Author: GIKorea

147 remains of ROK Army veterans of the Korean War are finally returning home:

The largest repatriation of remains of South Korean soldiers who fought alongside U.S. troops in the Korean War is being held at 4 p.m. EDT today at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii.

The soldiers’ remains are being returned to their homeland of South Korea after 67 years away, officials said.

“This, like the past repatriation, is due to the strong and long standing partnership between the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and [South Korea’s] Ministry of National Defense Agency for KIA Recovery and Identification,” said Lee Tucker, spokesman for the Defense Prisoners of War/Missing in Action Accounting Agency, said. “It is the incredible improvements in technology, advancements in forensic science and the strong partnership between DPAA and MAKRI which led to these identifications.”

Scientists with DPAA and MAKRI have conducted joint forensic investigations and were able to validate these 147 remains as being of South Korean origin, according to a Pentagon statement.

Military Times

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest on the recent North Korean manufactured “crisis”:

North Korea was seen removing multiple propaganda loudspeakers reinstalled recently along the border with South Korea, officials said Wednesday, after leader Kim Jong-un ordered the suspension of military action plans against the South.

The North recently set up around 20 to 30 loudspeakers in border areas after threatening to take military action against what it called “the enemy” in anger over Seoul’s failure to stop defectors from sending anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the border.

“North Korea is taking down those newly installed loudspeakers from earlier today,” a military source said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the most obvious question likely no one in the media will ask, is what did the Moon administration promise the Kim regime in return for reducing tensions?

Of all the excerpts given to the media there is hardly anything new he is disclosing because it has been widely reported President Trump has threatened to pull out USFK if South Korea does pay more for US-ROK cost sharing:

 U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to pull American troops from South Korea if Seoul did not pay US$5 billion under a defense cost-sharing deal, his former National Security Adviser John Bolton said in his memoir.

In “The Room Where It Happened,” set to be published Tuesday, Bolton recalled an Afghanistan-related meeting that took place last August ahead of the start of Special Measures Agreement negotiations between South Korea and the United States.

“Get out of there if we don’t get the five billion-dollar deal (for South Korean support of U.S. bases),” Trump was quoted as saying. “We lose $38 billion in trade in Korea. Let’s get out.”

Trump’s initial demand for $5 billion has been widely reported as the two countries remain deadlocked over how much Seoul should pay for the upkeep of 28,500 American troops stationed on the peninsula.

Yonhap

Here is something new that hasn’t been heard before, that President Trump allegedly call Kim Jong-un a “psycho”:

At the meeting, Trump also called the “war games” with South Korea a “big mistake,” referring to the allies’ combined military exercises.

“You shouldn’t have let them go on,” Bolton quoted Trump as telling him. “I’m trying to make peace with a psycho,” he added of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

You can read more at the link.

The last person remaining that can delay the Korean left’s attempt to completely take over prosecuting powers is Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl. The Moon administration is trying to rehabilitate the image of former corrupt Prime Minister Han Myeong-sook by appointing a judge with deep ties to to disgraced former Justice Minister Cho Kuk to look into it. ROK Heads may remember that Cho is good friends with Moon, so it is likely anyone with ties to him will provide investigation results favorable to Han Myeong-sook. Yoon has been delaying the investigation much to the ire of the Korean left:

President Moon Jae-in on Monday urged his justice minister and the prosecutor general to stop fighting each other and cooperate to complete reform of the prosecution.    

“Last week, the Ministry of Justice and the prosecution each launched task-force teams to protect human rights during criminal procedures,” Moon said during his opening remarks at a Blue House policy meeting that included both top officials. “Since the two powerful organs willingly started the initiatives, they must cooperate with each other and prepare a bold reform measure to make the people feel actual changes.”    

Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl has been facing growing pressures from the ruling party to step down for his constant discord with Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae.

Moon stressed the importance of cooperation as the friction between Yoon and Choo reached a new peak last week amid disagreements over an ongoing investigation into the prosecutors’ handling of a 2010 corruption probe into former Prime Minister Han Myeong-sook.    

On May 29, Yoon reassigned the case to the human rights monitoring office of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office. The investigation is reviewing prosecutors’ suspected coercion of a witness to testify against Han, and was originally assigned to the more independent and powerful Inspection Headquarters of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office.    

Led by Han Dong-soo, a former judge appointed by Choo’s predecessor Cho Kuk, the Inspection Headquarters has the power to request warrants, conduct raids and detain suspects, unlike the human rights monitoring office. Han Dong-soo has also argued that his team should be in charge of the internal probe.    

During a National Assembly hearing last week, Choo said Yoon’s assignment was a mistake. She then ordered the Inspection Headquarters to directly question key witnesses instead of waiting for the human rights office’s findings.  

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read much more at the link, but the Korean left wants Yoon to resign, but by law his term runs until July 2021.

This could be the last balloon launch for the Fighters for A Free North Korea for a while considering how the ROK government has put the clamps on their activities:

A South Korean activist group released balloons containing anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the border in the dead of night on Monday, in defiance of the South Korean government’s attempts to prevent such acts amid heightened tensions with North Korea.    
   
Park Sang-hak, head of the organization Fighters for a Free North Korea, said six members of his group launched 20 balloons containing half a million leaflets, 500 books advertising the success of South Korea’s capitalist system, 2,000 one dollar bills and 1,000 memory cards across the border towards the North from a secluded location in Paju, Gyeonggi, from 11 p.m. to midnight.    
   
One of those balloons was discovered stuck on trees on the banks of a stream in Hongcheon County, Gangwon, by police Tuesday afternoon.  
   
“In order to evade [South Korean] police surveillance, I trained members unaccustomed to dispatching leaflets to send the flyers,” Park announced, before delivering a tirade condemning the Moon Jae-in administration for attempting to silence defector groups from speaking out.   
   
The Ministry of Unification, South Korea’s top inter-Korean agency, on Tuesday expressed “deep regret” at the act, and announced it was taking “serious” measures to punish the group for violating the government’s ban on leaflet distributions.    
   
“The government once again stresses clearly that it will strongly respond to the dissemination of leaflets and items towards North Korea, which raise tensions between South and North and endanger the lives and safety of local residents,” the ministry stated in a press release.  
   
The ministry spokesman raised doubts, however, about Park’s claim that his group had released 500,000 leaflets Monday night, saying that based on investigations of the amount of leaflets the group prepared beforehand and the wind conditions that night, none of the released balloons appear to have entered North Korean territory.   
   
After police confiscated the group’s hydrogen gas supplies used to fuel balloon launches in the past, the group apparently obtained only enough helium to float a single balloon — likely the one found at Hongcheon, the ministry said. The balloon that was retrieved did not contain books, dollar bills or memory cards, it added.  

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

I remember the good old days of North Korean propaganda music on the DMZ and U.S. troops station at the JSA may get to experience it again:

North Korea is reinstalling propaganda loudspeakers in regions along the inter-Korean border after removing them under a 2018 summit agreement with South Korea, military officials said Monday.

After the summit between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on April 27, 2018, the two Koreas agreed to halt all hostile acts against each other and eliminate their means, including broadcasting through loudspeakers and distribution of leaflets.

According to the authorities, North Korea has been detected setting up loudspeakers again “in multiple places” inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) from around Sunday. It had dismantled dozens of loudspeakers in around 40 areas near the tense border in a first action to follow up on the Panmunjom Declaration.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.