It appears the UNC is on board with letting this happen:

South and North Korea are likely to start their joint on-site inspection as early as this week for a project to modernize and re-link railways across their border, government officials said Sunday.

At high-level talks last week, the two Koreas agreed to begin field surveys of the western Gyeongui railway in late October and the Donghae railway along their east coast in November.

“The Koreas are known to be discussing ways to conduct the inspection (on the North section) of the Gyeongui line starting late this week,” a government official said.

“The schedule is flexible, depending on consultations between the government and the United Nations Command (UNC) over the passage of the Military Demarcation Line,” he added.

In August, the Koreas failed to carry out a joint railway field survey as the U.S.-led UNC did not approve the plan, citing “procedural” problems, a move widely seen as U.S. objection to the inter-Korean railway project on the basis that it might hamper sanctions.  “As far as I’m concerned, Seoul’s consultations with Pyongyang as well as the UNC are smoothly under way,” the official said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

It looks like President Moon’s attempt to lobby European governments to drop North Korean sanctions is not working:

President Moon Jae-in has told French President Emmanuel Macron that North Korea’s denuclearization needs to be stimulated further by easing UN sanctions if the North’s measures to scrap its nuclear program are believed to have reached an irreversible level.

But North Korea has not remotely reached a point where denuclearization is irreversible. It has not even started. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un flatly refused to give the U.S. even a partial inventory of its nuclear facilities and stockpiles when visiting U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pleaded with him, and instead demanded that the U.S. officially declare an end to the Korean War to “build trust.”

The first step to denuclearization must be reporting all nuclear facilities and fissile materials, because how else will anyone know whether North Korea is scrapping anything? This is a no-brainer. Yet the North is vehemently protesting before taking even the first step, claiming that the demand is tantamount to “mafia-like tactics.”

Yet the South Korean president labors under the delusion that North Korea’s denuclearization has progressed significantly. During his summit last month with U.S. President Donald Trump, Moon even said the North’s denuclearization had almost reached an “irreversible” level already. U.S. nuclear experts, by contrast, say Pyongyang’s gestures so far — dismantling a moribund nuclear test site in Punggye-ri and a static missile launch pad it no longer needs — do not qualify as denuclearization at all.

Moon hopes that North Korea’s denuclearization can reach an irreversible level in a few months and is going around the world asking global leaders to stimulate the process by easing sanctions. Macron quite rightly brushed him off, saying sanctions must continue until “concrete denuclearization steps are taken.”  [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

The big test is going to be if the Key Resolve exercise that happens every March is cancelled.  I would think by then we would have a good idea of which way the whole denuclearization negotiations is going to go:

The United States and South Korea have canceled an annual air exercise scheduled for December, the Pentagon announced Friday, emphasizing ongoing diplomatic discussions with North Korea.

The Pentagon and South Korea’s military will not conduct Exercise Vigilant Ace as the two nations negotiate with North Korea over its nuclear program, said Dana White, a Pentagon spokeswoman. It’s at least the fourth military exercise that the nations have canceled since President Donald Trump unexpectedly announced he was suspending military “war games” on the peninsula after his June summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

The Moon admin's political suppression in the name of "jeokpae cheongsan" (elimination of deep rooted evil) continues. Its target #1 is Park Seung-chun, former Minister of Veterans & Patriots. He was found not guilty on 5 charges. So now they set up comttee to investigate again. https://t.co/VmhGwfmBux

— Tara O (@DrTaraO) October 17, 2018

A group of foreigners studying in South Korea pose for a photo during a program to experience the excavation of the remains of soldiers killed during the 1950-53 Korean War on a hill in Paju, north of Seoul, on Oct, 18, 2018, in this photo provided by the defense ministry. (Yonhap)

I think you can put this in the poor excuse department;

In an email arranging to hand off proprietary Navy information to the flamboyant contractor Leonard Francis, Navy Cmdr. Troy Amundson described himself as “a small dog just trying to get a bone.”

Later that night, Francis procured the services of several prostitutes from Mongolia for Amundson, prosecutors say, just one in a string of bribes that Francis paid for leaked military data.

On Friday, Amundson was sentenced to 30 months in prison. He joins the ranks of more than a dozen other Navy officials whose military service is now tarnished with felony records for getting cozy with Francis in what has become the worst corruption scandal to hit the Navy in decades.

Amundson, a decorated combat pilot, told the judge that, at the time, he didn’t realize what he was doing was illegal. The ship schedules laying out port visits in Southeast Asia that he passed on to Francis weren’t classified and were regularly given to contractors, his lawyers said.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but like the judge in this case I find it hard to believe that this naval commander did not know accepting prostitutes in return for information was illegal.

S. Korea will grant refugee status to zero of the roughly 500 Yemenis that arrived on Jeju to flee the civil war in their home country, though many will have humanitarian visas allowing them to stay for one year.https://t.co/DFEljNiwwv

— Jonathan Cheng (@JChengWSJ) October 17, 2018

A visitor looks at an old pear tree heavy with pears at a theme park in Yeongdong, about 210 kilometers southeast of Seoul, on Oct. 17, 2018. The tree is known to have been planted around 1910. (Yonhap)

It looks like the Pope is willing to be a propaganda tool for the Kim regime to make it look like they really have reformed and are nice guys hosting the Pope.  This charade is all in an effort to get sanctions lifted in return for doing little to nothing in return in regards to denuclearization:

Pope Francis expressed his willingness Thursday to visit North Korea if officially invited, also saying he will “certainly” respond to such an invitation from the communist state.

The remarks came in a meeting with South Korean president Moon Jae-in, who paid a courtesy call on the pope to deliver a verbal invitation from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for the pope to visit Pyongyang.

“The pope said ‘(I) will unconditionally give an answer if an (official) invitation arrives and I can go’,” Moon’s top press secretary, Yoon Young-chan, told reporters.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Please leave anything you want to talk about in the comments section.