Probably the most surprising thing I learned from this article is that only 2% of freight is inspected coming into South Korea:
An investigator shows bags of methamphetamine, which are part of the 112 kilograms of the drug that the police confiscated, at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency on Oct. 15, 2018. (Yonhap)
South Korean police said Monday they have busted the largest-ever operation to smuggle drugs into the country, a scheme they say involves Taiwanese and Japanese organized crime rings and Korean dealers.
Six people were arrested in the attempted trafficking of 112 kilograms of methamphetamine, an amount that is enough to be used simultaneously by 3.7 million people, according to police. It is estimated to be worth 370 billion won (US$326.56 million).
Among those arrested were a 25-year-old Taiwanese, a 32-year-old Japanese and a 63-year-old South Korean.
The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said the Taiwanese obtained a screw making machine on a ship at a port in the southeastern coastal city of Busan, which departed from Bangkok on July 6 this year. Concealed inside the machine were 112 bags packed with 1 kilogram of methamphetamine each.
The customs authorities failed to detect the smuggled drug as it was concealed inside the machine and sealed up by welding. Usually, it is almost impossible for the customs authorities to detect drug smuggling attempts at a port, the Korea Customs Service said.
The customs office conducts drug inspections on only 2 percent of freight sent into South Korea and lacks the time to do more. Sniffing dogs are of no use as methamphetamine has no color or smell, according to the office. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but if only 2% of freight is inspected it seems smuggling drugs into South Korea is incredibly easy. Additionally it seems it would be easy for someone to smuggle in imports from North Korea in violation of sanctions which has already happened this year.
According to President Moon the Kim regime is supposed to be trusted so why the cyber attacks?:
South Korea is considering drawing up rules of engagement in cyberspace to effectively deal with growing threats from North Korea and other unidentified players, military authorities said Sunday.
“Since 2004, discussions have been under way at the U.N. meetings to enact international laws related to cyber war,” a source told Yonhap News Agency on condition of anonymity. “We will closely watch the relevant situations and cautiously review and push for drawing up the rules of engagement.”
The envisioned rules of engagement are expected to provide a detailed guideline on how to respond to cyberattacks as soon as threats are detected. The military is also said to be developing its own cyber countermeasures, though details about what kinds of tools that can be employed have not been known.
The move comes as the number of cyberattacks against the country’s military has been on a steady rise in recent years.
According to the data, there were 3,587 hacking attempts against the defense ministry and the military from January to August this year. This compares with 1,434 cases detected during all of 2013. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but it is just the North Koreans and other bad actors up to their normal tricks with little fear of repercussions.
By declaring the NLL a maritime peace zone the Moon administration has given in to North Korean demands that dispute the ROK’s sovereignty of the NLL, of course the Kim regime is going to agree with this:
This map shows the West Sea peace-cooperation special zones proposed by South Korea at the 2007 inter-Korean summit. (Yonhap)
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Friday that the leaders of the two Koreas have recognized the Northern Limit Line (NLL), a de facto sea border, as the term was included in this year’s key inter-Korean agreements.
The remarks came amid a dispute over whether the communist state now acknowledges the maritime boundary that it has long disputed on the grounds that it was drawn unilaterally by the U.S.-led U.N. Command after the 1950-53 Korean War.
In the April inter-Korean summit declaration, the two Koreas jointly used the NLL term, while pledging to transform areas surrounding the tense boundary in the West Sea into a “maritime peace zone.” That term also appears in last month’s military agreement aimed at reducing tensions and preventing accidental clashes.
Seoul has used the two agreements to argue that the North has recognized the NLL.
“The two leaders agreed to turn the areas around the NLL into a maritime peace zone and also reaffirmed that in the September military agreement,” the JCS said in a text message sent to reporters.
“This means that the two leaders have recognized the NLL,” it added. [Yonhap]
So what is a maritime peace zone that the Kim regime is so happy to recognize? President Moon’s plan has been to surrender sovereignty of the NLL to the North Koreans by allowing joint fishing along the maritime border. This plan actually dates back an entire decade to the Roh Moo-hyun administration when Moon Jae-in was President Roh’s Chief of Staff. This map shows why the North Koreans are happy with the is arrangement:
The current NLL is depicted with the Blue line and North Korea’s claimed NLL is depicted with the Red line.
Compare the two maps and the proposed joint fishing zones nearly mirror North Korea’s NLL claims. The giving up of sovereignty of this maritime territory will make it harder to defend the South Korean islands along the NLL. Such an agreement would also set a precedent that the Kim regime’s claim against the legitimacy of the NLL is valid. The last time a South Korean leftist government tried to give away the NLL the ROK Defense Ministry was furious. That is likely why the Moon administration cleaned house at the Ministry of Defense before moving forward with this plan.
Think tanks' influence has ebbed b/c policymakers think they're *already* too beholden to foreign (& specifically, S. Korean) influence. No amount of money can sell tired ideas that don't work or obscure that fact that Moon's policies prioritize Pyongyang's interests over ours. https://t.co/9Jd1kXIAsW
Kim Jin-ho (L), chairman of the Korean Veterans Association (KVA), shakes hands with outgoing U.S. Forces Korea Commander Gen. Vincent Brooks in Seoul on Oct. 12, 2018, after presenting him with the KVA’s highest insignia, in this photo provided by the association. (Yonhap)
This is a pretty horrible accident that has killed five Korean mountain climbers in Nepal:
At least nine climbers, including five Korean nationals, are reported to have been killed in a massive landslide at Mt. Gurja in western Nepal.
