It looks like the cover up of companies shipping North Korean coal into South Korea in violations of UN sanctions is in full effect:
A satellite image of North Korea’s Port of Wonsan in Kangwon Province taken on July 16. A vessel is docked next to a crane for moving coal. (Yonhap News)
A South Korean coal importing company is being investigated by the customs authority on suspicions of importing what is believed to be North Korean coal and disguising it as being from Russia, government officials have disclosed. Reportedly, this is only one of nine suspicious cases being investigated by the authorities.Misrepresenting the origin of coal counts as illegitimate importing under the Customs Act and the forgery of private documents under the criminal code.
And since importing North Korean coal is banned by UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea (Resolution No. 2371), this could also represent a violation of sanctions, if the coal does turn out to be from North Korea.On Aug. 6, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Korea Customs Service (KCS) met reporters at the Foreign Ministry office in Seoul’s Jongno District and explained the current status of their investigation into the import of coal suspected of being from North Korea.“We were provided with intelligence related to allegations of importing North Korean coal from the relevant government agency in Oct. 2017.
We have been investigating the importer implicated in the intelligence in question and are currently wrapping up that investigation,” said a KCS official. The KCS is planning to announce the details of its investigation when it hands over the case to the prosecutors, after completing the investigation. [Hankyoreh]
So the investigation has been going on for nearly a year which causes me to believe this is being slow rolled. Here is what the ROK government is trying to get people to believe:
But until upcoming investigations have run their course, it’s too soon to say whether the coal these companies imported is actually from North Korea. There are a number of possibilities that will have to be determined by investigators. The companies may have actually imported Russian coal; they may have known it was North Korean coal and passed it off as Russian; or they may have been fooled by Russian companies and imported coal without realizing it was from North Korea.
“We’re getting this intelligence from an ally, and the intelligence itself does not constitute definitive proof that the coal is from North Korea,” said an official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
I get the feeling this investigation will lead no where, but I guess we will see.
If you own a BMW you better get it checked out soon:
Two more diesel vehicles, a 730Ld model, left, and a 320d, right, caught fire on Korean highways on Thursday. The former is not included on a recall list announced by BMW Korea last month. [YONHAP]Two more BMW diesel cars caught fire Thursday morning, less than an hour apart, as Korea’s Transport Ministry mulls banning the fire-prone BMW vehicles from Korean roads.
This makes 36 cases of BMWs bursting into flames in Korea this year, eight in the last nine days.
As some of the vehicles that caught fire in recent weeks are not even included in BMW’s official recall list, industry analysts are raising new doubts about the company’s description of the cause of the fires.
On Thursday, a 730Ld model caught fire on the Namhae Expressway in South Gyeongsang.
The fire was extinguished within 15 minutes, according to the local fire station. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but BMW is saying the fires are being caused by an exhaust gas recirculation issue.
There is no reason why this travel ban should be allowed to expire. The North Koreans have never come clean about what happened to Otto Warmbier and allowing Americans to travel to North Korea gives the Kim regime a fresh pool of hostages to grab when the current negotiations inevitably collapse:
A U.S. ban on its citizens traveling to North Korea is expected to expire at the end of this month.
The U.S. government announced on Aug. 2 last year that U.S. passport holders were banned from traveling to North Korea for a year. The ban took effect on Sept. 1.
There has been no announcement from the U.S. government of an extension.
The travel ban followed the death of U.S. college student Otto Wombier, who suffered brain damage after he was detained by North Korea. [Korea Times]
It's a bit weird and yet understandable. Some of my best older Korean friends are among this lot. I don't try to belabor the point and just accept them as my friends with… https://t.co/k2eG0OfoqL
Employees of Korea Post demonstrate drone delivery service at a post office in Yeongwol, Gangwon Province, on Aug. 8, 2018, in this photo courtesy of Korea Post. (Yonhap)
Via a reader tip comes news of another example of how Asian-Americans continue to grow in importance in American society:
The growth of the Asian-American community since the turn of the century has been reflected in all professional and social areas of life in the U.S., not least the armed forces.
