Considering South Korea’s technical prowess a ALCM shouldn’t be too hard for them to develop:
South Korea’s arms procurement agency will launch a program to develop a long-range, air-launched cruise missile (ALCM), the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA), said, Monday. DAPA said it will spend 190 billion won ($145 million) to produce the nation’s first domestically developed ALCM by 2028, and that it will be mounted on the KF-21 fighter jet, currently under development by Korea.
The ALCM is anticipated to be capable of hitting a target up to 500 kilometers away with pinpoint accuracy, and will become a core asset of the KF-21, DAPA added.
The ALCM is a completely new endeavor for South Korea, due to a lack of technologies involving the safe mounting of missiles on an aircraft and separating them for use. But research from 2019 to 2021 has confirmed the feasibility of the development project, according to DAPA.
High-profile politicians from the ruling party and the presidential office are under heavy fire after speaking ill of the bereaved families who lost their loved ones in the Oct. 29 crowd disaster in Itaewon, accusing them of venting their anger at the government. Lawmakers and observers chastised the ruling party politicians for their lack of sympathy and political attacks on the family members who started a civic group to call for a full government investigation and an apology from the president.
The most-criticized remark came from Kim Seong-hoi, former presidential secretary for religious and multicultural affairs in the Yoon Suk-yeol administration. He criticized the bereaved families for demanding the government take responsibility for poorly managing the crowd on Halloween weekend and for failing to communicate properly with the victims’ families.
“Why do you people blame the government for the whole thing when it was your responsibility to keep your grown-up children from going (there)?” Kim wrote on Facebook, Sunday. “Have your children been conscripted by the state from birth? Since when did the president of the free Republic of Korea become the ‘supreme paternal leader’ (who must take care of all members of the public)?”
You can read more at the link with other ruling party politicians making comments critical of the victim’s families. I can understand their frustration with political activists trying to nationalize what was a tragedy caused by whoever started pushing people in the crowd and the lack of crowd control by the local police. With that said the ruling party needs to keep their comments to themselves because it just further gives fodder to politicize this tragedy by their critics.
This will be a big summit for President Yoon when it gets scheduled. It will be interesting if THAAD will be a talking point for President Xi when this summit happens:
Foreign Minister Park Jin smiles during his virtual meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, at the government complex in Seoul, Monday. Courtesy of Ministry of Foreign Affairs
The foreign ministers of South Korea and China agreed to strengthen bilateral diplomatic ties, Monday, as the two countries seek to hold high-level exchanges, including a summit in Seoul, “in the new era of cooperation.”
According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Minister Park Jin and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi held a virtual meeting and agreed to “maintain exchange momentum” for President Yoon Suk-yeol and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping following their first summit in Bali, Indonesia, last month.
The top diplomats said they will work together to honor what was agreed upon during the previous summit and to possibly hold a second one in South Korea, but did not elaborate.
It looks like the KCTU trucker protest has been a failure for them:
Cargo truck union leadership holds their head down after the members voted in favor of ending the strike at the inland container depot in Eulwang, Gyeonggi, on Friday. The strike lasted for 16 days, the longeset stretch since 2003.
The trucker strike is over 16 days after it started, a majority of union members voting to go back to work, and some just dispersing.
In votes held at 16 locations nationwide, 62 percent of the 3,574 that cast ballots agreed to end the strike.
The decisive climb down came a day after the government said it would order more truckers back to work, extending the legally binding orders to steel and petrochemical truckers. Cement truckers received back-to-work orders last week, and all but one complied or indicated the intent to do so. (…….)
“We decided not to ask the opinion of our union members as asking the members to vote on whether to continue to strike is an attempt by leadership to avoid accountability and pass that responsibility to the members,” a Busan union official said. “The general strike didn’t end up with the results that we expected was because of the Yoon Suk-yeol government breaking its promise, oppression and anti-labor policies.”
Truckers went into strike on Nov. 24. Cargo Truckers Solidarity, the trucker union under the militant Korea Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), failed to rally public support amid concerns over the weakening economy and several reports of violence directed at non-union truck drivers.
The strikers were also swayed by the heavy penalties of the back-to-work order. They could face up to three years in jail and up to 30 million won in fines for not complying. Threats to end certain government subsidies were also made.
You can read more at the link, but I think the threats the KCTU was making against trucker drivers trying to go to work really soured the public on the protests.
Skiers in Pyeongchang Skiers await their turn to take a lift to enjoy skiing and snowboarding at Yongpyong Resort in Pyeongchang, Gangwon Province. (Yonhap)
It looks like President Yoon is about to follow through on one of his campaign promises:
Lee Myung-bak
Former President Lee Myung-bak is expected to receive a special pardon later this year as part of President Yoon Suk-yeol’s second round of special pardons.
According to the presidential office, Yoon is expected to grant special pardons at the end of the year. The presidential pardons are likely to be granted on December 28.
The former president is serving a 17-year prison sentence for embezzlement and bribery. Lee, who governed the country from 2008 to 2013, was charged with 16 criminal allegations in 2018 and sentenced in 2020.
Currently, Lee is out of prison, having been granted a temporary suspension of his sentence due to health issues. He initially filed the request for a three-month temporary suspension in June and then requested an extension for another three months in September. His suspension is set to expire on Dec. 28 at midnight.
The Ministry of Justice will review the beneficiaries of the pardon on Dec. 20 and the government is expected to announce the official list on Dec. 27 after a Cabinet meeting.
The Korean left continues to try and pressure President Yoon to fire the Interior Minister over the Itaewon crowd crush disaster:
The National Assembly passes a motion calling for the dismissal of Interior Minister Lee Sang-min on Dec. 11, 2022. (Yonhap)
The opposition-controlled National Assembly on Sunday passed a motion calling for the dismissal of Interior Minister Lee Sang-min over the bungled government response to the deadly Itaewon crowd crush.
The motion won backing from 182 of the 183 lawmakers who cast ballots, with one vote declared invalid.
Members of the ruling People Power Party (PPP), which has opposed the dismissal motion, boycotted the vote and walked out of the chamber en masse before voting began.
You can read more at the link, but according to the article President Yoon will likely ignore the opposition party’s demands. This is clearly politically motivated to try and put blame on the Yoon administration for the Itaewon tragedy when any fair minded person realizes that this was a failure of crowd control at the local police level.
