Author: GIKorea

If you do anything this weekend, I recommend reading this entire posting over at One Free Korea about the Ningpo 12. They were the group of North Korean waitresses that defected from their restaurant in China to South Korea in 2014. The Kim regime has claimed they were kidnapped by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.

The lawyer group called Minbyun launched a lawsuit against the government essentially on the behalf of Kim Jong-un to validate this theory. Most ROK Heads know this, but for new readers it is important to understand that the Minbyun group are hard core leftists.  In the past they have attacked the USFK base relocation, tried to bring back the US beef issue, and tried to have North Korean defectors forcibly returned to North Korea.  Below is an excerpt from the OFK article that shows why the restaurant manager named Heo Gang-il changed his story about why they defected after meeting with Minbyun:

Heo claims that at the meetings, Jang offered him and three of the ex-waitresses a stipend of 300,000 to 500,000 won per month. Heo says that Jang also told him he could earn “a lot more money” by suing the South Korean government for coercing a defection under false pretenses. Jang also began to suggest that the four refugees go back to North Korea. He asked Heo to tell this story at a press conference. At one point, Minbyun lawyers handed some of the women photographs of their family members back in North Korea, posing before lavish banquets, which they had obtained from their “clients.” They also gave the women letters from their families, urging the women to return to the “open arms” of their motherland. Heo also recently told Yonhap TV that Kim Sam-seok urged them to go back to North Korea to save their families.

One Free Korea

JTBC the news network behind the fraudulent tablet computer story that was a major factor in the impeachment of former President Park Geun-hye, was chosen to interview Heo for his new story about the defections. Major international media outlets like the New York Times ran articles that essentially supported North Korea’s view of events based on Heo’s change of story. Now we know that Heo was on the take from Minbyun. Incredibly Heo was meeting with Minbyun lawyers at the comfort women house now making headlines in South Korea that was run by the disgraced Yoon Mee-hyang:

Last month, South Korea’s largest-circulation daily, the right-leaning Chosun Ilbo, also found Heo in his new country of residence and interviewed him. Heo told the Chosun Ilbo that in June 2018, after the JTBC interview, Yoon Mee-hyang and Kim Sam-seok invited him and at least three of the 12 ex-waitresses to a weekend retreat at a shelter for the wartime rape survivors. It was the first of a series of such meetings. Also present at the meetings were representatives of various “civic groups,” including the Japan-based North Korean front group Chongryon, a “prisoners of conscience” organization, and Minbyun. The most notable Minbyun attendee was a lawyer named “Jang.” It may also have been around this time that at least some of the Ningpo 12 began volunteering at the Council’s shelter and befriending the elderly survivors.

Yoon Mee-hyang is married to Kim Sam-seok who is a convicted North Korean spy and she is accused of using comfort women to raise money for her own personal use. Now she is tied to the Ningpo-12 scandal as well. Incredibly Yoon is a newly appointed lawmaker for the South Korean ruling party.

Once again I highly recommend reading the whole article at the link.

This is how the Kim regime negotiates with the South:

North Korea will take its next step against South Korea, for what it claims to be Seoul’s betrayal and crimes against the communist state, it said Saturday, adding that its army has been entrusted to plan and take any necessary action.

“I feel it is high time to surely break with the South Korean authorities. We will soon take a next action,” Kim Yo-jong, first vice department director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), said in a statement carried by the North’s Korean Central News Agency.

Kim is also younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

“By exercising my power authorized by the Supreme Leader, our Party and the state, I gave an instruction to the arms of the department in charge of the affairs with enemy to decisively carry out the next action,” the statement said.

She added, “the right to taking the next action against the enemy will be entrusted to the General Staff of our army.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but I continue to believe the Kim regime is trying to squeeze concession out of the Moon administration. President Moon faces no political hurdles after his ruling party decisively won April’s parliamentary elections, so the Kim regime may be wondering what the hold up is in regards to investment into North Korea and the curtailing of sanctions.

