Author: GIKorea

I think what President Yoon is preparing the ROK military for, is to strongly respond to a Cheonan sinking or Yeonpyeong Island shelling like provocation. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to this, but North Korea seems due to provoke something in the Yellow Sea which has been quiet for quite a while:

President Yoon Suk-yeol ordered the military on Wednesday to swiftly punish North Korea in case of provocations as he presided over a meeting of top commanders for the first time since taking office.

“(The president) ordered our military to swiftly and firmly punish North Korea in the event that it carries out a provocation,” his office said after Yoon’s meeting with the commanders from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps at the Gyeryongdae military headquarters, 160 kilometers south of Seoul.

“He stressed that it is the military’s mission to defend the people’s lives, property, territory and sovereignty at all costs, and that we must firmly show our resolve to do so,” the office said in a statement.

North Korea has carried out a series of short- to long-range missile tests since Yoon’s inauguration in May and showed signs of preparing for what would be its seventh nuclear test.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Yes Trump’s personal diplomacy may not have led to any long term solutions for the North Korea problem, but neither has any of his predecessors plans lead to anything either:

Donald Trump’s unconventional summits with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in 2018 and 2019 produced nothing, former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said at a forum here Friday.

The United States under Trump’s presidency was “not traditional for what America’s role has been in the world,” the retired Marine general and former head of Central Command said at a gathering hosted by the Seoul Forum for International Affairs, the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Korea Society in Seoul.

The two nations were threatening war in 2017, but Kim and Trump emerged friends from their 2018 summit in Singapore, trading “love letters” afterwards. The two met again the following year in Hanoi, Vietnam, and at the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea.

Trump hailed the meetings as momentous developments, but foreign policy experts widely criticized them for failing to produce any agreements between the two countries.

“As far as what came out of it, I would say nothing,” Mattis said of the summits. “I saw nothing that came out of it.”

In 2020, North Korea resumed missile tests and its bellicose statements aimed at the U.S. and South Korea. North Korea has so far this year launched 17 rounds of missile tests, a one-year record.

“President Trump was an unusual leader” who believed in “personal diplomacy,” Mattis said.

“He was convinced that he could work something out with Kim — I was not optimistic,” he added. “My job was to make certain I did everything I could to stand by the [South Korean] Ministry of Defense and make certain the U.S. military … ties were absolutely at the top of their game to ensure that we were buying the time to safely engage in that summit.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Here is another example of South Korea’s growing space program:

Korea on Tuesday started transporting the country’s first lunar orbiter to the United States ahead of next month’s launch using a SpaceX rocket, officials said.

Korea plans to launch the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, also known as Danuri, aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 8:24 a.m. on Aug. 3 (Korean Time).

According to the Ministry of Science and ICT, Danuri was sent from the Korea Aerospace Research Institute in Daejeon, 160 kilometers south of Seoul, to Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, in a specially designed container.

The orbiter will be flown to Orlando International Airport and arrive at the Floridian space center Thursday. It will later undergo maintenance, assembly and other pre-launch preparations for about a month before launch.

Danuri will begin circling around the moon in December and conduct a yearlong mission to observe it using an array of instruments, including cameras and magnetometers. It will also identify potential landing sites for future lunar missions.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

I am surprised this NCO was even able to get on his motorcycle much less drive it with a .323 blood alcohol level:

A United States Forces Korea (USFK) service member is under investigation by local police for allegedly causing an accident while driving a motorcycle under the influence of alcohol, according to the law enforcement authorities, Tuesday. 

Pyeongtaek Police Station in Gyeonggi Province said a 37-year-old male sergeant, whose identity has been withheld, is accused of driving under the influence at the time of the accident. He crashed his motorcycle into a Kia Sorento at a three-way intersection near Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek at around 7:40 p.m., Sunday. 

The sergeant left the scene of the collision, leaving his motorcycle behind. The Sorento driver reportedly suffered minor injuries. 

After police arrived on the scene, they tracked the owner of the motorcycle through the license plate number and found that the vehicle belonged to a person on Osan Air Base. 

The sergeant turned himself in at around midnight, shortly after local police launched a joint investigation with U.S. military police. His blood alcohol level at the time he turned himself in was 0.323 percent, well above 0.08 percent, which would qualify for the revocation of a driver’s license.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

The Joong Ang Ilbo has article published about the difficulties that African students are having in South Korea:

Karen, Lanre and Fatima are all black students from Africa living in Korea and studying at different Korean universities. They have asked to withhold their identities as they worry that they could face a backlash after speaking out about their experience of studying in Korea.  All three students agree that just being black in Korea attracts a lot of attention and discomfort.  
   
“When I ride the subway, people look at me and never want to sit next to me unless it is the last seat available,” Karen said.    
   
Lanre described how once, while he was out walking, “a little girl saw me and then went to hide behind her parents while looking at me as if I wanted to hurt her.”   
   
This kind of reaction seems to be common and could come from a lack of education on racial issues.  
   
Fatima also noted that some cultural features like braids, which are worn by some Korean rappers for a hip-hop look, are appropriated, and used in a different way than their original meaning.  
   
“Before doing it, you try to learn what is behind it and why these people are doing this, you don’t just do it for the style” said Fatima.    
   
Lanre also said that some of his classmates in Suwon kept repeating that Africa was very poor, and even asked questions like, “Do you have cars?” This type of behavior can continue to convey a lot of clichés, prejudices and preconceived notions about African people.  
 
The issue is not only a lack of education on racial issues, but also seems to extend to the culture in some schools and universities.  
   
Karen arrived in Korea in 2014 and went to study in a Korean high school once she finished learning Korean. On her very first day in school she sat in the front row and, “the teacher came up to me, took my hand, and asked me if I was dirty or if I was just black.” 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Fortunately there are still plenty of people willing to fight to defend South Korea, but the trend from this survey is showing that the number of people willing to fight in decreasing:

Nearly seven out of 10 South Korean nationals are willing to fight for their country in the event of war, according to a recent poll.

The World Values Survey polled 1,245 South Koreans, 67.4 percent of whom expressed their willingness to fight for their country, while 32.6 percent were unwilling to take up arms to defend their homeland.

South Korea ranked 40th out of 79 countries polled between 2017 and 2021 when it comes to the percentage of the population willing to fight for their country in the event of a war, but the percentage of people who are unwilling to take up arms has been steadily increasing, compared to 6.5 percent in a 1981 survey.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but I wonder what the number would be if the people unwilling to fight did not have the option of fleeing South Korea to another country. Would they fight then?