The Daily Beast has an article published about how the left-wing operative and convicted criminal, Park Jie-won has taken over Korea’s National Intelligence Service:
The old Korean Central Intelligence Agency, a fearsome tool of terror for bygone South Korean dictators, has now lost the right to spy on politicians and torture foes of the regime. Instead the agency, renamed the National Intelligence Service years ago, is morphing into an instrument for North-South Korean reconciliation.
Nothing shows the changing role of the NIS more sharply than the appointment by South Korea’s liberal President Moon Jae-in of an old-time leftist politico as NIS director. Imprisoned in 2006 for agreeing to send North Korea $500 million to bring about the first North-South Korean summit in June 2000— between then-South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and North Korea’s Kim Jong Il, father of current ruler Kim Jong Un—the 78-year-old Park Jie-won hopes to use the agency to get back in the good graces of the North Koreans.
The NIS may still engage in routine intelligence-gathering, but Park, who was Kim Dae-jung’s closest aide, envisions the agency pursuing “peace, cooperation and unification” of the two Koreas. As for his signature on an old document promising payoffs to North Korea, he called it “fake,” a forgery.
The controversy over the signature revived memories of the scandal in which Park was alleged to have signed an “agreement on economic cooperation” with North Korea before the June 2000 summit. The document states the payoffs came to $3 billion, including another $2.5 billion in long-term aid and investment, all to get Kim Jong Il to agree to host Kim Dae-jung in Pyongyang. Several months later, “DJ,” as he was widely known, won the Nobel Peace Prize for which he had been lobbying for years.
Park might say he knew nothing, but he was sentenced in 2006 to three years in prison for arranging payoffs that critics say aided and abetted North Korea’s rise as a nuclear power. Some have claimed the final total sent to North Korea amounted to far more. In any event North Korea conducted its first underground nuclear test in 2006 and has staged five more since then, most recently in September 2017.
Daily Beast
You can read more at the link, but any fair observer can conclude that all the payouts did was accelerate the Kim regime’s nuclear capabilities and made them the even more dangerous threat they are today.
Leaders from Nagasaki are urging the world to ban nuclear weapons, which is a nice thought that will not happen anytime soon:
The Japanese city of Nagasaki on Sunday marked its 75th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing, with the mayor and dwindling survivors urging world leaders including their own to do more for a nuclear weapons ban.
At the event at Nagasaki Peace Park, scaled down because of the coronavirus pandemic, Mayor Tomihisa Taue read a peace declaration in which he raised concern that nuclear states had in recent years retreated from disarmament efforts.
Instead, they are upgrading and miniaturizing nuclear weapons for easier use, he said. Taue singled out the U.S. and Russia for increasing risks by scrapping the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
Military Times
You can read more at the link, but it seems to me that Mayor Taue should be more worried about nearby nuclear threat North Korea than Russia and the U.S.
Anyway this is the time of the year to renew the debate on whether the U.S. should have used the bomb or not during World War II.
Well if the monsoon rains were not bad enough, now a typhoon is heading towards South Korea as well:
South Korea will come under the direct influence of Typhoon Jangmi, the season’s fifth typhoon, this week, which will bring heavy rain to the country’s flood-hit southeastern region, the state weather agency said Sunday.
The tropical storm, which formed early Sunday southwest of Okinawa and started to move northeast, is expected to pass waters 350 kilometers south of Jeju Island around 10 a.m. Monday, according to the Korean Meteorological Administration (KMA).
Around 3 p.m. on the same day, it is predicted to arrive in waters 30 km southwest of Busan, some 325 km southeast of Seoul, it said.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
With the drop in coronavirus cases across Korea, USFK is easing the restrictions placed on servicemembers and their families:
U.S. Forces Korea will lower its health protection level nationwide starting Monday, allowing personnel to visit Seoul for the first time in months thanks to a decline in coronavirus cases.
The military already had eased most restrictions on service members in May but kept the South Korean capital out of bounds except for people stationed in the metropolis due to fears of cluster infections.
Bars, clubs and other establishments with adults-only entrance remain off-limits in all areas, the command said Friday in an announcement on social media.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link.
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