This latest attempt to create a crisis is also clearly being used to build up Kim Yo-jong’s leadership profile within the regime and internationally. It will be interesting to see in the coming months if she continues to take a major role in regime messaging like she is currently doing.

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

If you ever wanted to avoid the crowds at a waterpark in Korea, now is the time:

Everland’s Caribbean Bay and other water parks across the country have recently opened their pools and slides in the summer heat, but are suffering a sharp drop in visitors due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, company officials said Thursday.  (…….)

A Caribbean Bay official said the water park has had about 100 to 400 visitors a day since its opening this year. The figure nosedived compared to 10,000 tallied in early June last year.

“Last year, the limit on the number of daily visitors we set was 20,000. This year, we set the limit at 1,200 amid the pandemic, but the daily figure is even falling far short of this limit,” the official said.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

It looks like foreign residents in South Korea might eventually become eligible for a COVID-18 stimulus payment:

The South Korean human rights watchdog has stepped in after the governments of Seoul and Gyeonggi Province in March excluded some foreign residents from their disaster relief funds amid COVID-19’s blow to the domestic economy. 

The National Human Rights Commission of Korea said Thursday it had advised Seoul mayor Park Won-soon and Gyeonggi provincial governor Lee Jae-myung to subsidize “all foreign residents” in their regions with registered addresses, according to Korean local news outlet Nocut News.

The independent state agency said that after examining experts’ opinions, precedent cases of COVID-19 subsidies allocated by governments, the constitution and local autonomy laws, it concluded that not paying the money to the foreign residents was “discrimination on an unreasonable ground.”

Article 12 and 13 of the local autonomy law, cited by the agency, states that “residents,” who have the right to local government’s administrative benefits that are fair to all, include foreigners who reported their addresses to local government offices.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

It looks like North Korea wants to stay in the headlines and dump on Trump like everyone else it seems like now a days:

North Korea on Friday again vowed to build up its military force to counter what it perceives as U.S. threats and said there would be little reason for a personal relationship between leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump if Washington persists with sanctions and pressure.

On the two-year anniversary of the leaders’ first summit, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Son Gwon said the North would never again gift Trump with high-profile meetings and concessions he could boast as foreign policy achievements unless it gets something substantial in return.

“The question is whether there will be a need to keep holding hands shaken in Singapore, as we see that there is nothing of factual improvement to be made in the DPRK-U.S. relations simply by maintaining personal relations between our supreme leadership and the U.S. President,” Ri said in a statement carried by state media, referring to North Korea by its formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Associated Press

You can read more at the link.

 U.S. military leaders have been unusually outspoken about the need to address institutional racism amid a growing wave of civil unrest over the latest killing of a black man in police custody.

Many black service members speaking Sunday at a forum organized by U.S. Forces Korea welcomed the outrage but called for words to be translated into deeds.

Sgt. Dasha Long, 35, thanked U.S. Forces Korea commander Gen. Robert Abrams for tackling the long taboo topic, saying the discussion was an important first step.

“This isn’t new, right? But it feels like it took too long for us to hear something about it,” Long said, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “I Can’t Breathe,” which was uttered by George Floyd before he died as a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes on May 25.

“I feel safer outside the country that I serve than I do in it, so I want to know aside from words what actions are going to take place because I’m tired,” she said.

Anger over Floyd’s death, which was captured on video, has sparked massive protests calling for racial justice and an end to police brutality in the United States. It also has led to soul searching in the military, which has long prided itself as promoting diversity.

Nearly 19% of active-duty enlisted service members are black, but that number falls sharply to just under 9% when it comes to officers, according to a 2018 Defense Department demographics report. Many also complain that they are unfairly targeted by the military justice system and receive unfair sentences compared to their white counterparts.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but I am willing to bet that if the Stars and Stripes took a poll most white soldiers stationed in South Korea would also agree that they feel safer there than back in the U.S. So this is not an exclusively a black soldier issue.

As far as the 9% officer issue, this is caused by societal issues larger than the Army. To become an officer you need to have a four year college degree and either commission through ROTC or OCS. If the number of African-Americans graduating from four year universities increases, the number of officers will also increase.