It looks like there is an English teacher job opening at Sahmyook University after one of their professors was fired due to his link to the murder of four people back in Canada:
Paul Laan
A former professor at a Seoul-based university is a suspect in a mysterious missing-person case in Canada, according to South Korean broadcaster JTBC.
Canadian Paul Laan taught English at Sahmyook University in Nowon, northern Seoul, from 2014. The university stripped him of his professorship early this month after learning of the accusations in Canada and then terminated his contract.
According to the report, Laan came to Korea in 2006 and earned a living by teaching English at private or public institutes.
According to JTBC and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), he was a suspect in a high-profile missing-person case in Ontario in 1998. A woman in her 70s, known as the “Cat Lady,” was a tenant in his house and disappeared outside Huntsville. Police later found that three other tenants were missing.
Police investigating the case saw Laan as a suspect but they found no evidence, and it became a cold case.
CBC put the case back in the spotlight on its investigative program “The Fifth Estate,” aired in September.
The program said the residents’ disappearance was not reported and that pension checks were stolen from them by the Paul family. The youngest of the family was living in South Korea as a professor, according to the program.
“Paul now teaches English at a university in South Korea and travels with his wife extensively, professing their love for God on their family blog,” CBC reported. [Korea Times]
You can read the whole CBC report on these murders at this link. The Paul family are all part of a crime family in the Huntsville area of Canada that have a long criminal history culminating in the murder of four people.
Goods that are tribute to K-pop girl band GFRIEND have angered fans because the objects can apparently be used as sex toys.
The life-size pillows, 180 centimeters long and 60 centimeters wide with a full body image of each member color-printed on top, are the source of the controversy. People criticized the goods for encouraging fans to hug the objects and perhaps do more than just hugging them.
Source Music released the products on Dec. 29 ahead of the band’s first exclusive concert on Jan. 6-7 at Olympic Park in Songpa-gu, Seoul. They were introduced on the band’s social network site with hashtags “#GFRIEND 1st Concert 2018” and “#Season_of_GFRIEND.”
Each object in the six-piece package costs 60,000 won ($56). They were among 25 new products including cheering wands and shopping bags. The goods are worth a total of 1 million won. [Korea Times]
This reduction is likely caused by the bad behavior some ROK generals have been accused of in recent years. Regardless this is a huge drop in the number of general officers:
The Ministry of National Defense is pushing for a massive reduction in the number of generals as part of a military reform plan, government sources said Sunday.
The ministry is said to be preparing for a plan to gradually lower the quota of generals starting this year, possibly by 70-80, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. Currently, there are about 430 generals in the South Korean troops.
The Moon Jae-in government pledged to slim down the bloated top brass of the military. The previous Lee Myung-bak government had planned in 2011 to reduce the number of generals by 60, or 15 percent, by 2020. The plan was revised down to 40 under his successor Park Geun-hye. [Yonhap]
Since February, when I summarized the UN resolutions that Kaesong violated (https://t.co/YoUoe16R0l) the UNSC has further restricted joint ventures with N. Korea. Sunshine was a conclusive & catastrophic failure policy failure, and Pyongyang has done nothing to deserve reopening. pic.twitter.com/OgPvIV4QgV
North Korea’s calendar for 2018 is featured in this photo obtained by Yonhap on Dec. 27, 2017. The calendar has different views each month of Pyongyang’s Ryomyong Street that the country bills as a model and standard of modern architecture with high-rise apartments. (Yonhap)
In long interview with Michael Schmidt of the New York Times, President Trump had plenty to say about how China has not been helpful enough with enforcing sanctions on North Korea:
SCHMIDT: What’s going on there. Tell me about that.
TRUMP: Yeah, China. … China’s been. … I like very much President Xi. He treated me better than anybody’s ever been treated in the history of China. You know that. The presentations. … One of the great two days of anybody’s life and memory having to do with China. He’s a friend of mine, he likes me, I like him, we have a great chemistry together. He’s [inaudible] of the United States. …[Inaudible.] China’s hurting us very badly on trade, but I have been soft on China because the only thing more important to me than trade is war. O.K.?
[Cross talk with guests.]
_________
SCHMIDT: Can you finish your thought on North Korea. What’s going on with China?
TRUMP: I’m disappointed. You know that they found oil going into. …
SCHMIDT: But how recently?
TRUMP: It was very recently. In fact, I hate to say, it was reported this morning, and it was reported on Fox. Oil is going into North Korea. That wasn’t my deal!
SCHMIDT: What was the deal?
