This is something that should have been done a long time ago, but it took using a nerve agent in an international airport before finally getting relisted:

North Korea bristled at the United States on Wednesday for re-listing Pyongyang as a state sponsor of terrorism, calling the move by Washington a “serious provocation.”

The North’s foreign ministry spokesman told its state media that Pyongyang would continue to strengthen its deterrent force against the U.S. hostile policy.

U.S. President Donald Trump put North Korea back on a list of state sponsors of terrorism for the first time in nine years, stepping up pressure on the North to give up its nuclear weapons ambition.

A day after the re-listing, Washington on Tuesday imposed new sanctions targeting Chinese and North Korean entities and vessels suspected of aiding North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

North Korea said the U.S. re-listing is “a serious provocation and a violent infringement upon our dignified country.”

“The U.S. will be held entirely accountable for all the consequences to be entailed by its impudent provocation to the DPRK (North Korea),” the North Korean ministry spokesman said.  [Yonhap]

The North Koreans were removed from the State Sponsor of Terrorism list in 2008 for denuclearization promises which they have never kept.  The State Department has refused to add them back to the list ever since despite them never answering for terrorist incidents against South Korea to include a hijacking where ROK citizens are still held hostage in North Korea.  It seems the North Koreans should have never been taken off the list until they came clean and paid reparations for these prior crimes.

My thoughts on China's "tough" position on North Korea – this time the changes seem to be more serious than it has been in the past decade or so https://t.co/JSanpBSiLE

— Andrei Lankov (@andreilankov) November 20, 2017

A group of U.S. soldiers stationed in South Korea joins an event in Seoul on Nov. 21, 2017, to donate coal briquettes to the impoverished. (Yonhap)

Make no mistake that the only reason the anti-US groups want increased transparency is to use any documents they can demagogue and not provide full context of to inflame public opinion against USFK:

In a major step to enhance transparency in American forces stationed here, South Korea and the United States agreed on Tuesday to make public any non-confidential information they have in relation to the United States Forces Korea.

“The Joint Committee discussed cooperative efforts to further enhance transparency of SOFA-related affairs with the Korean public,” the allies said in a joint press release following the 198th joint committee meeting of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) earlier in the day.

SOFA is a bilateral agreement detailing the legal terms for the U.S. stationing of some 28,000 troops in South Korea.

“The Joint Committee agreed to cooperate in every possible way to disclose non-confidential information related to SOFA implementation agreements to enhance public awareness and use well-established SOFA procedures,” according to the joint release.

Each year, the allies produce about 100 documented agreements and they will all be made available for public view except those that are classified as military secrets or have special reason for nondisclosure, a ranking ministry official said.

The latest agreement came amid increasing local civil demand for more transparency in matters related to the USFK’s more than six-decade stationing in the South against potential North Korean aggression.

Claiming the public right to know, two civil rights groups have filed an administrative litigation, demanding the defense minister disclose details of the South Korea-U.S. negotiations leading to the deployment of the American defense system Terminal High Altitude Area Defense in South Korea.

The Seoul Administrative Court, however, dismissed the civic groups’ suit, saying the information is classified.

Environmental pollution at American military bases in South Korea has also led to increased calls for public access to USFK-related information.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Via a reader tip comes this article showing the amount of illegal weapons that are seized at airports in South Korea:

Nineteen people have been caught this year trying to bring guns onto planes in Korea, a sharp increase from just one from last year.

According to Rep. Park Wan-su of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party, Monday, 25 such cases occurred at airports across the country between January 2014 and this September.

The number changed little from two in 2014 to three in 2015 and one in 2016, but it has soared at an alarming rate over the past nine months.

During that period, 25 guns, 1,368 bullets, 395 knives and 1,374 other weapons such as stun guns have been seized.

“All the nation’s airports and related institutions should beef up their security in response to an increasing number of such attempts,” Park said.

According to Rep. Park Chan-woo of the same party, 34 people were caught at Incheon International Airport trying to smuggle guns into the country between January 2012 and this August.

