This photo, taken on Jan. 29, 2018, shows an Olympic hospitality house for Switzerland being built at Yongpyong Resort in the northeastern alpine county of PyeongChang. Several nations participating in the Feb. 9-25 PyeongChang Winter Olympics will operate Olympic hospitality houses during the competition. Run by national Olympic committees or corporate sponsors, these hospitality houses will promote countries’ cultures and specialty foods. (Yonhap)
Via a reader tip comes this story of how former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder is getting hitched to Korean woman he met at conference in South Korea:
Gerhard Schroder visited Cheong Wa Dae on Sep. 12, 2017, to meet South Korean President Moon Jae-in and present his biography, translated into Korean by Kim So-yeon. / Korea Times file
It was love at first sight that bound them together.
German news outlet Bunte broke the story earlier this month that former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder will marry his South Korean interpreter Kim So-yeon. The report triggered a media frenzy in Seoul. Reporters captured the moments the pair dated at Changdeokgung royal palace in Seoul and dined together at Korean restaurants in the city and Kreuzberg, Berlin.
The couple held a press conference at the Press Center in Seoul, Thursday, admitted their romance and announced they will marry this year.
Schroder, 73, and Kim, 47, did not seem uncomfortable in front of the Korean press as Kim faithfully interpreted Schroder’s opening speech and answers to journalists’ questions. And Schroder didn’t shy away from tugging her close to him in front of tens of photographers. Whenever they smiled at each other, cameras flashed to capture the moment.
“We have met each other’s family members who agreed to our engagement,” Kim said. “And we will move back and forth between Hanover and Berlin, where Gerhard lives, and Seoul after marriage.” [Korea Times]
I guess the Kim regime was not happy that the Moon administration did not do enough to censor the ROK media:
North Korea has called off a joint cultural event scheduled to be held in its country to celebrate the upcoming Winter Olympic Games in South Korea, Seoul officials said Monday.
The abrupt notification came in a telegram sent to South Korea at 10:10 p.m., saying the North was canceling the event scheduled to be held Feb.4, according to Seoul’s unification ministry.
The communist state was known to have cited what it claimed to be “biased” media reports about the upcoming event.
The unification ministry said the North also took issue with South Korean reports about its “internal event,” apparently referring to reports about a possible military parade marking the 70th anniversary of its military on Feb. 8, one day before the start of the Winter Olympic Games.
The Seoul government expressed disappointment, noting the North’s decision may undermine what it earlier called a “hard-earned” chance to improve inter-Korean relations.
“It is very regrettable that an event agreed by the South and the North will not be held due to North Korea’s unilateral notification (decision),” the ministry said in a statement. “What has been agreed must be implemented under the spirit of mutual respect and understanding as the South and the North have only taken a hard-earned first step toward improving the South-North relationship.” [Yonhap]
We all knew that the Kim regime was going to use the Winter Olympics as a means to circumvent United Nations sanctions and they are not even trying to hide it:
The government is agonizing over whether it should send refined petroleum products to North Korea for upcoming joint cultural events in the midst of tough international sanctions over Pyongyang’s missile tests, officials said Sunday.
“We told the North to take charge of supplying the electricity necessary to hold the joint cultural events but received an answer that it is difficult to stably supply power to the facility built by the South Korean side,” a senior government official said, requesting not to be named. “In the end, we are the ones who should solve the electricity problem.”
The official noted that it is more difficult than ever to ship refined petroleum products to North Korea because of new sanctions that have been imposed by the United Nations and the United States.
The two Koreas agreed last week to hold cultural events at Mount Kumgang on the North’s east coast before the Winter Olympics opens in South Korea’s alpine city of PyeongChang on Feb. 9. The joint events are most likely to be held at a 620-person cultural hall in the mountain resort.
The likelihood is that a diesel-fueled electric generator will be in use for the events, as that is what Hyundai Asan, the South Korean company that operated the long-suspended package tours to the scenic North Korean mountain, did in the past.
The United Nations resolution adopted in December, however, imposes a cap of 500,000 barrels of refined petroleum that can be shipped to the isolated communist country.
Officials expect that 10,000 liters (2641.7 gallons) of diesel oil will be needed for the upcoming events.
“We believe it won’t be a problem if we send the diesel oil to the North and report this to the UN Security Council later,” a government official said. [Joong Ang Ilbo via a reader tip]
No matter how little the use of the oil is this will set a precedent that can be followed to continue to circumvent sanctions. When the Moon administration likely comes back later to reopen Mt. Gumgang tours, start tours to the Masiki Ski Resort, or reopen the Kaesong Industrial complex in North Korea they can power all these projects using oil brought in from the South. This bringing in the oil for the cultural performance in North Korea is almost like a proof of concept of how the Moon administration, if it wants to, can circumvent sanctions to start these inter-Korean projects.
