Author: GIKorea

It is amazing that anyone would have thought this type of research was a good idea:

Wuhan scientists were planning to release enhanced airborne coronaviruses into Chinese bat populations to inoculate them against diseases that could jump to humans, leaked grant proposals dating from 2018 show.

New documents show that just 18 months before the first Covid-19 cases appeared, researchers had submitted plans to release skin-penetrating nanoparticles containing “novel chimeric spike proteins” of bat coronaviruses into cave bats in Yunnan, China.

They also planned to create chimeric viruses, genetically enhanced to infect humans more easily, and requested $14million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) to fund the work.

Papers, confirmed as genuine by a former member of the Trump administration, show they were hoping to introduce “human-specific cleavage sites” to bat coronaviruses which would make it easier for the virus to enter human cells.

When Covid-19 was first genetically sequenced, scientists were puzzled about how the virus had evolved such a human-specific adaptation at the cleavage site on the spike protein, which is the reason it is so infectious.

The Telegraph

You can read more at the link, but this can be added to the mountain of circumstantial evidence of how COVID likely leaked from a Chinese lab.

It looks like the Kim regime received their talking points straight from Beijing:

North Korea on Monday denounced a United States decision to help build nuclear-powered submarines for Australia as an “extremely undesirable and dangerous” move that can trigger off a nuclear arms race.

The North will also take “corresponding counteraction in case it has even a little adverse impact on the security” of the country, the foreign news section chief of the North’s foreign ministry told the official Korean Central News Agency.

The United States on Wednesday announced the launch of a new trilateral security partnership with Australia and Britain, and said the countries will also work to equip Australia with “conventionally armed” nuclear submarines.

“These are extremely undesirable and dangerous acts which will upset the strategic balance in the Asia-Pacific region and trigger off a chain of nuclear arms race,” he was quoted as saying in the KCNA.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but these Australian submarines are not even expected to come into service until 2040.

We will see in a few months if this dip in popularity translates at the election box for President:

Public support for the main opposition People Power Party(PPP) has risen to hit 40 percent for the first time in a Realmeter weekly survey.

In the poll of two-thousand-517 adults between last Monday and Friday, 40 percent of respondents said they supported the conservative main opposition, up two-point-nine percentage points from a week earlier.

Meanwhile, support for the ruling liberal Democratic Party(DP) fell point-one percentage point to 32-point-five percent. The gap between the rival parties, seven-point-five percentage points, was outside the margin of error.

KBS World

You can read more at the link.

This sounds like childish jealousy from the North Koreans:

North Korea on Monday questioned whether South Korea’s newly unveiled submarine-launched ballistic missile is a real SLBM, claiming even if it is, the “clumsy product” is just in the elementary development stage and cannot serve as an effective means of attack.

The chief of the North’s Academy of National Defense made the claim in an article carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), days after South Korea unveiled its first homegrown SLBM by announcing the successful test-launch from the 3,000-ton-class Dosan Ahn Chang-ho submarine.

“The disclosed pictures show that the weapon has the structure and shape of a typical ground-to-ground tactical ballistic missile. Though the photos could have deliberately been retouched for secrecy, the missile in the picture looked somewhat like a poor weapon without all its shape and far from an underwater weapon,” agency chief Jang Chang-ha said. “What was shown in the pictures was clearly not SLBM.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but what this does mean is that what little resources the DPRK does have they will likely now pour into SLBM development, not because they really need it, but to keep up with the ROK.

China has tightened regulations on kids who play online video games:

Korean game companies face a major hurdle as China, the world’s biggest game market, has recently released tougher measures for juvenile online gaming.    
   
The Chinese government announced on Aug. 30 that minors under the age of 18 will only be allowed to play online games on Fridays, weekends and holidays, from 8 to 9 p.m. each day. This limit is a tightening of the existing 90-minute per day regulation that had been in place since October 2019 and is aimed at curbing juvenile game addiction.   
   
While not taking direct aim at the Korean market, the regulations have had a ripple effect as seen in the fall of stock prices of game companies in recent weeks.  

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but there is another option called parenting where parents tell their kids to go to bed and take the gaming devices from them if they don’t.

I always keep a little bit of skepticism when it comes to these unverifiable stories out of North Korea, but this one I can see having some truth to it:

Almost two years since its release and subsequent rise to global popularity, the K-drama “Crash Landing on You” continues to leave an impact on its fans. In North Korea, where the drama’s storyline is based, several teens caught watching the series are allegedly facing prison time among other harsher sentences. The incident, while unconfirmed, has heightened awareness of the country’s human rights atrocities after being shared in a viral video.

Seoul-based publication The Daily NK, which specializes in North Korean news that relies on a network of sources from inside the hermit kingdom, reported in late August that eight teens were put on public trial for watching and imitating the characters of various South Korean dramas including the popular “Crash Landing on You.” 

Next Shark

You can read more at the link.