It looks like this defector couple may have repatriated themselves back to North Korea:
This image captured from footage by North Korea’s propaganda outlet Uriminzokkiri on Aug. 28, 2017, shows Lim Ji-hyun, a North Korea woman who defected to South Korea in 2014 and returned home in June. In a video, she condemned South Korean TV programs featuring North Korean refugees. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)
South Korea is looking into the whereabouts of a North Korean defector couple amid speculation that they may have voluntarily returned to North Korea via China, Seoul’s unification ministry said Monday.
A local cable TV channel reported Sunday that the 30-something defector couple could not be reached after they left for China in mid-October.
“As they fell out of touch after leaving for China, authorities are investigating the case,” Baik Tae-hyun, ministry spokesman, told a regular press briefing.
It cannot not be confirmed if they voluntarily re-entered North Korea unless they appear on the North’s propaganda outlets to say so.
The ministry said that 26 North Korean defectors have gone back to the North so far. The number of North Koreans coming to South Korea stood at 31,093 as of end-September.
In mid-July, a North Korean female defector appeared in a propaganda video, saying she returned to North Korea in June after suffering “physically and mentally” in the capitalist South. [Yonhap]
Protesters create the message “Arrest MB” with candles during a rally in downtown Seoul on Oct. 21, 2017. MB refers to former President Lee Myung-bak, who is accused of oppressing the media, artists, politicians and other prominent figures critical of him, using the intelligence agency as the controlling tool. Oct. 29 marks the first anniversary of the candlelight protest that led to the ouster of Lee’s successor, Park Geun-hye. (Yonhap)
The Supreme Court has confirmed life imprisonment for a woman who killed her married lover’s wife with poison.The top court upheld an appellate court’s verdict.
According to court documents, the woman, Han, 48, met Yoo, a married man who became her lover, at a gathering of friends from elementary school in February 2014.
Han told Yoo’s wife of their “deep and serious” relationship, hoping this would lead to the couple’s breakup.But instead Yoo’s wife offered to pay Han 350 million won ($309,700) if she ended the relationship.
In January 2015, Han visited Yoo’s apartment in Songpa-gu, Seoul, with a bottle of soju mixed with potassium cyanide.Yoo’s wife drank the toxic liquid while talking with Han, and died soon after.
Han claimed Yoo’s husband could have killed his wife.
But investigators found evidence that Han collected information about how and where to buy potassium cyanide.
They also found evidence that her husband was informed of the poisoning plan before hand. [Korea Times]
At 93 years old it would be pretty amazing if former President Carter ends up making a trip to Pyongyang to negotiate an end to the latest nuclear crisis:
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter landed in North Korea on June 15, 1994 as Washington was getting close to bombing the Yongbyon nuclear facility. After talks with then-Pyongyang leader Kim Il Sung, Carter managed to broker a deal that diffused the crisis – and prevented another war on the peninsula. [YONHAP]Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said he is willing to go on a diplomatic mission to North Korea on behalf of President Donald Trump, saying that China’s influence on the Pyongyang regime is “greatly overestimated.”
“I would go, yes,” Carter, 93, told a New York Times columnist at his home in Plains, Georgia, about whether he would go to Pyongyang for the Republican Trump administration.
According to an article published Saturday, Carter said that he has spoken with H. R. McMaster, Trump’s national security adviser, whom he called a good friend, and said, “I told him that I was available if they ever need me.”
But so far, he has gotten a negative response.
“I’m afraid, too, of a situation,” Carter said, remarking on the concern in Washington over the bellicose exchanges between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. “I don’t know what they’ll do. Because they want to save their regime,” referring to the North.
He voiced concern that the young leader Kim may try pre-emptive action if he thinks Trump would act against him, and added, “I think he’s now got advanced nuclear weaponry that can destroy the Korean Peninsula and Japan,” as well as outlying territories in the Pacific and maybe even parts of the U.S. mainland. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Here is what retired General and former CIA Director David Petraeus had to say about President Trump’s rhetoric towards North Korea:
David Petraeus
The United States is unlikely to go to nuclear war with North Korea despite the recent escalation in tensions, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency said Sunday.
David Petraeus, who served in the Barack Obama administration from 2011-2012, said he thinks U.S. President Donald Trump has been using tough rhetoric with North Korea to get the attention of the leadership in China, not in Pyongyang.
“This is about getting President Xi’s attention … so that China will really clamp down on the umbilical cord through which 90 percent of the trade that goes to and from North Korea transits,” Petraeus said in an interview on ABC News.
China is able to “bring North Korea to its senses,” he added, alluding to Beijing’s leverage as Pyongyang’s main ally and economic benefactor.
North Korea carried out two long-range missile tests in July and a sixth nuclear test in September. Trump declared shortly thereafter that he would “totally destroy” the North if it posed a direct threat to the U.S.
Petraeus said a nuclear war is still unlikely.
“I don’t think likely. No,” he said. “I think, in fact, that again all of this is a communications strategy that is trying to make sure that China understands that this administration is in a very different situation from any of its predecessors, that North Korea on this president’s watch could have the capability to hit a city in the United States with a nuclear weapon.” [Yonhap]
American golfer Justin Thomas poses with his trophy after winning the inaugural CJ Cup @Nine Bridges on Jeju Island on Oct. 22, 2017. Thomas won the first PGA Tour event in South Korea in a playoff against Marc Leishman from Australia. (Yonhap)
A ROK defense source is saying that the North Koreans may have tested their way out of a viable nuclear test site:
A satellite photo of a North Korean region near its Punggry-ri nuclear test (R), provided by 38 North, indicates landslides there following the Sept. 3 test. (Yonhap)
Even if North Korea wants to conduct another nuclear test, it may be facing a big hurdle to preparations at its testing site amid signs of topographic damage from the previous experiment, an informed South Korean defense source said Monday.
“The possibility of North Korea’s additional provocations remains open all the time,” the source said in response to the weeks-long break in its belligerent acts, as the South’s Defense Minister Song Young-moon visited the Philippines to participate in the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM)-Plus session.
The Kim Jong-un regime may be weighing the technological aspects of its nuclear and missile program and political timing, added the source.
The North passed the Oct. 10 founding anniversary of the powerful Workers’ Party and the opening of China’s communist party congress last week with any provocation. (……)
But it remains unclear whether the North will be able to carry out a seventh nuclear test in the near future amid reports of continued natural earthquakes near the Punggye-ri test area following the Sept. 3 hydrogen bomb test there with the destructive yield of more than 50 kilotons, according to the source.
“If it tries to send a meaningful message to the world with another nuclear test, it would require a more powerful bomb,” added the source. “North Korea will consider whether it will keep testing nuclear weapons there, including a review of topography.” [Yonhap]
I wonder if this guy forgot that Guam is part of the United States?:
A man wanted in connection with sex crimes in Oregon was apprehended on Guam after he arrived here on a flight from South Korea, according to a written statement from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The 59-year-old man, who is not named in the statement, is wanted on charges of rape in the first degree, sodomy in the first degree and two counts of sex abuse in the first degree, according to the statement.
The South Korean man arrived on a flight Oct. 19 and was taken into custody by Customs and Border Protection. [Pacific Daily News]
