Kim Jung-hun, a firefighter from the southwestern city of Jeongeup, flexes his muscles while holding an electric saw in a bodybuilding contest of the World Firefighters Games Chungju 2018 in the city some 150 kilometers southeast of Seoul on Sept. 11, 2018. The games, regarded as the Olympics of firefighters, will continue to Sept. 17, with some 6,000 people in the profession from more than 50 countries participating. (Yonhap)
Of course the Moon administration is going to downplay the cost of the money they plan to give to North Korea:
The Unification Ministry is rejecting suspicions it is downplaying the costs of implementing April’s inter-Korean Panmunjeom Declaration.
A ministry official told reporters Wednesday that the practice of submitting estimated next-year budget requests was established by the Roh Moo-hyun government in 2007, and that this government is simply following precedent. He was responding to the concerns raised by some opposition lawmakers that the total cost of implementing the Panmunjeom Declaration may be far higher than the Moon administration’s 471-billion estimate, and say that requesting funds in year-by-year amounts may be a way of minimizing perception of that total cost.
Earlier this week, the government told lawmakers that it will require an additional 298-point-six billion won next year to implement the agreement.
Estimated costs include operating the inter-Korean liaison office, holding family reunions, and a range of infrastructure projects to modernize North Koreas roads and rails. [KBS World Radio]
What is funny is that the Moon administration is claiming they are following precedent set during the Roh Moo-hyun administration. Current President Moon was the Chief of Staff for former President Roh, so essentially his administration is following a precedent of downplaying Inter-Korean cooperation costs he helped to create.
Anchor: New jobs figures released Wednesday show a bleak situation. Unemployment reached its highest point last month since the Asian financial crisis nearly 20 years ago.
Our Park Jong-hong has this report.
Report: The latest figures show South Korea’s jobless rate rose slightly in August to four percent due to a fall in employment in the retail and manufacturing sectors.
Young adults aged 15 to 29 who were out of a job last month stood at ten percent, up six-tenths of a percentage point from the previous year and the highest since 1999.
The number of employed went up by a mere three-thousand compared to August last year to 26-point-nine million.
This increase in jobs last month is the smallest since January 2010, when ten-thousand jobs were cut.
For the second month in a row, the number of newly added jobs has stayed below ten-thousand per month.
An official at Statistics Korea, which compiled the report, said one main reason behind the dismal figures is the struggling business at automakers and shipbuilders which is spilling over to related sectors like retail. [KBS World Radio]
Seoul announces it will open a N-S liaison office in Kaesong on Sept 14, as in two days from now and four days before President Moon’s Pyongyang pilgrimage. Moon’s visit is more and more looking like a tributary mission, just like Kim Dae Jung’s in 2000 and Roh MH’s in 2007.
A K-1A2 combat tank fires during a live-fire demonstration at a training center in Pocheon, north of Seoul, on Sept. 11, 2018. The demonstration is part of the Defense Expo Korea 2018, a platform for land forces equipment exhibitors to display and market defense products. (Yonhap)
Assuming this claim is true in Woodward’s latest rumormongering book, I don’t see what the problem is with the US President weighing the options available to address the North Korean nuclear issue. Obviously after been given the information President Obama decided not to do it:
Former U.S. President Barack Obama mulled a preemptive attack on North Korea after its fifth nuclear test in 2016, according to a book released Tuesday.
Obama was deeply disturbed to learn that North Korea had conducted its biggest-yet nuclear detonation on Sept. 9, 2016, with the North claiming the new nuclear bomb could be mounted on a ballistic missile, journalist Bob Woodward wrote in “Fear: Trump in the White House.”
“Even with his intense desire to avoid a war, Obama decided the time had come to consider whether the North Korean nuclear threat could be eliminated in a surgical military strike,” the book claims.
