Author: GIKorea

It appears the submarine that North Korea used to fire a missile from this weekend has not been in the best working condition:

The North Korean submarine that fired a ballistic missile from underwater Saturday was the one that had to be towed ashore due to an engine problem following an earlier missile test-firing in October last year, sources said Sunday.

The North is believed to have repaired the Gorae-class vessel since the Oct. 19 test-firing that also took place in waters off the country’s eastern coastal city of Sinpo, where the North’s main submarine shipyard is located.

Due to damage to its engine from the impact of the firing at the time, the 2,000-ton-class submarine could not move on its own and had to be towed by a tugboat to the Sinpo shipyard, according to military and intelligence authorities.

“Though the extent of the damage was not exactly determined, it was not in a condition where it could move on its own. It had to be towed,” a source said on condition of anonymity.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

None of this is actually surprising to people who have been paying attention:

The incoming Yoon Suk-yeol administration finds itself in hot water over its policy roadmap for the next five years, as some of his key election pledges ― disbanding the gender equality ministry, raising soldiers’ salaries and deploying additional U.S. missile systems in South Korea ― have been missing from a list of key tasks.

Those pledges were used as catchy slogans throughout Yoon’s presidential election campaign, after his Facebook postings that promoted such ideas grabbed voters’ attention despite their low feasibility. As the pledges were exempt from the roadmap, however, the Yoon administration faces growing criticism for backing down from its pledges. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but the Gender Ministry is not going any where because Yoon’s party does not control the National Assembly to actual make its abolishment law. As we have discussed before here on the ROK Drop the Yoon administration had talked of purchasing a THAAD battery. However, this is not something you just go to a car dealership and buy. This is a multi-year long process to purchase, build the battery, and train personnel for billions of dollars. As far as paying troops more that is a huge bill that means money needs to be taken from so where else when the current Moon administration is already running huge deficits.

These are all things that cannot immediately be implemented and thus focusing on more realizable short term goals initially is probably prudent for the Yoon administration.

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

If this was an ICBM test the fact that it did not rise as high in apogee as other tests indicates something did not go right. For example the March ICBM test had an apogee of 4,475 kilometers. This test had an apogee of 780 kilometers:

North Korea’s state-controlled news outlets were unusually silent Thursday about the country’s latest ballistic missile test the previous day.

There had been no related reports by the secretive nation’s media, including the Korean Central News Agency and the Rodong Sinmun, as of 5 p.m., unlike Pyongyang’s usual practice of quickly boasting publicly about its major weapons tests.

On Wednesday, the North launched a ballistic missile, which flew 470 kilometers at a maximum altitude of 780 km before falling into the East Sea, according to South Korea’s military. Some informed sources said it seems to be an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) fired at a lofted angle.

The North’s media has usually carried reports, coupled with a number of photos, of such major missile tests the next morning, except for failed launches like the one in mid-March.

Observers here raised the possibility that the North failed to achieve its goal in the latest missile firing, the 14th of this year.

Military authorities here appeared intent on figuring out why the North’s state media had not reported on the missile launch.

“What appears to be certain is that the North did not conduct the missile launch at its fullest capacity,” a military source said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Besides the upcoming inauguration the Defense Chief nominee was testifying which may be the real reason why they fired this missile:

North Korea fired a ballistic missile toward the East Sea on Wednesday, South Korea’s military said, in the recalcitrant regime’s latest saber-rattling that comes less than a week before President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol’s inauguration.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said it detected the launch from the Sunan area in Pyongyang at 12:03 p.m. and that the missile flew 470 kilometers at a top altitude of 780 km and speed of Mach 11.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It looks like a consequence of narrowing losing the ROK Presidential is that Lee Jae-myung is now open to being investigated:

Police raided Seongnam City Hall Monday over allegations that former presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung, who was mayor of Seongnam from 2010 to 2018, took donations from companies via the city’s football club, Seongnam FC.  
    
The Bundang Police Precinct announced Monday that they raided five divisions of the city government, including the planning and policy planning divisions. Lee’s home and other locations related to the case were not raided.  
   
“We cannot confirm specific investigation details such as what kind of documents were secured through the raid,” a spokesperson from the Bundang Police Precinct said. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.