During that period, 2,819 illegal weapons, including 1,483 bullets and 426 knives, were seized. The lawmaker said 45.8 percent of them came from the United States.   [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but I wonder how many of these guns found are from people forgetting they had one packed in their bag or were they legitimately trying to smuggle it into Korea?

I agree that the word “American” should be kept in the name of the school to distinguish it from other international schools in South Korea:

After a public outcry, the word “American” was restored to the name of the soon-to-be-consolidated middle/high school at the Army’s Yongsan Garrison in Seoul, officials said Wednesday.

“Please know that we acknowledge and appreciate the proud legacy of our Seoul American Schools,” Lois Rapp, a Department of Defense Education Activity official, said in an email. “The combined school will be named Seoul American Middle/High School.”

Falling enrollment due to the ongoing move of U.S. troops and their families to Camp Humphreys as the military transitions its headquarters 40 miles south of Seoul prompted DODEA to combine the Seoul American Middle School and the Seoul American High School.

In a memo to parents and a recent town hall, school officials said the combined school would be called the Seoul Middle High School.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read the rest at the link.

Um, no. I will not be downloading Adobe Flash Player from KCNA.kp pic.twitter.com/4gIElOQg5q

— Curtis Melvin 커티스 멜빈 (@CurtisMelvin) November 16, 2017

Holidaymakers watch an early Christmas parade during a winter festival at the Everland amusement park in Yongin, south of Seoul, on Nov. 19, 2017. (Yonhap)

The Washington Post has an article published that features interviews with 25 recently defected North Koreans that explains what life is like under the Kim Jong-un regime.  I did not read anything I did not already know, but it is an interesting article none the less:

When Kim Jong Un became the leader of North Korea almost six years ago, many North Koreans thought that their lives were going to improve. He offered the hope of generational change in the world’s longest-running communist dynasty. After all, he was so young. A millennial. Someone with experience of the outside world.

But the “Great Successor,” as he is called by the regime, has turned out to be every bit as brutal as his father and grandfather before him. Even as he has allowed greater economic freedom, he has tried to seal the country off more than ever, tightening security along the border with China and stepping up the punishments for those who dare to try to cross it. And at home, freedom of speech, and of thought, is still a mirage.

In six months of interviews in South Korea and Thailand, The Washington Post talked with more than 25 North Koreans from different walks of life who lived in Kim Jong Un’s North Korea and managed to escape from it. In barbecue restaurants, cramped apartments and hotel rooms, these refugees provided the fullest account to date of daily life inside North Korea and how it has changed, and how it hasn’t, since Kim took over from his father, Kim Jong Il, at the end of 2011. Many are from the northern parts of the country that border China — the part of North Korea where life is toughest, and where knowledge about the outside world just across the river is most widespread — and are from the relatively small segment of the population that is prepared to take the risks involved in trying to escape.  [Washington Post]

You can read the rest at the link, but a major theme from the interviews is that the market economy is providing for the daily needs of people and not the regime.  Also people are leaving North Korea now not because of hunger but of disillusionment brought on by the regime’s activities and information from the outside world.  I look at this as validation of why an aggressive information war should be fought within North Korea to cause further disillusionment with the regime.

I don’t see what is so surprising about President Trump’s comment, it is no secret that he has been pushing to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States:

While circling the sky near the inter-Korean border last week, U.S. President Donald Trump posed a question that later took the leader of South Korea’s ruling party by surprise.

According to Choo Mi-ae of the Democratic Party, Trump was on his Marine One helicopter to the heavily fortified demilitarized zone when he turned to White House chief economic director Gary Cohn and said: “I just saw something amazing. There are so many factories. Can’t they be built in the U.S.?”

The trip to the DMZ was later canceled due to fog and Trump had to turn back to Seoul to continue his two-day state visit. The trip was watched closely because Trump had threatened to use military options against North Korea and engaged in a war of words with the regime over its nuclear and missile programs.

“I think President Trump understood, while he was in the air for 30 minutes, that 25 million people were living in the area below him and that they would be wiped out in the event of war,” Choo said in a meeting with reporters in New York. “But I was so surprised when Director Cohn told me this story. Wasn’t (Trump) essentially saying we should build our auto parts factories in the U.S., too?”  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.