Yes this would have been an unconventional way to begin an introduction:
Former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo wrote in his new memoir that his secret meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jung Un in 2018 began with a “joke about assassination.”
“This small, sweating, evil man tried to break the ice with all the charm you would expect from a mass murderer. ‘Mr. Director,’ he opened, ‘I didn’t think you’d show up. I know you’ve been trying to kill me,’” Pompeo’s memoir, which Fox News obtained a copy of, reads.
“My team and I had prepared for this moment, but ‘a joke about assassination’ was not on the list of ‘things he may say when he greets you.’ But I was, after all, director of the CIA, so maybe his bon mot made sense,” he added.
Pompeo’s memoir, “Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love,” is set to be released on Jan. 24 amid speculation that the former Trump Cabinet secretary could announce a 2024 presidential run. Pompeo said last month that he will announce his 2024 plans this spring.
In the first chapter, obtained by Fox News, Pompeo writes his meeting with Kim was a “complete secret” and his goal was to “correct the failed efforts of the past that had not eliminated North Korea’s nuclear weapons of mass destruction.” After the North Korean leader opened with an assassination joke, Pompeo said he responded in kind.
“I decided to lean in with a little humor of my own: ‘Mr. Chairman, I’m still trying kill you.’ In the picture taken seconds after that exchange, Kim is still smiling. He seemed confident that I was kidding,” Pompeo said in the memoir.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
It is looking more likely that the indoor mask mandate will soon be repealed, however I don’t expect Koreans will be taking off their masks anytime soon:
The government will decide when to lift the indoor mask mandate this week, as the country is past the peak of the latest winter COVID-19 wave, Interior Minister Lee Sang-min said Wednesday.
“With this winter’s COVID-19 wave past its peak, the overall virus situation is stabilizing,” Lee said during a government virus response meeting.
Taking the virus situation and other external factors into account, the government will determine when and to what extent the indoor mask mandate would be adjusted during the next virus response meeting scheduled for Friday, the minister noted.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
It is surprising that this doesn’t happen more around the THAAD base. The fact someone lost probably around a thousand dollars by losing their drone might deter others from trying this:
Military and police personnel resumed a search Wednesday for a presumed civilian drone thought to have crashed after flying near a U.S. THAAD missile defense unit in a southern county the previous day, officials said.
The authorities are conducting the search in areas close to the base in Seongju, 217 kilometers south of Seoul, while police are investigating who sent the drone and for what purpose.
The Army said chances appear low that the drone was mobilized for espionage.
U.S. Forces Korea personnel are known to have first detected the drone flying toward the base at 12:54 p.m. Tuesday and used a jamming gun to bring it down, according to defense sources.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
This could be bad news for opposition leader Lee Jae-myung:
A fugitive underwear tycoon nabbed in Thailand last week in connection with the prosecution’s ongoing investigation into opposition leader Lee Jae-myung’s corruption allegations returned home Tuesday.
Kim Seong-tae, former chairman of underwear maker Ssangbangwool Group, arrived at Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, around 8:20 a.m. via an Asiana Airlines flight from Bangkok.
He was apprehended by Thai police at a golf club near Bangkok a week ago, roughly eight months after he fled the country amid several high-profile corruption investigations.
Kim has been long sought after by prosecutors as a key suspect in a number of high-profile corruption investigations, including alleged payment of Lee’s attorney expenses by proxy, suspected embezzlement of company funds and alleged transfer of cash to North Korea.
The 55-year-old Kim, handcuffed and flanked by prosecution investigators, was asked if he had any relationship with Lee, the chairman of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP), by reporters at the airport but flatly said he did not know him at all.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
Jeju island had multiple communities that wanted to host their trash incinerator while Seoul cannot find one place to put it without protests:
While Seoul’s plan to build a new trash incinerator in the western district of Mapo has been sparking protests from residents since last year, a similar plan on Jeju Island has developed into a very different course of action: Islanders are welcoming with open arms the construction of landfill facilities and several districts competed with each other to have them right in their backyards.
Korea Times
Last September, Jeju Special Self-Governing Province selected an uninhabited patch of the authority’s land in the Sangcheon area of Andeok District in the island’s southern city of Seogwipo as a site for the island’s new waste incinerator. The selection process, which lasted nine months from December 2021, saw no disputes with the residents. It was a clean race to win the municipality’s bid with no visible signs of a “not-in-my-backyard” (NIMBY) attitude among the locals.
After finding out what benefits the authority will provide to the residents living around the selected site, three different communities in Seogwipo voluntarily stepped up for the bid. Each community hoisted banners welcoming the new incinerator with hopeful and cheerful messages, a rare scene in Korea, where the public hardly embraces the construction of a large-scale waste incinerator that burns hundreds of tons of garbage every day.
You can read more at the link, but the Jeju community that hosted the trash incinerator received benefits such as new roads, community center, a swimming pool. Such incentives in Seoul are not enough to sway people who largely already have access to such facilities, thus the NIMBYism.
Maybe offering free trash service to the neighborhood in Seoul that hosts the incinerator and higher fees everywhere else might be a way to persuade a neighborhood to want to host the plant?
If you are an international student in South Korea you will once again be paying more for tuition this year:
Amid what they say are financial struggles, local universities are relying on international students in their decision to raise international student tuition.
Korea Times
This year’s hikes for international students are in sharp contrast to tuition for domestic students, which has been frozen for the last 15 years.
Major universities in Seoul, including Chung-Ang University, Hanyang University, Sogang University, Sungkyunkwan University, the University of Seoul and Yonsei University, will raise tuition for international students by up to five percent this year, according to those in the education circle.
The main reason for the tuition hikes for international students is government restrictions on raising tuition for domestic students, they say. According to Korea’s Higher Education Act, tuition increases cannot be more than 1.5 times the average increase in consumer prices during the three preceding years, meaning that tuition for domestic students can only rise by up to 4.05 percent this year.
You can read more at the link.
