It appears someone’s pet monkey has gotten lose and is now threatening hikers on Mt. Bukhan just outside of Seoul:
A rogue monkey on Mt. Bukhan has attacked several hikers.
According to the Ministry of Environment Thursday, officials have been trying to capture the monkey since they received reports about it last week. The mountain is not a natural habit for the creatures.
A video clip, which has gone viral, shows the monkey wandering around the mountain. The person who posted it on YouTube on June 9 was almost attacked when he went near the animal.
He backed off and said: “This monkey is not afraid of humans at all.” [Korea Times via a reader tip]
You can read more at the link or view the Youtube video below:
If anyone thought were going to stop all their nuclear programs because of a summit then they have no knowledge of past negotiations with the Kim regime. Additionally here we go again with intelligence officials leaking classified information to the media:
As President Donald Trump touted a new era of diplomacy with the North Korean regime, a classified intelligence assessment appeared to tell a different story, according to several US intelligence officials.
The assessment revealed that, in recent months, North Korea had upped its production of fuel for nuclear weapons at several secret sites, according to over a dozen intelligence officials cited in an NBC News report published Friday. The officials said they believe North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may be trying to conceal the secret facilities from the US.
“Work is ongoing to deceive us on the number of facilities, the number of weapons, the number of missiles,” one senior US intelligence official said to NBC News. “We are watching closely.”
According to five US officials cited by NBC News, the North Korean regime was increasing production of enriched uranium, even as relations with the US improved following the 2018 Winter Olympics. And since the leaders of both countries held a summit in Singapore in mid-June, the Trump administration has already delivered some concessions to the North. [Business Insider]
You can read more at the link, but it only makes sense that the North Koreans are going to rush to increase the amount of fuel and weapons they have to maximize their bargaining position. Like I have always said I seriously doubt the regime will completely denuclearize.
On a side note, I do find it interesting how the media now is highly critical of North Korean double dealing when during past negotiations many in the media made excuses for North Korean double dealing.
This is why South Korea dreads a collapse of the Kim regime:
Sammy Hyun is now a US citizen and has lived in the US since 2007 – and he considers himself to be ‘lucky’. Photograph: Noah Smith for the Guardian
When Chang Ho Kim was living in North Korea, information trickled in from China about the world outside the closed country. Through the lens of pirated movies, he says, America had looked to Kim like “a very rich and luxurious place”.
Defectors from the North automatically become South Korean citizens after a mandatory three-month transition that is part debriefing, part re-education. Most North Korean defectors in the South stand out, and the Kims were no exception. They have distinct accents, and are often shorter and slighter with darker, sallow skin from years of malnutrition. It’s hard to avoid South Koreans’ prejudice and suspicions that North Koreans are spies.
Remembering the Hollywood images of the US, the Kims decided to make their way to the US illegally through a broker.
But for the Kims, and others like them, life in the US is not necessarily easier.
The American celluloid dream comes with skyrocketing price tags. North Koreans arrive with little or no experience of bills, rent, and no means to cope with the lack of social services and health insurance that illegal immigrants must navigate.
“American life is so hard. Money, money, money,” said Pastor Young Gu Kim, an evangelical South Korean immigrant who helps defectors. “Some defectors told me, ‘Oh pastor, sometimes I miss it over there.’”
Like Chang Ho Kim, many North Koreans enter illegally and settle in Los Angeles, amid the large population of ethnic Koreans. Nearly 200 former North Koreans live in Los Angeles, advocacy groups say, but exact numbers are unknown. [The Guardian]
You can read more at the link, but North Koreans are not socialized to live in a western society that largely demands individual initiative to work hard and make money to support ones self. Imagine if millions of North Koreans showed up in South Korea instead of the small trickle that currently exists if the regime was to collapse. The social problems this would cause would be enormous and thus why the ROK government is pushing a policy of gradual reunification instead of regime collapse.
