The South Korean left’s war on conservative media continues, but credit to the New York Times for taking notice of what is going on in South Korea:

South Korea announced a sweeping crackdown on “fake news” on Tuesday, calling it “a destroyer of democracy.” Conservative critics of the government, however, cried foul, accusing it of trying to impede freedom of speech.

Speaking at a cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon said that fake news had spread so widely in South Korea that it was stymying not only citizens’ privacy but also the country’s national security and foreign policies, including its relations with North Korea.

Mr. Lee did not offer examples. But he was furious last week after he visited Vietnam for the state funeral for its president, Tran Dai Quang. While in Hanoi, he visited the stilt house of Ho Chi Minh and wrote in the visitors’ book at the compound that he felt “humble” before the “great” Vietnamese leader. South Korea fought against his Communist forces alongside the Americans during the Vietnam War.

When the photograph of Mr. Lee’s tribute was reported in South Korea, conservative critics called him a “commie” on social media.  [New York Times]

So of course the Prime Minister has declared war on fake news and wants a new law to regulate the news:

Mr. Lee encouraged government agencies to report fake news to the law enforcement authorities for investigation. He also called for a new law regulating such information, which some lawmakers in his Democratic Party had already been advocating.

Opposition lawmakers denounced the government’s move as an attempt to silence criticism, especially YouTube videos used by conservative critics to attack the progressive government of President Moon Jae-in, whom they often call a North Korean stooge. Progressives have long criticized those channels as a main source of inaccurate and unfair information.

“They can already punish distribution of false information under the existing laws,” Park Dae-chul, a legislator affiliated with the conservative opposition Liberty Korea Party, said in a statement. “I cannot help suspecting that this is an attempt to crack down on right-wing podcasts. They want to shut down the voices the government doesn’t want to hear.”

ROK Drop readers may recall how the Korean left has already taken over control of most of the mainstream media in the country through union violence and those they don’t control they have threatened with legal action.  They have even had conservative journalists arrested for libel.

The Moon administration is taking these actions because they need to change the South Korean public’s opinion of North Korea and Kim Jong-un.  Conservative critics who keep bringing up North Korea’s poor human rights record, past atrocities, terrorism, and other inconvenient truths have to be silenced to continue to shape pro-North public messaging.

The Moon administration’s ultimate goal is a confederation with North Korea and he can’t realize that without the support of the South Korean public.

It looks like a Trump-Kim Summit Part 2 will be closer to happening with the announcement that Secretary of State Pompeo is making another trip to North Korea:

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will travel to North Korea next week to meet with its leader, Kim Jong-un, the State Department said Tuesday.

Pompeo will visit Pyongyang Sunday as the U.S. pushes to dismantle the regime’s nuclear weapons program and set up a second summit between President Donald Trump and Kim.

At their first summit in Singapore in June, Kim agreed to work toward “complete” denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in exchange for security guarantees from the U.S.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but if there is a second summit there is going to have to be major announcement that comes out of it and suspect it will be an agreement to end the Korean War which the ROK and North Korea have been wanting by the end of this year.

This rhetoric of ending the Korean War has been going on for months because the Kim regime wants the peace treaty because it then challenges the legitimacy of the military presence in South Korea.  If there is peace why is USFK needed?

President Moon is saying all the right things that USFK will remain after any peace treaty is signed.  Despite claims in the media that Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in want US troops to stay after any peace deal is reached, this is just all rhetoric to prevent energizing South Korean conservatives against Moon.

Remember Moon is a very skilled politician that needs to keep the Korean right at bay and public anxiety down.  If he advocated openly for a USFK withdrawal that would give the South Korean right an issue to strongly attack him with and cause much public anxiety after decades of security guarantees provided by US forces.  That is why I think the Moon administration will publicly say they support USFK staying, but will then have their surrogates do things to make life difficult for USFK.

If the US government decides to withdraw USFK in the future on their own accord then the Moon administration is able to get what it ultimately wanted without getting blamed for it.

It looks like the Russian cargo ship suspected of sanctions violations was able to drop off its cargo somewhere before being investigated or this was all one big misunderstanding:

South Korea on Tuesday lifted a ban on the departure of a blacklisted Russian ship that it seized last week in the southern port city of Busan, following an investigation, Seoul’s foreign ministry said.

The Sevastopol was barred from leaving the country on Sept. 28 under a U.N. sanctions resolution after entering the country’s biggest port for repairs on Aug. 13, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“We have lifted the ban on the vessel as in our probe we didn’t found any violations committed by the ship. The cargo ship is now allowed to leave (South Korea) any time,” ministry spokesman Noh Kyu-duk said over the phone.

