This year's decennial event is especially meaningful for Jeju residents, since it could be the last one for most of the aging survivors. #Jeju#70th_anniversaryhttps://t.co/RiozYQ2IpR
South Korean President Moon Jae-in (4th from L, front) and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan (6th from L) of Abu Dhabi, join a group photo with South Korean officials and workers during a ceremony at a nuclear power station in Barakah, about 300 km west of the United Arab Emirates’ capital, on March 26, 2018, to mark the completion of a nuclear reactor built by South Korea. It is the first out of four reactors South Korea plans to provide the UAE under a 2009 deal that marked South Korea’s first exports of nuclear reactors. (Yonhap)
If this actually did happen the people who did it would make a much stronger statement if they were able to take pictures of the graffiti and smuggle it outside of the country for publication:
A North Korean resident recorded themselves defacing and burning images of Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Suk in February 2011. Image: Daily NK
The North Korean authorities have been put on high alert after discovering anti-Kim Jong Un graffiti defacing a major government building in the capital earlier this month.
“A person scribbled an anti-Kim Jong Un message on one of the outer walls of the ‘April 25 House of Culture’ in Pyongyang before dawn on March 1,” a resident of Pyongyang reported to Daily NK on March 19.
“The atmosphere is extremely tense now, with expectations that Kim Jong Un will soon personally hand down instructions over the matter.”
When asked what the exact words used in the anti-regime graffiti were, the source said he did not know, only that such graffiti appeared, and that in an attempt to track down the perpetrator, the authorities are conducting handwriting tests on residents and renewing scrutiny of the city’s non-official resident population.
Kim Jong Un has also reportedly ordered the country’s top intelligence agencies including the Ministry of State Security and Ministry of People’s Security to take part in a month-long emergency training course in response to the graffiti incident, likely in an attempt to strengthen the political and ideological resolve of its members. [Daily NK]
It looks like Kim Jong-un may be receiving his marching orders from the Chinese government before the upcoming summits with the ROK and US presidents:
Kim Jong-un was rumoured to be paying a secret visit to China on Monday after an armoured North Korean train pulled into Beijing under heavy guard.
Passengers were diverted and services cancelled as the train arrived in Beijing around 3pm, before video emerged showing a car driving away under police escort.
The train bears a marked similarity to one that Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-il, used for his trips to China, sparking speculation that the Supreme Leader was on board.
If the news is confirmed, it would mark Kim’s first visit to any foreign country since taking the reins of power. [Daily Mail]
You can read more at the link, but considering the honor guard, VIP motorcade, and the amount of security that met the train it seems likely it is either Kim Jong-un or maybe his sister visiting North Korea to justify such a response.
There will be a SHARP/ASAP Play entitled ‘The Introduction’ from the end of March to early May. The play will be shown at the Camp Casey, Camp Red Cloud and Yongsan Multiplex theaters. Check out these actors as they bring to life realistic sexual assault and alcohol abuse situations.
For schedule times and locations, please check out the flyer. [USFK-Facebook]
Just another example of how newspapers are going extinct:
The final edition of the Morning Calm, the last surviving Army newspaper in South Korea, ran off the press Wednesday evening.
A peninsula-wide institution, the biweekly Morning Calm detailed the lives of soldiers from Busan in the south to Camp Casey near the Demilitarized Zone.
It went the same way as many struggling newspapers in a wired world of instant shares and likes when Eighth Army commander Lt. Gen. Michael Bills declined to renew its contract this month.
Closing the paper will give public affairs staff more time to focus on local news and communicate with communities online, Camp Humphreys spokesman Bob McElroy said.
“They all felt that the time they devoted to the paper would be better used to focus on their communities rather than producing articles and photos that were outdated by the time the paper came out every two weeks,” he said. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read more at the link, but here is the link to the 8th Army website which I would hope will be updated significantly if the PAO is no longer publishing a newspaper.
Moon decided to use the word "nodong" instead of "geunro" to refer to labor in his constitutional revision bill. "Geunro" means "diligent or faithful" labor. Working faithfully for whom? https://t.co/53OXKXpf3i
Australian Ambassador to South Korea James Choi (L) poses for a photo during a publicity event at a department store in Seongnam, south of Seoul, on March 23, 2018, to promote Australian grapes. (Yonhap)
My rule of thumb is that anything the Kim regime is against must be a good thing for South Korea or the US. In this case the acquisition of the F-35A by the ROK military must be good thing considering the reaction:
North Korea blasted the South Korean military on Sunday for acting against the conciliatory mood developing on the Korean Peninsula, saying that the South is engaging in military maneuvers against Pyongyang.
The North criticized South Korea’s decision to deploy F-35A stealth jets and moves to buy more long-range air-to-ground missiles as part of a bid to strengthen weapons systems.
The military is scheduled to formally unveil the first F-35A stealth fighter aircraft for its military in a rollout ceremony this week. Seoul’s arms agency said it signed in February a purchase deal for 90 more Taurus bunker-buster missiles.
“(Such announcements) are open provocations against the negotiating party and a dangerous move that runs counter to the current mood for reconciliation and unity that the two Koreas had not witnessed in a long time,” said a commentary carried by the North’s ruling party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun. [Yonhap]
The Chinese government has long sought to break up the US-ROK and US-Japan military alliances that maintains the current security framework in Northeast Asia. The THAAD issue is a perfect example of how they have created tension in the US-ROK alliance with disinformation. The comfort women issue is another issue that Beijing has weaponized to create tension between the US, Korea, and Japan:
The “comfort women” issue appears, on the surface, to be a bilateral problem between South Korea and Japan. In reality, it is deeper. The key player is increasingly not South Korea, but China, and the ultimate target is not Japan, but the United States, as the comfort women are co-opted by Beijing in its anti-American information war.
China has been waging this war since Beijing realized after the First Gulf War that it would likely be unable to the United States on the battlefield. As the document Unrestricted Warfare, published by two high-ranking Chinese military officials, makes clear, the Chinese have chosen to fight the US, and particularly the US-Japan alliance, using desinformatsiya rather than hardware and troops. (…)
Overseas Chinese groups have also pressed hard on the comfort women and Nanjing issues in the US and Canada: In San Francisco, Superior Court judges Julie Tang and Lillian Sing retired from the bench in order to co-found the Comfort Women Justice Coalition, which was ultimately successful in bringing a comfort woman statue to San Francisco. Chinese-American San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee was himself a vocal proponent of the comfort woman statue. [Asia Times]
You can read more at the link, but I would not be surprised if Beijing isn’t fanning the flames of the anti-base sentiment in Okinawa as well to create further tension between the US and Japan.
