According to the Blue House there is nothing to see here, move along:

President Moon Jae-in’s secretary for civil affairs said Monday that the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae has not surveilled civilians for political purposes, shrugging off a former investigator’s spying claim.
Controversy has flared up after Kim Tae-woo, a former special investigator at the presidential office, made the revelation that he had collected information, including info about civilians and former bureaucrats who should not be subject to Cheong Wa Dae surveillance.
Surveillance of civilians has been a sensitive issue in South Korea as former conservative governments were blamed for illegally spying on citizens for political purposes.
Cho Kuk, Moon’s top secretary for civil affairs, and Chief of Staff Im Jong-seok flatly rejected Kim’s claim at a meeting of the parliamentary steering committee that oversees Cheong Wa Dae. Kim was under Cho’s supervision.
It marked the first time since 2006 that a presidential secretary for civil affairs spoke at the parliamentary panel.
The revelation came after Kim was forced to return to his original post at the prosecution last month over an allegation that he sought to influence a police probe into a corruption case involving his acquaintance.
“The bottom line is that as Kim has become almost certain to face disciplinary actions due to his irregularities, he crafted a rare hoax by distorting the due work process into a political issue and trying to cover up his misconduct,” Cho told lawmakers.
The presidential civil affairs team under the Moon government has not surveilled civilians or drawn up blacklists (of people critical of the government) unlike other previous administrations),” he stressed.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This is good news for ROK Army conscripts:

Enlisted soldiers will be allowed to stay off base for about four hours after hours during weekdays starting in February as part of efforts to protect the rights of conscripts. 
The Defense Ministry on Thursday announced a set of new guidelines that will allow soldiers to leave their base from 5:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. up to twice a month. They can meet family and friends, pursue their studies or enjoy themselves as long as their fitness for combat is not affected.
Currently conscripts are confined to the district where their barracks is for fear that they will not make it back in time in an emergency. But in future they can travel as far as a two-hour drive from their base. 
Some small businesses near bases were against the plan because they were afraid of losing customers, and some pundits warned the plans could affect discipline. But a ministry spokesman said, “We’re going to rely on common sense when we let soldiers spend time off base.”

Chosun Ilbo

Here is the latest on the Druking Scandal:

A special prosecutor team led by Huh Ik-bum has demanded a five-year prison term for South Gyeongsang Province Governor Kim Kyoung-soo over his alleged involvement in an online opinion rigging scandal. 
 
At the final hearing on Friday, the team said Kim acted like a deviant politician by mobilizing a private group that engages in illegal acts and using public posts as bargaining chips for elections. 

Kim, a close aide to President Moon Jae-in, is accused of approving a blogger and his associates’ development of a computer program called “King Crab,” which could be used to manipulate the number of likes for online comments. 

The special counsel team believes Kim colluded with the blogger known as “druking” to manipulate comments on news articles with the program to benefit the ruling Democratic Party, then the opposition party, in the run-up to last year’s presidential election. 

KBS World Radio

You can read more at the link.

Kim Jong Un wrote a two-page new years letter to Moon Jae-in today. In it he:

– Expressed regret for not visiting Seoul in 2018
– Said wanted to meet Moon 'frequently' in 2019
– Would work w/ Moon for "denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula together"https://t.co/QJqMKnMg5e pic.twitter.com/8cJahPQar5

— Chad O'Carroll (@chadocl) December 30, 2018

Here is the latest on the Moon administration’s growing “blacklist” scandal:

The opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP) urged the Blue House on Thursday to respond to suspicions that it compiled a blacklist of executives at public organizations affiliated with the Environment Ministry early this year, the latest in two weeks of revelations about illegal surveillance by President Moon Jae-in and his top aides. 

The LKP initially raised the blacklist allegation on Wednesday in a press briefing, while revealing to local reporters a document leaked by an anonymous former member of the Blue House special inspection bureau. The member claimed that his team specifically ordered the Environment Ministry to draft the report, which the ministry submitted last January. (………)

On Wednesday, the LKP revealed to reporters a document that was roughly entitled, “The trend of resignation of executives at organizations affiliated with the Environment Ministry.” Below that was a subtitle that read, “The status of resignation of executives at eight public organizations under the Environment Ministry.” A short summary of the report explicitly stated that “resignation procedures were proceeding without any particular disturbance or backlash except in the Korea Environment Corporation.” 