The ministry said that “putting on hold” the ship’s departure is different from its detainment, which is a measure taken in cases where a vessel is confirmed to have engaged in illicit activities, such as any violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

It looks like the Chinese are upping their reaction to the US Navy’s freedom of navigation patrols in the South China Sea:

Photos of an encounter between a Navy guided-missile destroyer and Chinese warship shed light on just how close the ships came to colliding Sunday in the South China Sea.

Naval website gCaptain.com published a series of photos Tuesday showing the USS Decatur and the People’s Republic of China destroyer Luyang passing each other during the confrontation. The Chinese ship appears to veer close to the Decatur before the U.S. ship pulls away to avoid a collision.

A Navy official confirmed to Stars and Stripes on Wednesday that the photos are legitimate, but said it is unknown how the website got access to the images, which were not publicly released.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but I hope the Navy has plenty of video cameras on board to record any possible collision.  This is because if a collision was to happen the Chinese would blame the US and then point to the Navy’s track record of two deadly collisions with civilian vessels in recent years.

With that said I doubt the Chinese would use one of their warships to collide with a US Navy ship.  I would suspect they would have one of their civilian vessels, like a fishing ship collide with a US Navy ship and then blame the US to anger public opinion within China against the US.

It will be interesting to see if the ROK government gives into Trump administration demands on the cost sharing issue in return for concessions on the North Korean issue:

South Korea and the U.S. are narrowing their differences over the cost, contract period and annual increase rate in regards to sharing the cost of stationing American troops on the Korean Peninsula.

An official from the Foreign Ministry in Seoul said Monday the two sides are negotiating thorny issues and ways to improve the system as a package for the new Special Measures Agreement set to take effect next year.

Under the current five-year contract which will expire in December, Seoul’s cost-sharing for stationing the 28-thousand-500-member U.S. Forces Korea for this year is set at around 960 billion won or 856 million dollars.

As for Washington wanting Seoul to include costs for “operational support” of deploying strategic assets from outside the peninsula against North Korean threats, the official said he can not answer whether the U.S. continues to make such demands.  [KBS World Radio]

It looks like the Moon administration has found another governmental figure from the former Park government timeframe to go after:

I would not be surprised if US authorities walked ROK authorities down to the dock to force them to take action:

South Korean authorities have seized a Russian-flagged ship and its crew in Busan on suspicion they are violating U.S. sanctions on North Korea, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.

The seizure came after concern about the Seoul’s lax enforcement of international economic sanctions on North Korea amid improving inter-Korean relations.

It is still uncertain whether the seizure was an independent decision by South Korea or a request from the U.S.  [Korea Times]

You can read the rest at the link.

On the 80th anniversary of the Munich Agreement, may I say: It was a good thing that Neville Chamberlain had the good grace not to hoist a giant picture of Adolf Hitler on London's City Hall in 1938. https://t.co/4Lr9On1Y4K

— Sung-Yoon Lee (@SungYoonLee1) September 29, 2018

Lawmakers of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party, including its floor leader Kim Sung-tae (5th from L), visit the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office in Seoul on Sept. 28, 2018, to protest prosecutors’ investigation into allegations that aides of its lawmaker Shim Jae-chul (4th from L) accessed digital files on fiscal budgets and other confidential data without authorization. The party denounced the investigation as a “grave suppression” of an opposition party and accused the government of trying to block people’s right to know. (Yonhap)

It is pretty amazing how long it takes to identify these remains, but the U.S. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency continues to get these remains identified:

South Korea on Monday held a solemn ceremony marking the repatriation of the remains of 64 soldiers who were killed in North Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War.

President Moon Jae-in presided over the repatriation ceremony at Seoul Air Base in Seongnam, 40 kilometers south of Seoul, with the attendance of top military and government officials and religious leaders, including Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo and U.S. Forces Korea Commander Gen. Vincent Brooks.

Escorted by a fleet of F-15K and FA-50 fighter jets, the remains arrived at Seoul Air Base on Sunday afternoon aboard a South Korea Air Force transport plane from Hawaii.

In Hawaii on Friday, the U.S. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency handed them over to Seoul’s Vice Defense Minister Suh Choo-suk. POW stands for Prisoner of War, and MIA means Missing in Action.

The remains were found during a joint excavation project between the United States and North Korea in major Korean War battle zones in the communist state, such as Changjin, South Hamgyong Province. The project was conducted from 1996-2005  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.