Category: Uncategorized

This is what every weekend in the Camp Casey ville used to be like 20-30 years ago:

A U.S. Army Apache helicopter unit’s planned visit to World War II sites in Poland devolved into a drunken escapade at an off-limits strip club, leading to the suspected drugging of a battalion executive officer who went missing and wasn’t found until the next day, an Army investigation found.

The incident involving the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade’s “No Mercy” battalion during its recent deployment to Europe now has multiple officers facing the possible end of their military careers. (……)

Conner said that he received multiple lap dances and that strippers “bit his nipples to keep him awake, and repeatedly had his credit card swiped,” the report stated. Conner then showed the soldiers in the car multiple receipts, which added up to 50,000 — it wasn’t clear whether the sum was in dollars or Polish zloty, which would amount to about $13,000.

Conner “also expressed a belief that the champagne he had been given at the club had been laced/drugged,” the report said.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link of what is basically a bad Army version of The Hangover movie. The fact that senior Army officers allowed themselves to be put into a position like this is why they are likely going to be looking for new jobs

If the US moves forward with COVID booster shots this means less vaccine for the rest of the world to include South Korea:

The country’s COVID-19 vaccination program is facing another potential setback following announcements in the United States that it will consider offering potential booster shots of vaccines in order to increase their effectiveness. 

Boosters are an extra dose of a vaccine given at a predetermined time after the initial injections to raise or maintain immunity against the targeted virus. The issue was recently brought up by U.S. vaccine policy chief Anthony Fauci and the CEOs of Pfizer and Modena.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

So basically what the Korean government is saying is that the vaccine is more dangerous than COVID for those under 30:

AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine will not be given to anyone under the age of 30 in South Korea, as growing evidence points to possible associations with a rare but serious blood-clotting disorder.

The government’s advisory committee on immunization practices said in a news briefing Sunday that AstraZeneca vaccinations will resume Monday after a partial suspension for the last four days.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

The BBC has an article on North Korea’s slave labor system based on a report released recently by the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korea Human Rights:

Generations of South Korean prisoners of war are being used as slave labour in North Korean coal mines to generate money for the regime and its weapons programme, according to a report released by a human rights organisation. The BBC has taken a closer look at the allegations.

“When I see slaves shackled and dragged on TV, I see myself,” Choi Ki-sun told me. He was one of an estimated 50,000 prisoners seized by North Korea at the end of the Korean War in 1953.

“When we were dragged to labour camps, we were at gun point, lined up with armed guards around. What else could this be if not slave labour?”

Mr Choi (not his real name) said he continued to work in a mine in North Hamgyeong province alongside around 670 other prisoners of war (POWs) until his escape, 40 years later.

BBC News

You can read the rest at the link, but the article goes on to discuss the songbun system and how someone’s class can sentence them to slave labor as well. For those that have closely followed this issue the fate of Korean War POWs, the songbun system, and North Korea’s slave labor camps is nothing new.

Clearly the NKHR is trying to remind people of the regime’s brutality likely because there is an effort by the engagement crowd to once again appease the Kim regime for little to nothing in return. If the engagers want to give Kim Jong-un his dream deal, than the American public should clearly understand the brutality of the regime they want to prop up.

This article says that Lee was directly approached by former President Park for a bribe, which is not correct. The alleged bribe was money that Samsung was paid to a sports foundation to fund her friend’s daughter’s equestrian team. The funding of the equestrian team the court considered a bribe though Park never received a dime of money from Samsung:

Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison on Monday, in a retrial of a bribery case involving former President Park Geun-hye. He was put behind bars again less than three years after he was allowed to walk free.

The Seoul High Court gave Lee, vice chairman of Samsung Electronics Co., the prison term for bribing Park and her longtime friend, Choi Soon-sil, to win government support for a smooth father-to-son transfer of managerial power at Samsung. 

“He actively and readily offered bribes to Park upon her demand for them, and engaged in improper activities in soliciting, although implicitly, Park’s support in the transfer of managerial power (at Samsung),” the court said in the verdict.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but notice how Lee is being treated by the Korean courts compared to former Justice Minister Cho Kuk.

Kim Yo-jong must not have liked the reports about her being demoted because she has lashed out at the South Korean military for monitoring their parade preparations:

The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un harshly criticized South Korea’s military for closely tracking its military parade believed to have taken place in Pyongyang to celebrate a rare party congress.

On Monday, Seoul’s military officials said signs were detected that the North carried out a military parade in central Pyongyang Sunday night in time for the eighth congress of the ruling Workers’ Party, which has been under way since its opening last week. 