This tactic by the Russians is really nothing new since misinformation on the Internet is something long used in South Korea for political purposes:
Demonstrators at two opposing protests in Houston, Texas, in May 2016. Both protests were orchestrated by Russian trolls.
Posing as American activists, Russian government-linked trolls created 129 Facebook events between 2015 and 2017.
On multiple occasions, the events prompted real Americans to take to the streets.
In a written statement Facebook gave to the Senate Intelligence Committee released on Thursday, the social media network said that the events created by one Kremlin-linked troll group were seen by more than 300,000 Facebook users. About 62,500 users marked that they would attend the event, and an additional 25,800 expressed an interest in attending.
Facebook told Congress it does “not have data about the realization of these events,” but CNN has previously found evidence that the Russian group successfully convinced Americans to attend the demonstrations.
The events were organized on a range of divisive issues and were designed to pit Americans against each other.
In one case, the troll group organized and promoted two opposing events on the same day at the same location in Houston, Texas.
“Heart of Texas,” a page that posed as a pro-Texas secession organization, promoted a “Stop Islamization of Texas” protest at the opening of a library at an Islamic Center on May 21, 2016. The same troll group used another page, “United Muslims of America,” to promote a “Save Islamic Knowledge” event at the same time.
The Russian group spent $200 promoting the events on Facebook, the company told Congress last fall.
Executive director of the American-Islamic Relations in Texas, Mustafaa Carroll, told CNN that his organization had contacted the FBI about comments posted on the “Heart of Texas” page before the protest. One of them read: “Need to blow this place up. We don’t need this shit in Texas.” [CNN]
You can read more at the link, but using trolls to create fake news and events is why the prior ROK government under President Lee Myung-bak implemented a real-name verification system for commenters to avoid false information influencing elections. President Lee had first hand experience with this when the 2008 US Mad Cow Crisis nearly toppled his Presidency shortly after being inaugurated. Afterwards the whole thing was proven to be fake news spread over the Internet and promoted by major media outlets to topple the President.
Young Koreans respond to Moon Jae-in's plea for anti-anti-North Korean self-censorship by burning pictures of Kim Jong-un. 자유 만세! 2030 ´김정은 사진 불태우기´ 릴레이 https://t.co/AeYp6iYEgc
Despite freezing temperatures, two Marines stand guard at a border sentry post in Gimpo, west of Seoul, on Jan. 26, 2018, in this photo provided by the Marine Corps. (Yonhap)
Here is what US Senator Duckworth had to say recently about her trip to South Korea:
Senator Tammy Duckworth
When Senator Tammy Duckworth returned from a recent trip to South Korea and Japan, she brought back a sobering message: “Americans simply are not in touch with just how close we are to war on the Korean peninsula.” In a speech at Georgetown University, she laid out the U.S. military maneuvers over the past several months—including a nuclear–powered submarine heading to South Korea, the movement of three aircraft carriers to the Western Pacific, and the Army testing out “mobilization centers” for deploying troops and training soldiers to fight in tunnels like those beneath North Korea—that inform this worry. In an interview with me, she said the U.S. military seems to be operating with the attitude that a conflict “‘will probably happen, and we better be ready to go.’”
The Illinois Democrat believes this is primarily a response to the rhetoric coming out of Washington, where members of the Trump administration have repeatedlythreatened to use force if diplomacy fails to prevent North Korea from acquiring the capability to strike the United States with nuclear missiles. And even though the administration continues to emphasize its preference for a diplomatic solution, “I feel like the military hears the war-mongering tendencies coming out of the executive branch and many in the legislative branch and have seen the writing on the wall and they said, ‘Holy cow. We’re more likely to be called on now than we were two years ago,’” Duckworth said.
“I know that the military’s job is to be fully ready for any contingency, and I commend them and support them for continuing to prepare for war. I’m not saying that they’re going to war,” Duckworth said at Georgetown. “But it’s painfully clear from my visit to the [Korean Demilitarized Zone] and these movements that I am seeing that we shouldn’t ignore the signals that our military is sending with these actions. We know that the North Koreans and our allies in the region are certainly paying attention.”
