Author: GIKorea

It will be interesting to see if this suspension of flights had anything to do with North Korea:

South Korea’s transport ministry said Monday it temporarily suspended flights at the Gimpo and Incheon international airports, but it didn’t specify the reason. 

At the request of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said it had banned flights at the country’s two major airports for about an hour Monday afternoon. 

Flights at the Gimpo and Incheon airports resumed at 2:10 p.m. after the flights were halted at 1:08 p.m. and 1:22 p.m., respectively, the ministry said. 

Twenty flights at Gimpo and 10 flights at Incheon were delayed due to the suspension order, according to the airports’ operators.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but Incheon International Airport I have always felt is a very easy provocation target for North Korea that would have immense impact on South Korea.

It has been a cold December in South Korea:

The Han River in Seoul was declared frozen by South Korea’s state weather agency for the first time this winter Sunday, as a cold snap has continued for days.

The first freeze of the river was observed on the river running through the capital city more than two weeks earlier than previous years, according to the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA).

According to the KMA, the river is officially frozen when it has thick ice in a 100-meter-long area between the Han River Bridge’s second and fourth piers. The bridge links Yongsan Ward and Dongjak Ward

In previous winters, the first freeze on the river was declared around Jan. 10. Last winter, the Han River never officially froze.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It is official, the COVID vaccine mandate has been repealed for all U.S. service members:

But the bill also ends one of Biden’s former top priorities in making the coronavirus mandatory for U.S. service members. Republican lawmakers successfully included the measure that rescinds Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s August 2021 order requiring troops to receive the coronavirus inoculation or face punishment, including dismissal from the military. Some 8,200 service members were discharged from the military this year for refusing the vaccine. 

Republicans also tried to include a measure in the NDAA that would force the military services to reinstate those service members who were discharged because of the mandate, but that effort failed. 

The Pentagon has not said what it plans to do now that the vaccine requirement has been ended. Defense Department spokespeople this week said they could not yet comment on the issue.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and an even better New Year!

It is hard to believe it is almost Christmas. I hope everyone has a great holiday! Leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.

In a game of oneupmanship, the ROK has released a much higher resolution spy satellite photograph of Pyongyang than the one the North Koreans released of Seoul:

South Korea on Thursday released a photo of Pyongyang taken from one of its own satellites after North Korea published imagery of Seoul using what it claimed was a military spy satellite.

The color photo, taken with “land satellite No. 1,” clearly shows Kim Il-sung Square and its surrounding facilities, including a history museum, an art museum and a department store.

By contrast, the North Korean photo released Monday was in black and white, and barely showed the outlines of bridges across the Han River and a port in the western city of Incheon.

The North’s Korean Central News Agency said the camera fitted on the “test-piece satellite” built for military reconnaissance purposes had a resolution of 20 meters.

Experts here said a reconnaissance satellite must have a resolution of at least 0.5m, making the North’s equipment impossible to use for its stated purpose.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but give the North Koreans time and they will probably get a high resolution spy satellite eventually into orbit as well.