“What is weird is that the joint chiefs of staff of South Korea made a senseless statement that they captured the north opening a military parade at midnight on Jan. 10 and they are in the middle of making precision tracking,” Kim Yo-jong was quoted as saying in a statement released by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Wednesday.

“They are the idiot and top the world’s list in misbehavior as they are only keen on things provoking world laughter,” she added.

Kim added that the North is only holding a military parade in the capital city and not conducting any military exercises “targeting anybody nor launch of anything.”

“Do they really have nothing else to do but let their military body make ‘precision tracking’ of the celebrations in the North?” she said.

She warned the South Korean authorities, saying “all these things must surely be reckoned up in the future.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

There is a new “Force” in Republican politics that involves two newly elected Korean-American congresswomen:

Beyond the initial four members in the Force, there’s also California GOP Reps.-elect Young Kim and Michelle Steel, Korean immigrants who have been friends for decades and speak on the trail. Steel frequently points to the suffering their families endured under communist regimes.

They all belong to a high-profile freshman class that includes a record-breaking number of women and minorities for the House GOP. And with their diverse backgrounds and already-impressive Twitter followings, the Force could have an outsize impact as Republicans look to take back the House in 2022 — particularly as some are itching to do battle directly with the Squad. (…………)

But the incoming Republicans say they want to put a personal face on their ideological fight. Steel talks about how her parents escaped Korea and relocated to Japan and said she sees how it is easy to take freedom for granted in the U.S.

Politico

You can read more at the link, but I am not sure what communism that Representative Steele and Kim were fleeing from in South Korea. I could not find which year she immigrated, but she got married in California in 1981 which means she immigrated before then likely in the 70’s. This would put her family immigrating to the U.S. during the Park Chung-hee era. Young Kim immigrated to the U.S. in 1975 which was also during the Park Chung-hee era.

Park was a quasi-dictator, but was stringently anti-communist so saying their families suffered under communism is a stretch to me. They suffered indirectly from the provocations from North Korea and the resulting limits on political freedom enacted by the Park regime. However, unless their families were political dissidents, it is more likely their families immigrated to the U.S. for economic reasons. Another possibility is that the reporter just doesn’t know what they are writing about and just assumed South Korea was communist back then.

This is actually a positive that has come out of the COVID pandemic because I have personally seen some Koreans spend outrageous amounts of money on weddings. COVID now gives them an excuse to not invite so many people and thus save money:

A 29-year-old man recently got married in a five-star hotel wedding hall. Because of the government’s social distancing guidelines, he couldn’t invite more than 50 guests.    
   
According to the man, he hadn’t ever thought of having a wedding ceremony at a hotel due to the cost. Then he realized it only costs about 5 million won ($4,400) to have a wedding in a hotel with about 40 guests—which is the same price as a wedding hall ceremony with the usual number of guests.    
   
“I never thought about having a wedding ceremony at a hotel, but ever since I did it, I’ve been recommending it to others,” he said.      
   
Koreans who are forced to cut back on ceremonies and overseas honeymoons due to the pandemic are splurging in other ways.    
   
As small weddings—which host about 100 guests or fewer—become popular among Koreans, luxury hotels have been enjoying strong demand for their wedding halls.    
   
According to Statistics Korea, some 126,367 couples tied the knot between January and July. While the figure is the lowest number of marriages for any January-to-July period since the statistics agency started compiling data in 1981, the number of marriages held at five-star hotels has increased dramatically.  
   
Lotte Hotel Seoul said the number of weddings it held in its wedding hall jumped 20 percent between January to September compared to the same period a year earlier. The number of small weddings spiked more than 100 percent.   

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Of all the things to criticize the WHO over this is by far the least important. How boring of a life you must have to troll websites to look for a reason to feign outrage over Dokdo:

The World Health Organization (WHO) has yet to add the easternmost islets of Dokdo to a map of Korea on its official website, despite repeated calls from civic activists and citizens here, according to the Voluntary Agency Network of Korea (VANK) Tuesday. VANK is a civic diplomacy organization with more than 120,000 members.

In the ‘countries’ section of the website, the health organization provides brief information about each member state including a map. The map of South Korea is missing some of its territories including Dokdo and nearby Ulleung Island in the East Sea. 

However, the islands are included in the map of Japan, which some believe gives the impression that they are Japan’s territory. The country has been making repeated territorial claims on Dokdo, over which Korea claims sovereignty.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but no one who goes to the WHO website would think that Dokdo is owned by Japan based on these maps. Hardly anyone outside of Korea knows where or what Dokdo is. It is pretty clear whoever put the website together just zoomed in the map on South Korea because it is so small. Japan on the other hand is much larger and the map was zoomed out to picture it.

This would be the equivalent of an American being upset because the Farallón de Pájaros island was not included on a map of the United States.