The Himalayan Times reported on Saturday that the organizer of the expedition team said that the climbers were buried after the landslide hit their base camp.
According to AFP, a Nepalese police spokesman confirmed that a South Korean expedition was among a group of eight people killed in a snowstorm. The spokesman did not confirm the number of South Koreans killed or the details of the landslide.
The victims include Mountaineer Kim Chang-ho, the first Korean to summit the fourteen peaks above eight-thousand meters without supplemental oxygen.
The climbers were awaiting fair weather when a heavy snowstorm triggered the landslide that buried their base camp. [KBS World Radio]
Here we go again with the media advocating for the MAVNI program:
This image shows a portion of a U.S. Army document submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in September 2018 which lists 502 service members who enlisted under the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest recruiting program, and who were discharged between July 2017 and July 2018. The document was unsealed at the request of The Associated Press, which has interviewed more than a dozen recruits from countries such as Brazil, Pakistan, Iran, China and Mongolia who said they were devastated by their unexpected discharges or canceled contracts. U.S. ARMY VIA AP
Over the course of 12 months, the U.S. Army discharged more than 500 immigrant enlistees who were recruited across the globe for their language or medical skills and promised a fast track to citizenship in exchange for their service, The Associated Press has found.
The decade-old Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest recruiting program was put on hold in 2016 amid concerns that immigrant recruits were not being screened sufficiently. The Army began booting out those enlistees last year without explanation .
The AP has interviewed more than a dozen recruits from countries such as Brazil, Pakistan, Iran, China and Mongolia who all said they were devastated by their unexpected discharges or canceled contracts.
Until now, it’s been unclear how many were discharged and for what reason because the Army has refused to discuss specific cases. But the Army’s own list, submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia last month, says 502 service members who enlisted under MAVNI were discharged between July 2017 and July 2018.
The list, which was unsealed this week after a request from the AP, offers “refuse to enlist” as the reason for expelling two-thirds of the recruits. That is the reason given for 35 percent of enlistee discharges Army-wide, according to a research study posted on a Defense Department website.
But at least one recruit whose paperwork said he was being discharged from the program for that reason said it was not accurate. [Associated Press]
You can read more at the link, but according to documents most of these MAVNI recruits ended up refusing to enlist. Plus I like how the Associated Press reporters did not mention in the article the espionage threat potential from these recruits. Just last month a Chinese agent who was a MAVNI recruit was arrested:
The complaint charges Ji with one count of knowingly acting in the United States as an agent of a foreign government without prior notification to the Attorney General. He will make an initial court appearance today at 5:00 p.m. EDT (4:00 p.m. CDT) before U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael T. Mason in Courtroom 2266 of the Everett M. Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago.
According to the complaint, Ji was born in China and arrived in the United States in 2013 on an F1 Visa, for the purpose of studying electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. In 2016, Ji enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves as an E4 Specialist under the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI) program, which authorizes the U.S. Armed Forces to recruit certain legal aliens whose skills are considered vital to the national interest. In his application to participate in the MAVNI program, Ji specifically denied having had contact with a foreign government within the past seven years, the complaint states. In a subsequent interview with a U.S. Army officer, Ji again failed to disclose his relationship and contacts with the intelligence officer, the charge alleges. [Department of Justice]
Here is an update on the story of a US Army nurse set on fire by a civilian co-worker at the hospital at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Her supervisors ignored her pleas for months before the attack to do something about the guy. Now she is launching a lawsuit against the Army:
Before and after photos of 1st Lt. Katie Blanchard, who was set on fire by a civilian Army employee in 2016. (Facebook)
One year ago, an Army civilian who tossed a water bottle full of gasoline onto his supervisor and lit a match was sentenced by a judge to 20 years in prison for attempted murder.
The Feres doctrine prevents service members and their families from suing the Defense Department in the event of injury or death, but for 1st Lt. Katie Blanchard, that is beside the point. In September, she filed a personal injury claim against the Army Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where she was working at Munson Army Health Center at the time of the September 2016 assault.
“Is it okay for us to have gross negligence and zero accountability in the military? Because if you look at my case, that’s what it is,” Blanchard told Army Times in a Wednesday phone interview. “Zero accountability for the way they treated me and the things that they missed that will forever affect my life.”
Blanchard, 28, is asking for just under $3.5 million to cover some of the costs of the permanent disabilities she faces, after more than 100 surgeries to date and an intense battle with post-traumatic stress. [Army Times]
I recommend reading the whole thing at the link because she was obviously failed by her leadership at Ft. Leavenworth. With that said the other failure I see in this case is the difficulty with trying to fire government civilian workers. I wonder how much that played into the attitude her superiors had with dealing with her co-worker?
With that all said it is going to be interesting to see how this lawsuit plays out because if the Army can be sued for negligence this will open a Pandora’s Box of lawsuits against the Army.
The Moon admin's typical MO. 1 Say we're considering X. 2 If opposition too strong, say not considering. 3 Find other ways to implement/wait til it quiets & do it quietly. 4 Don't tell/explain details to public. 5 Just say "peace" or "equality" or "justice" 6. Next! 7. Repeat. https://t.co/pIJiMPpz5t
President Moon Jae-in introduces his Pungsan dogs to BBC Seoul correspondent Laura Bicker during an interview at the presidential office in Seoul on Oct. 12, 2018, in this photo released by the office. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un gifted the dogs to Moon to mark their talks in Pyongyang from Sept. 18-20. The dogs were both born in 2017 in the North Korean county of Pungsan. (Yonhap)