Duckworth, a retired lieutenant colonel who lost her legs during the Iraq War when insurgents downed her helicopter, took the trip along with Ruben Gallego, a Democratic congressman from Arizona and a fellow Iraq War veteran, earlier this month. The two met with top South Korean and Japanese diplomats and defense officials as well as commanders of U.S. forces in South Korea. Duckworth said that she found “all three of the major military actors—American, Korean, and Japanese—…more ready [for war] than they’ve ever been.” [The Atlantic]
You can read more at the link, but I find it interesting that Senator Duckworth is more worried about the rhetoric coming out Washington, but makes no mention of the rhetoric and actions backing it up coming out of Pyongyang that is firing missiles over Japan, setting off nuclear bombs, threatening to destroy Guam and other US cities, and even murdering someone with a nerve agent weapon in a busy international airport.
Considering all of this the US military would be derelict in its duties if it did not train for a possible military contingency in response to North Korean actions. However from reading the article it appears that Senator Duckworth would prefer to have an untrained military so the Trump administration could not use it as an option to stop North Korea’s nuclear and ICBM programs if needed.
Here is the latest update on the status of ex-ROK President Park Geun-hye who continues to be jailed despite not being convicted of anything:
Yoo Yeong-ha
Former President Park Geun-hye, currently facing a criminal trial for conspiring with her friend to receive bribes from conglomerates, is extremely regretful that she was fooled by her longtime confidante, Park’s onetime defense lawyer said Wednesday.
Park was indicted in April 2017 for having abused her power to receive bribes from conglomerates by conspiring with her friend, Choi Soon-sil.
The former president is also charged with leaking confidential information to Choi. She has been boycotting the trial since October, describing the accusations as “political retaliation.”
All her lawyers, including a longtime associate, Yoo Yeong-ha, resigned from the case to protest a judge’s decision to extend her detention to April 2018.
In an interview with the JoongAng Ilbo, Yoo spoke for the first time about the case and his client. It was Yoo’s first media interview since Park was impeached and ousted from presidency in March of last year. The interview took place on Wednesday, and the JoongAng Ilbo published it in Friday’s edition.
Yoo said Park had not known about Choi’s alleged illicit activities when she was president. “The National Intelligence Service, police and the presidential senior secretary for civil affairs never briefed her about Choi,” Yoo said. “She said it is unfortunate that no one informed her about Choi’s activities.”
Park was indicted in April for alleged crimes committed during her failed presidency. Prosecutors said Park, in collusion with Choi, received massive bribes from conglomerates through two cultural and sports foundations Choi practically controlled. Samsung’s contributions to the foundations and generous sponsorship of equestrian training for Choi’s daughter, Chung Yoo-ra, were described as bribes, and Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong was also indicted for offering or promising the president a total of 43.3 billion won ($40.7 million).
Yoo said Park is firm on three key issues surrounding her charges. “Park is firm that she never heard from Choi that Samsung Group offered support for Choi’s daughter’s equestrian training,” Yoo said. “Park is also firm that she never asked Samsung Vice Chairman Lee to support Choi and her daughter. She also stands firm that she never ordered An Chong-bum, then senior economic affairs secretary, to create foundations.”
Regarding the newly added charges that Park had misappropriated the funds of the National Intelligence Service (NIS) and used the money for private purposes, Yoo said the former leader is also innocent on this count. Earlier this month, the prosecution said Park had used 1.5 billion won of misappropriated NIS funds for private affairs, including beauty treatments.
Yoo had visited Park at the Seoul Detention Center after the new charges were added. Speculation was high that Yoo would be rehired, but Park ultimately did not retain him.
“At the beginning of her term, Park was briefed that the Blue House of the previous administrations had received money from the NIS and used it, and there is no legal problem involving the practice,” Yoo said. “She therefore told her officials to do business as usual. She never received any report about spending the NIS money.”
Yoo added, “It’s also not true that Park used the NIS money for private affairs. A president has their own special-activities account. There’s no reason for her to use the NIS money.”
Yoo also said it is unfair to hold Park accountable for the administration’s creation and operation of a blacklist of liberal artists to oppress them and cut their funding just because she was briefed about a plan.
“She doesn’t seem to recall any specific order,” Yoo said. “If you argue that she made a tacit order for something just because she received a briefing about it, it means that presidents will be linked to all sorts of crimes in the future. No administration will be safe, if you use that logic.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but on this issue I have yet to see the evidence that Park ever accepted a bribe or knew what Choi was up to. If this all ends up being smoke and mirrors to get her out of office this is going to cause a precedent that whenever the conservatives take power they will legally go after liberal presidents for real or imagined reasons as well.