As Congress passes the North Korea Human Rights Reauthorization Act, @HouseForeign Chmn Ed Royce writes, "Seoul’s recent efforts to silence North Korean human rights advocates are counterproductive and deeply disturbing.” https://t.co/TrMBfyd1ES via @houseforeign
Nobel Prize-winning American economist Paul Krugman delivers a keynote speech at a special talk on South Korea’s social polarization at the conference hall of the Federation of Korean Industries in Seoul on June 27, 2018. (Yonhap)
My usual caveats apply when it comes to anonymous sources providing stories like this out of North Korea:
A senior North Korean military officer who told colleagues they no longer needed to “suffer and tighten our belts to make rockets and nuclear weapons” has been executed by firing squad, according to reports in dissident media.
The officer was named by the Seoul-based Daily NK news website as Hyon Ju-song, a 56-year-old lieutenant general who was serving as director of the services inspection division of the People’s Armed Forces.
Lt. Gen. Hyon appears to have become excited at the possibility that the detente that has taken place on the Korean Peninsula this year will develop into full-blown peace and got ahead of official party policy.
Quoting one of the organisation’s “citizen reporters” in the North, Daily NK said Lt. Gen. Hyon had been “on the fast track to success” within the military, but was arrested after making unguarded comments during a visit to one of the regime’s most important facilities.
“While checking the oil supplies for the Sohae Satellite Launching Station during the comprehensive inspections of wartime supplies on April 10, Hyon stated, ‘We no longer have to suffer and tighten our belts to make rockets or nuclear weapons’. This was seen as an abuse of authority and a treasonous statement that opposed the Party’s military-first policy”, the site reported. [The Telegraph]
It will be interesting to see if alternative service fixes this currently problem of jailing people for not doing their mandatory service for largely religious reasons:
The Constitutional Court on Thursday ordered the revision of the conscription law to allow for alternative service for conscientious objectors by the end of next year, while upholding the criminalization of those who refuse to serve in the military, largely for religious reasons.
The nine-member panel ruled a clause in the Military Service Act, which stipulates that such objectors face up to three years in prison, to be constitutional. The court did so in all its three previous rulings, most recently in 2011.
The decision was made by four votes to four, with one refusing to judge for procedural reasons. It required at least six votes to overturn the past rulings.
“The punishment clause is meant to strike a balance between securing military service resources and the burden of military service. Its legislative purpose is just, and enforcing the military service obligation with criminal punishment is a suitable means to achieve the legislative purpose,” the court said.
The court, however, ruled that another clause in the same law that does not recognize alternative service for conscription is unconformable to the highest law. It ordered the National Assembly to amend the law by the end of 2019. Otherwise, the clause will be scrapped on Jan. 1, 2020.
The decision was made by six to three.
The punishment of objectors without the provision of alternative options is an infringement of freedom of conscience and the principle banning excessive punishment, the court said. [Yonhap]
This is an example of why the South Koreans need the US to agree to drop sanctions before they can begin any projects with North Korea:
After the two Koreas agreed on Tuesday to connect their railroads and work together on modernizing the North’s infrastructure, one question looms: Is the project even possible?
If South Korea were to provide North Korea with vehicles, machinery and other equipment for track construction, it would violate United Nations Security Council Resolution 2397, which prohibits the export of industrial equipment to the North. The sanctions, passed unanimously on Dec. 22, 2017, came after the North tested an intercontinental ballistic missile on Nov. 29 of last year.
During the meeting between officials from the two Koreas on Tuesday, both sides agreed to boost cooperation in modernizing North Korea’s rails, stating the end goal was “balanced development of the national economy and co-prosperity.”
South Korean President Moon Jae-in has espoused a grand vision of creating a single market with the two Koreas to lay the foundation for unification, job creation and economic growth in both countries. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read much more at the link, but I expect that the Kim regime will continue to play nice in order to convince President Trump to drop sanctions for little to nothing in return. I would not be surprised if the Kim regime decides to continue to play nice until after the mid-term elections in the US. This will give them an assessment of the landscape in the US moving forward in 2019.