TRUMP: My deal was that, we’ve got to treat them rough. They’re a nuclear menace so we have to be very tough.
RUDDY: Mr. President, was that a picture from recent or was that months ago? I don’t know. …
TRUMP: Oil is going into North Korea, I know. Oil is going into North Korea. So I’m not happy about it.
SCHMIDT: So what are you going to do?
TRUMP: We’ll see. That I can’t tell you, Michael. But we’ll see. I can tell you one thing: This is a problem that should have been handled for the last 25 years. This is a problem, North Korea. That should have been handled for 25, 30 years, not by me. This should have been handled long before me. Long before this guy has whatever he has.
TRUMP: No, look, I like China, and I like him a lot. But, as you know, when I campaigned, I was very tough on China in terms of trade. They made — last year, we had a trade deficit with China of $350 billion, minimum. That doesn’t include the theft of intellectual property, O.K., which is another $300 billion. So, China — and you know, somebody said, oh, currency manipulation. If they’re helping me with North Korea, I can look at trade a little bit differently, at least for a period of time. And that’s what I’ve been doing. But when oil is going in, I’m not happy about that. I think I expressed that in probably [inaudible].
TRUMP, as aides walk by: And, by the way, it’s not a tweet. It’s social media, and it gets out in the world, and the reason I do well is that I can be treated unfairly and very dishonestly by CNN, and, you know, I have — what do have now, John, 158 million, including Facebook, including Twitter, including Instagram, including every form, I have a 158 million people. Reporting just this morning, they said 158 million. So if they a do a story that’s false, I can do something — otherwise, Andy, otherwise you just sort of walk around saying what can I do? What, am I going to have a press conference every time somebody, every time Michael writes something wrong?
So, China on trade has ripped off this country more than any other element of the world in history has ripped off anything. But I can be different if they’re helping us with North Korea. If they don’t help us with North Korea, then I do what I’ve always said I want to do. China can help us much more, and they have to help us much more. And they have to help us much more. We have a nuclear menace out there, which is no good for China, and it’s not good for Russia. It’s no good for anybody. Does that make sense?
SCHMIDT: Yeah, yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
TRUMP: The only thing that supersedes trade to me — because I’m the big trade guy, I got elected to a certain extent on trade. You see, I’m renegotiating Nafta, or I’ll terminate it. If I don’t make the right deal, I’ll terminate Nafta in two seconds. But we’re doing pretty good. You know, it’s easier to renegotiate it if we make it a fair deal because Nafta was a terrible deal for us. We lost $71 billion a year with Mexico, can you believe it? $17 billion with Canada — Canada says we broke even. But they don’t include lumber and they don’t include oil. Oh, that’s not. … [Inaudible,] … My friend Justin he says, “No, no, we break even.” I said, ‘Yeah, but you’re not including oil, and you’re not including lumber.” When you do, you lose $17 billion, and with the other one, we’re losing $71 billion. So the only thing that supersedes trade to me is war. If we can solve the North Korea problem. China cannot. …
SCHMIDT: You still think there’s a diplomatic solution?
TRUMP: China has a tremendous power over North Korea. Far greater than anyone knows.
SCHMIDT: Why haven’t they stood up?
TRUMP: I hope they do, but as of this moment, they haven’t. They could be much stronger.
SCHMIDT: But why not?
TRUMP: China can solve the North Korea problem, and they’re helping us, and they’re even helping us a lot, but they’re not helping us enough. [New York Times]
It appears that the Moon administration is trying to develop a political path to bring the Kaesong Industrial Park back from the dead:
This file photo shows the Kaesong Industrial Complex, the now-shuttered inter-Korean industrial park, just north of the inter-Korean border. (Yonhap)
Ousted former President Park Geun-hye unilaterally ordered the shutdown of an inter-Korean industrial complex last year without proper consultations or a legitimate process, a panel report showed Thursday.
The report was unveiled by a nine-member committee of civilian experts that has been reviewing the previous conservative governments’ North Korea policies, including Seoul’s closure of the Kaesong Industrial Complex in February 2016. The panel was launched by Seoul’s unification ministry in September.
The Park administration shut down the factory zone, just north of the inter-Korean border, in response to North Korea’s fourth nuclear test and long-range rocket launch in 2016. The move put an end to the last symbol of inter-Korean reconciliation.
“It is verified that the closure was decided by the president’s unilateral verbal order without discussions or consultations at the official decision-making level,” the report showed.
The former government said that the shutdown was decided at a National Security Council meeting on Feb. 10, 2016, right before the announcement. But the report showed that Park made the order two days earlier.