In recent years, Americans of Asian background have been signing up for the military in growing numbers, and, in 2016, they were 28% more likely to be among the officer ranks than they were 12 years earlier.
The change was more pronounced in certain branches of the military than others. The number of Asian-American officers in the army, for example, grew by 41%. That compares with growth of just 4% for ethnic minorities overall and a 3.1% decline among African Americans. [Nikkei Asian Review]
Prominent North Korean defector Thae Yong-ho who is also a candidate for the most hated person by South Korean leftists who they haven’t put in jail yet, has started his own English language blog. In his recent posting he discusses how Kim Jong-un has no intention to denuclearize and is strengthening the Anti-Imperialist Education within North Korea against South Korea:
Thae Yong-ho
The reality is that when North Korea’s Kim Jong-un came out to the inter-Korean Summit and US-North Korean Summit, he had no intention of giving up his nuclear weapons. It was simply a way to earn time to hold onto his survival by putting on a ‘show’ of pretending to be interested in denuclearization.
While Kim Jong-un thinks that as long as he is in possession of nuclear weapons he will be able to continue the hereditary rule of the Kim family, in actuality, as long as North Korea has nuclear weapons it will not be treated as a ‘normal state.’ In fact the nuclear weapons will be the malignant tumour that leads to the collapse of the North Korean system.
At this moment in time, South Korean citizens are delighted at the start to an era of forgiveness and cooperation between the two Koreas and think that through these inter-Korean exchanges, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un will change.
However, while Kim Jong-un is pretending to be interested in inter-Korean exchanges and cooperation on the outside; internally, he is intensifying the ‘Anti-Imperialist Education’ and warning his people about getting swept away with the exchange and cooperations with South Korea. [Thae Yong-ho]
North Korea repatriated a South Korean citizen Tuesday through the border village of Panmunjom in a “positive humanitarian” move, Seoul’s unification ministry said.
In a message to Seoul a day earlier, Pyongyang claimed the 34-year-old, identified only by his surname Suh, illegally entered the country on July 22.
On Monday, the North’s Red Cross informed the South of a plan to send him back, and Seoul accepted the offer.
The North repatriated Suh via Panmunjom at 11 a.m. as scheduled, a ministry official told reporters.
He is under investigation by the South’s authorities into why and how he entered the North. He left for China before July 22, an informed source said.
The government views the North’s repatriation of Suh as “positive from a humanitarian perspective,” the official added.
But six South Korean nationals, including three missionaries, are still detained in the communist nation. [Yonhap]
It is interesting that President Trump was able to get all the American detainees released, but Moon Jae-in has done nothing to get ROK detainees released.
It appears that China has a new weapon that instead of running people over with tanks, they can now suppress protests by covertly setting people on fire:
China has developed a new portable laser weapon that can zap a target from nearly a kilometre away, according to researchers involved in the project.
The ZKZM-500 laser assault rifle is classified as being “non-lethal” but produces an energy beam that cannot be seen by the naked eye but can pass through windows and cause the “instant carbonisation” of human skin and tissues.
Ten years ago its capabilities would have been the preserve of sci-fi films, but one laser weapons scientist said the new device is able to “burn through clothes in a split second … If the fabric is flammable, the whole person will be set on fire”.
“The pain will be beyond endurance,” according to the researcher who had took part in the development and field testing of a prototype at the Xian Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shaanxi province.
The 15mm calibre weapon weighs three kilos (6.6lb), about the same as an AK-47, and has a range of 800 metres, or half a mile, and could be mounted on cars, boats and planes. [South China Morning Post]
You can read more at the link, but considering all the past failures with laser weapons I recommend patience before getting to worried about Chinese soldiers zapping US soldiers into ash.
