrested in Pyongyang in 2013 and then sentenced to hard labor for life on charges of spying for South Korea’s spy agency.

In 2014, two other South Korean missionaries, Kim Kuk-gi and Choe Chun-gil, were also detained in the North on charges of committing what the North’s regime called anti-North Korea crimes. Three former North Korean defectors, who had obtained South Korean citizenship, were detained in 2016.

“The government condemns North Korea’s illegal and inhumane measure and strongly calls on North Korea, a signatory to the International Covenants on Human Rights, to immediately send them back to their beloved family members,” Koo Byoung-sam, spokesperson at the ministry, said in the statement.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It will now be harder for anyone in Korea looking to travel to Israel with Korean Air canceling flights to the country:

Korean Air Co. has canceled its flights from Incheon to Tel Aviv this week amid safety concerns over the escalating conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, according to company officials Monday.

South Korea’s leading air carrier has canceled all three KE957 flights from Incheon to Tel Aviv, which run regularly on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, for the week.

The company, however, has kept in place the returning KE958 flights, which transport passengers from Tel Aviv to Incheon. It plans to decide whether to operate the return flights after reviewing the airport situation in Tel Aviv.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.

According to the article the “gapjil” problem of professors abusing their authority does not really happen in undergraduate classes, but instead in graduate school where students have to work closely with their professors:

Earlier this month, a former professor saw his appeal denied in a lawsuit he filed to overturn the university’s decision to dismiss him. He was fired for sending inappropriate messages to a graduate student — a female foreign national doing a doctorate.

In 2021, the male professor sent sexually suggestive messages to the Ph.D. student, while implying that he would not pass her dissertation if she continued to avoid his advances. In some of the messages disclosed to the media, he described himself as an “emperor” and the victim a “concubine.”

The case appears to be a classic instance of “gapjil,” which refers to a superior’s abuse of power over an individual in a subordinate role, often by harassment or exploitation.

Although it typically occurs in the workplace, gapjil is also common in universities between professors and students.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link, but the article is recommending more gender equality centers on campus.