It also said that the closure was a decision that transcended law, adding that even a political decision amid a security crisis should be made within the boundary of law and under legal procedures. [Yonhap]
It was no secret that the Kaesong Industrial Park could be shutdown in retaliation for North Korean provocations. There were plenty of discussions over a prolonged period of time before the final shutdown in 2016. Park may have decided she wanted to shutdown Kaesong, but she still clearly held a National Security Council meeting to discuss it before the final decision was announced. This seems like an extreme reach to try and find fault with the decision making process in my opinion.
Here is the most ridiculous part of the government’s findings:
At that time, the ministry said that the decision was aimed at preventing money generated by the industrial park from bankrolling North Korea’s nuclear and missile development.
But the panel said that there is no sufficient information or evidence to support the claim that funds from the complex had been used for other purposes.
“This hampers the legitimacy of the government’s decision and limits Seoul’s future stance over the resumption of the Kaesong complex,” the report showed.
The Kim regime is paid directly in US dollars which makes it very easy for the Kim regime to divert the money to support their weapons programs as has been previously reported:
South Korea said 70 percent of the U.S. dollars paid as wages and fees for the suspended Kaesong industrial project, run jointly with the North, had been diverted for Pyongyang’s weapons program and luxury goods for leader Kim Jong Un. (……)
“The wages for the North’s workers and other fees were paid in cash in U.S. dollars to the North’s authorities and not to the workers,” South Korea’s Unification Ministry said on Sunday. “This is believed to be channeled in the same way as other foreign currency it earned.”
The cash is then kept and managed by the ruling Workers’ Party’s Office 39 and other agencies, the ministry said. The ministry said it had confirmed the movement of the money through various sources but did not specify them.
Office 39 is widely believed to exist to finance the luxurious lifestyle of the North’s leader. The office is also believed to be part of the North’s agencies that fund the country’s missile and nuclear program. [Reuters]
For the Moon administration to claim that no money from Kaesong was used to support the Kim regime’s weapons programs is very deceptive. This is because the Kim regime is not going to provide a financial audit that shows conclusively where the dollars they received went to. However, reasonable people can conclude that any money received by the Kim regime from Kaesong to fund their government is more money ultimately available to fund their weapons programs.
The Moon administration clearly has a political motive to try and reopen Kaesong, but I would be very surprised if the Trump administration will ever agree to this. Could you imagine the Tweet storm from President Trump if President Moon announces the reopening of the Kaesong Industrial Complex?
Participants, along with a girl statue symbolizing a “comfort woman,” sit on 300 chairs placed at Gwanghwamun Square in downtown Seoul in a performance themed “A Promise Inscribed on an Empty Chair” after finishing this year’s final weekly rally in front of the Japanese Embassy on Dec. 27, 2017, calling for Japan’s apology for its army’s sexual enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Korean women during World War II. Such victims are euphemistically called “comfort women.” Portraits of late comfort women and chrysanthemums are placed on the chairs. (Yonhap)
This was pretty stupid that this ship would sail into a South Korean port after illegally delivering oil to North Korea:
This composite photo of oil transfer between China and North Korea is captured from the website of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. (Yonhap)
A Hong Kong-flagged vessel has been seized and inspected by South Korean authorities after secretly transferring oil to a North Korean vessel in international waters in a ship-to-ship transfer prohibited by the United Nations Security Council, government officials said Friday.
South Korean customs authorities took and searched the vessel, Lighthouse Winmore, when it entered the country’s Yeosu Port on Nov. 24 after transferring 600 tons of refined petroleum to a North Korean vessel on Oct. 19, the officials said.
UNSC Resolution 2375, adopted in September, bans member countries from ship-to-ship transfer of any goods for North Korea. Resolution 2397, adopted just a week earlier allows a country to capture and look into a vessel suspected of engaging in prohibited activities with North Korea.
The Hong Kong-flagged ship was chartered by Taiwanese company Billions Bunker Group and previously visited South Korea’s Yeosu Port on Oct. 11 to load up on Japanese refined petroleum and head to its claimed destination in Taiwan four days later, the authorities noted.
Instead of going to Taiwan, however, the vessel transferred the oil to a North Korean ship, the Sam Jong 2, and three other non-North Korean vessels in international waters in the East China Sea, they said. [Yonhap]
You can read the rest at the link, but the ROK is expected to hold on to the ship for six months while the legal process plays out. It seems to me the ROK ought to just auction the ship off. How many companies would want to do illegal oil transfers with North Korea if they risk having their shipped sold off?