A total of 24 executives of those eight organizations were listed in the report, profiling their affiliation, job rank, name, term and “status quo.” Among those figures, 14 were said to have submitted resignations and three were said to have been planning to.

Former LKP Rep. Kim Yong-nam, who is a member of a committee within the conservative party looking into the whistle-blowing scandal, said during Wednesday’s press conference that the former Blue House special inspection bureau member who provided the document said he personally received the report around Jan. 15 from a high-ranking official in the Environment Ministry. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

This environmental blacklist reminds me some what of what the Moon administration did to consolidate control over public media broadcasters. They pressured executives to resign by having union thugs harass and threaten them. Once the executives resigned they were replaced by the Moon administration with left wing advocates.

In this case it appears they pressured government employees within the Environmental Ministry to resign in order to put in place employees that shared left wing values.

What is driving the criticism of the blacklist is that the Moon administration put the Chief of Staff of the prior Park administration Kim Ki-choon in jail for three years for running a so called “cultural blacklist” that prevented left wing affiliated artists from getting government funding. What he did is arguably not as bad as what is alleged here where people were actually forced out of their jobs.

South Korea paid ~$860 million this year for USFK cost sharing. South Korean negotiators have been trying to keep cost sharing increases below the $1 billion level. The Trump administration however, wants the ROK to pay $1.2 billion instead:

But an even bigger concern is that Washington and Seoul have failed to agree on dividing the cost of keeping U.S. troops here despite 10 rounds of talks so far. The Trump administration wants to double the South Korean share, but this year South Korea already paid W960.2 billion or half of the total upkeep cost (US$1=W1,126). Trump’s demand in short comes down to asking Seoul to pay for pretty much the entire upkeep. The Wall Street Journal said Trump’s negotiators asked for a 50-percent hike or US$1.2 billion. That is a huge increase considering the fact that Seoul’s share has grown only by 2.5 to 25.7 percent each year since 1991. 
South Korean officials are reluctant to talk about the issue, which is extremely sensitive in the domestic political situation, while U.S. officials are merely saying there are “very big differences” between the two sides. There is a possibility of Trump threatening to pull U.S. troops out in order to pressure Seoul to pay more. He has been treating most diplomatic alliances from the perspective of whether they support the U.S. rather than in the traditional way of spreading the Pax Americana around the globe. 
There is no telling what Trump will do to get South Korea to pay more, nor how Seoul will react — it could end up telling the Americans to leave or stoke anti-U.S. sentiment.

Chosun Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but considering the access to advanced technology and training that the ROK receives from USFK, asking for $1.2 billion a year is a reasonable request in my opinion.

Just another example of the hypocrisy from North Korea. The only reason the Japanese are going all in on missile defense is because the threat from the Kim regime. Just last year the North Koreans fired a missile over Japan:

North Korea’s state media on Saturday criticized Japan for conducting a test of a new missile interceptor system, which is being co-funded by the United States and Japan, arguing that the move could chill the “peace atmosphere” on the Korean Peninsula. 
The U.S. and Japan have jointly developed the SM-3 Block IIA interceptor, and they successfully conducted a test of the new interceptor in Hawaii earlier this month.
In an English-language commentary, the North’s Korean Central News Agency said, “Japan’s incitement of the bellicose atmosphere is a serious act of harassing peace to chill the peace atmosphere on the Korean peninsula and the region and strain the situation.” 
“It is the revelation of the crafty trick of the Japanese reactionaries to further ratchet up the tension on the Korean peninsula and meet their own interests,” the commentary said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I saw this image at naver cafe.
It was taken in South Korea. But I think – South Korean did not make this.
It is an reasonable doubt.
Because South Korean start studying English in elementary school.
Who made it, he or she is not South Korean or not study in South Korea. pic.twitter.com/sYGkiNpiMY

— hr chang (@chang_hr) December 25, 2018