“The North Korean threat had not been diminished, and in September 2016 Obama posed a sensitive question to his National Security Council: Was it possible to launch a preemptive military strike, supported by cyber attacks, on North Korea to take out their nuclear and missile programs?” it continues. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but the closest the US came to a preemptive strike was during the Clinton Administration when the nuclear issue first came up. Strike planning was called off after Jimmy Carter’s unilateral intervention by traveling to Pyongyang. It does make me wonder how different things would be now if the Clinton administration did in fact launch this strike on North Korea’s nuclear program?
If there is going to be a second Trump-Kim summit I would think there is going to be a major announcement from the summit instead of the generalities that came out of the first summit:
U.S. envoy to North Korea Stephen Begun meets with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Seoul, Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2018. COURTESY OF THE BLUE HOUSE
South Korea’s president called on the United States and North Korea to make “bold decisions” to put nuclear negotiations back on track as the White House announced planning is underway for a second summit between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un.
President Moon Jae-in, who plans to travel to Pyongyang next week for his own meeting with Kim, said he has no choice but to play mediator to promote dialogue between the longtime adversaries.
Talks aimed at persuading the North to give up nuclear weapons have stalled since Trump and Kim vowed to work toward the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” at their June 12 summit in Singapore.
But Trump welcomed a North Korean military parade over the weekend that left out the usual long-range missiles and focused on peace and economic development in what was seen as a gesture toward rekindling talks with Washington.
Moon said Tuesday that the North must dismantle its nuclear weapons programs and the U.S. must take a corresponding step.
“If we would like to move to a higher level … bold ideas and decisions by the leaders of North Korea and the United States are necessary,” he said during a Cabinet meeting, according to a transcript from his office. “In the process, both countries must end the deep-rooted, mutual distrust stemming from 70 years of hostile relations.” [Stars & Stripes]
You can read more at the link, but when President Moon talks about “bold decisions” what he means is that President Trump needs to sign up for the “pretend denuclearization” plan. Does anyone really expect Kim Jong-un is going to show up at a second summit and hand over his nukes to President Trump?
Life is continuing to imitate the Duffel Blog. Via a reader tip here comes the latest example:
Col. Mark Eugene Muth, 57, was arrested for rushing the stage as Boy George and Culture Club played. (Kettering Police Department)
An Air Force colonel who was unable to handle the raging intensity of a Boy George concert last week in Kettering, Ohio, was arrested for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest after attempting to rush the stage.
Col. Mark Eugene Muth, 57, assigned to the command surgeon general’s office at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, was taken into custody Sept. 5 by Kettering Police for allegedly “causing a disturbance by shoving people in an attempt to get closer to the stage area,” according to the Dayton Daily News.
When the heavenly glow emanating from the legendary 1980s star simply became too much to bear, Muth reportedly charged ahead, perhaps in an effort to finally show the world that all those karaoke performances of “I’ll tumble for ya” had paid off.
You can read the whole thing at the link, but the Air Force Times author must have been laughing the entire time he wrote this article. Unsurprisingly too much alcohol was involved in this incident.
Yet another example of when life imitates the Duffel Blog:
‘Horny bastard’ first sergeant had affair with female infantry private, Army says
Members of the first gender integrated infantry one-station unit training at Fort Benning, Ga., report in February 2017. An investigation found one of the women had an inappropriate relationship with her company first sergeant after joining the 82nd Airborne Division. (Patrick Albright/Army)
Critics said it was bound to happen, and, sure enough, it did.
Sgt. 1st Class Chase Usher, who had been serving as the top noncommissioned officer of B Company, 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, has been removed from his position leading soldiers and is serving in a staff role, an 82nd Airborne spokesman told Army Times on Tuesday.
“Disciplinary action deemed appropriate by the chain of command was taken against both individuals and has been completed,” Lt. Col. Ramon Osorio, the division spokesman, said. “Both continue to serve within the division, however, the first sergeant was relieved of his position and currently serves on the staff of a different unit.” [Army Times]
Not even the Duffel Blog could have topped this quote:
A female platoon sergeant said Usher told a group of her colleagues that he was going to be Thor for Halloween, but wouldn’t need to carry a hammer ― because he already had a comparable tool in his pants, according to the investigation.
You can read much more of this stupidity at the link.
