This seems an awful lot of fencing to be removed from the border areas:
South Korea’s defense ministry plans to gradually remove more than half of all coastal and riverside barbed wire fences across the country to help ease residents’ inconveniences, officials said Thursday.
The move, which is part of the Defense Reform 2.0 initiative aimed at creating a smaller yet stronger military, came amid Seoul’s push for inter-Korean cooperation and rapprochement.
The ministry plans to inspect all fences across the nation, which measure about 300 kilometers in total, to determine which can be eliminated in a way that does not hurt the country’s coastal defense.
“At this point in time, we think that some 57 percent of the fences can possibly be removed,” a ministry official said, declining to be named. “We will take action this year as to the sections that the military can eliminate on its own, while we plan to take care of other fences in stages.” [Korea Times]
The US Treasury Department is continuing to go after companies that violate sanctions against North Korea:
The United States imposed sanctions on a Russian port service agency and Chinese firms for aiding North Korean ships and selling alcohol and tobacco to Pyongyang in breach of U.S. sanctions.
The U.S. Treasury said in a statement on Wednesday that China-based Dalian Sun Moon Star International Logistics Trading Co. Ltd and its Singapore-based affiliate SINSMS Pte. Ltd had netted more than $1 billion a year by exporting alcohol and cigarette products to North Korea.
The department also sanctioned Russian-based Profinet Pte Ltd and its director general, Vasili Aleksandrovich Kolchanov, for providing port services on at least six occasions to North Korean-flagged ships.
Kolchanov was personally involved in North Korea-related deals and interacted directly with North Korean representatives in Russia, the department said.
“The tactics that these entities based in China, Singapore, and Russia are using to attempt to evade sanctions are prohibited under U.S. law, and all facets of the shipping industry have a responsibility to abide by them or expose themselves to serious risks,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in the statement. [Reuters]
Korean Sex Crimes: Sharing the public information of a sex offender = 3 million won fine (£2000~). Sharing the naked pictures of your girlfriend online without her consent = 2 million won fine (£1400~). Laws are fascinating. I should've studied law. #regrets#korea#phdlife
This image provided by Seo Kyoung-duk, professor of Sungshin Women’s University, on Aug. 14, 2018, promotes a video clip on YouTube (https://youtu.be/5isUH0g_YEU) that he made to criticize Japan for its attempts to distort the history of its wartime sexual slavery. South Korea has designated Aug. 14 as national day for the former sex slaves, also known as comfort women. (Yonhap)
Remember Reality Winner? Well she is about to be sentenced for leaking Secret information to the media and it is not looking good for her:
Reality Winner
A Georgia woman who mailed a secret U.S. report to a news organization faces the “longest sentence” ever behind bars for a federal crime involving leaks to the news media, prosecutors said in a court filing.
Former National Security Agency contractor Reality Winner, 26, is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 23 by U.S. District Court Judge J. Randal Hall in Augusta. She pleaded guilty in June to a single count of transmitting national security information when she worked in Augusta as a translator at an NSA facility.
Winner’s plea deal with prosecutors calls for imprisonment of five years and three months. But the sentencing judge isn’t bound by that agreement. Winner’s crime carries a maximum penalty of 10 years.
The Trump administration has made prosecuting government employees who leak sensitive information to the media a high priority, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions pledged to clamp down on leaks last year.
In a court filing Tuesday, federal prosecutors in Winner’s case said the 63-month sentence they’re recommending is plenty stiff to deter other government workers from leaking sensitive information, even if it could be tougher. [Associated Press]
You can read more at the link, but I have no sympathy for people who leak Secret information to the media. What makes this even more pathetic for her is that the information she leaked CNN had already reported on back in October 2016. A federal official told CNN that Russia may have compromised the personal information of Florida, Illinois, and Arizona voters. Reality Winnner’s leak of the document just confirmed what was already known.
It looks like for the next year USFK can count on maintaining a troop strength of at least 22,000 personnel:
President Donald Trump has objected to a series of provisions in the newly passed 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, including limits on the reduction of troops in South Korea and recognizing Crimea as a Russian province.
The defense legislation, which Trump signed into law Monday, sets new restrictions to keep the administration from decreasing troops in South Korea to less than 22,000. It also prohibits U.S. funds from helping legitimize Russia’s control of Crimea.
Both provisions, among several others in the NDAA, reflect congressional concerns about the president and drew objections from the White House. [Stars & Stripes]
It is pretty sad when politicians can’t even agree on what day their country was founded:
Rival parties clashed over a long-running controversy over the founding day of the Republic of Korea Wednesday as the country marked the 73rd anniversary of its liberation from Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule.
Conservatives have long claimed that the country was founded on Aug. 15, 1948, when the South Korean government was launched after Korea was liberated from Japan’s control in 1945 and then divided into the capitalist South and the communist North.
But the liberal bloc says that April 13, 1919, when the Korean government-in-exile was established in Shanghai, should be regarded as the day of the republic’s founding.
The ruling Democratic Party (DP) said that the conservatives’ claim is an outdated idea based on ideological division. But the main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP) insisted that to deny the country’s founding in 1948 is to disavow South Korea’s legitimacy. [Yonhap]
How many ppl believe an unchanged N Korea – i.e., one still the Kimist DPRK – will be more peaceful,rather than more belligerent or dangerous,if it becomes more prosperous? Isn’t it much safer that NK change first, bf we help it get wealthier? Isn’t this subsidizing dictatorship? https://t.co/St0yw59ums
I think the Moon administration may be trying to create a precedent of sanctions exemptions at the Kaesong Industrial Complex with this request. If this gets approved down the road they could request even more small exemptions and pretty soon they have a working industrial park again:
The Gaeseong Industrial Complex in North Korea is seen in this file photo. All operations in the joint venture between the two Koreas have been stopped since 2016 when Seoul decided to close the complex. Yonhap
South Korea’s foreign ministry said Wednesday it was talking with the United States to possibly obtain sanctions relief for North Korea, though the ministry didn’t specify when the relief would happen.
“The ministry is in discussions with the United States to get the go-ahead for partial sanctions relief, which will be helpful for South Korea to push forward the country’s business projects, most of which are non-commercial, with North Korea. But the South has no plans to violate U.N. sanctions now being imposed on the North,” said a ministry official.
The official added the U.N. Security Council’s actions would support and conform to the efforts of diplomatic talks toward denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.
At the Singapore summit in June between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Trump said economic sanctions will be maintained until Pyongyang’s nuclear program is “no longer a problem.”
The remarks came after Seoul began supplying power to the liaison office located inside the joint industrial park in Gaeseong, North Korea. Seoul’s unification ministry said South Korea seeks to run the office within this month in consultation with the U.S. and the allies.
It also said the power supply will be limited to the joint liaison office, not the entire Gaeseong Industrial Complex (GIC), and that its measure should not be seen as a sign of easing the U.S.-led international sanctions on Pyongyang.
The measure however, raised suspicions whether South Korea will be walking a tightrope between abiding by the sanctions and seeking exemptions from the sanctions to help the impoverished Pyongyang regime. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but the Trump administration should tell them to have North Korea provide the power themselves.
