For people in Korea interested in purchasing the new iPhone X you may have to wait awhile because Apple is not prioritizing getting the phone to the Republic of Samsung any time soon:

Apple fans in Korea watched the company’s unveiling of its new devices Wednesday morning and got their first glimpses of the highly-anticipated 10th anniversary iPhone X, and successors to the iPhone 7, the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus.

But if they plan on buying those new Apple phones, they might have to wait – possibly until January for the special-edition iPhone X.

The iPhone 8 models and the iPhone X won’t be released at the same time. Apple is set to accept orders for 4.7-inch iPhone 8 and its bigger sibling, the 5.5-inch 8 Plus, on Friday and will begin shipping on Sept. 22. The first batch of countries to receive deliveries on Sept. 22 total 29 and Korea is excluded. The second batch, also totaling 29, will see the phones delivered on Sept. 29. Korea is not in that group.

Orders and deliveries for the 5.8-inch iPhone X will be later, a confirmation of rumors that Apple is having trouble with its supply of key components including OLED displays.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

Another example of the expansion of the entitlement culture.  Fortunately the ROK Supreme Court shot down this attempt to make parents responsible for paying for the tuition of their adult children:

Parents do not have custodial duties for adult child, the top court has ruled.

The Supreme Court set the rule with a case in which an adult son filed a suit against his divorced father, demanding he cover the cost of studying in the United States.

The court rejected the claim, stating that the father was not obliged to look after his adult child.

The father-son dispute dates back to 2010 when the father’s second son fled to the U.S. at age 15 for study, without his father’s consent. The father refused to support the son there, including school tuition and other living costs.

The parents divorced shortly afterward, with the mother given custody and the father obliged to support their basic life.

In 2016, the son filed a suit against the father, demanding that he pay 140 million won ($123,000) to cover tuition and living costs at a prestigious university to which he was admitted in 2014.

The son claimed his father was obliged to support him financially because “an increasing number of children make their living with money from their parents.”  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Reports Confirm North Korea Has Enough Oil To Survive An Embargo | Zero Hedge https://t.co/b8GadNBKye

— NorthKoreaRealTime (@BuckTurgidson79) September 10, 2017

Flowers are laid at the tombs of Chinese soldiers, killed in the 1950-53 Korean War, in the city of Paju, north of Seoul, on Sept. 12, 2017. China fought on the North Korean side in the war against South Korea aided by the United States-led Allied Forces. (Yonhap)

This is something that can take people new to South Korea by surprise.  Personally I have spent so much time in South Korea that I hardly even notice the female restroom cleaners when they walk in, much less feel my human rights are being violated:

Men’s toilets in Korea have been places of embarrassment and the subject of debate for years, especially among non-Koreans, because of women cleaners there.

Whenever females enter, wearing rubber gloves and holding brushes to scrub urinals and toilet seats, male patrons cannot help feeling embarrassed.

The cleaners, mostly ajumma ― Korean jargon for tough middle-aged women ― apparently cause serious mental discomfort to men who cannot handle the awkward situation.

Some patrons are philosophical with the attitude that the women are simply doing their jobs. But other patrons claim the presence of the women is violating the men’s human rights.

“I haven’t seen this trend in other countries, but the fact that women clean men’s toilets, while men are busy urinating, is a violation of basic human rights,” said South African Francois Pieters, who has lived in Korea for almost four years and was shocked to experience such an encounter on Sep. 7.

“Most of the foreign men in Korea, if not all of them, are shocked by this and yes, we do feel violated.”

Pieters claimed he went to a toilet in Seolleung Station in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, to change clothes for a wedding, but could not do so because two cleaning women were there.

“If they can put up a sign, like almost all of the other countries I’ve been to, then that would not violate anybody’s human rights,” Pieters said.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

As expected the United Nations sanctions in response to North Korea’s nuclear test have been watered down by the Russians and the Chinese.  The cuts in oil imports and ban on textile exports will inconvenience the Kim regime, but I see nothing in these sanctions that will be a game changer in regards to changing the current status quo on the peninsula which is what the Chinese and Russians want to maintain:

The UN Security Council on Monday unanimously adopted new sanctions against North Korea following its sixth nuclear test, imposing a cap on exports of crude oil to the country, though it fell short of a complete ban.

The 15-member council based in New York approved Resolution 2375, which imposes a cap on the supply, sales or transfer of crude oil to North Korea to the level of the past 12 months, some 4 million barrels, and limits exports of refined petroleum products to the country to 2 million barrels a year. It also bans the sale of condensates and natural gas liquids to the North.

However, the latest resolution fell short of the complete oil embargo called for in an earlier U.S.-drafted resolution, which would have needed the support of veto-wielding members China and Russia.

The resolution, though considered a watered-down version of the U.S. draft, will reduce oil provided to North Korea by around 30 percent, according to the U.S. mission to the United Nations, and cut off over 55 percent of refined petroleum products going to the country. China is the largest supplier of crude oil to the North.

It also includes a ban on North Korean textile exports, which was the country’s second largest export category in 2016 after coal and other minerals, and is expected to reduce its revenues by up to $800 million.

The latest resolution does not include North Korean leader Kim Jong-un or his sister on its blacklist, as initially proposed.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

A ROK Drop favorite Andrei Lankov explains why Russia is going to attempt to water down United Nations sanctions on North Korea or veto them all together and it has nothing to do with Putin taking an anti-US position:

Vladimir Putin was right when he recently said that even if North Koreans have to eat grass, they will not surrender nuclear weapons (of course, in North Korea the people who make decisions on nuclear weapons are far removed from the people who would have no choice but to eat grass).

However, there is the probability that a really harsh sanctions regime will eventually provoke a grave political crisis and revolution in North Korea: instead of eating grass, the people will rebel.

For American observers, who will watch enthusiastic TV reports about a North Korean revolution in safety, this development, as long as it does not trigger a region-wide war, will be welcome. After all, regime collapse will bring about the complete solution of the North Korean nuclear issue, the U.S.’s overwhelming concern.

However, Russia and China, inconveniently located on the border with North Korea, have reasons to be unenthusiastic about prospects of a Syria-like or Libya-like situation, anarchy and civil war in a nuclear-armed country nearby. For Moscow – and, for that matter, for Beijing – a collapsing North Korea is a greater threat than a nuclear one, however bad a nuclear North Korea is.  [NK News]

You can read the rest of the analysis at the link.

We're thinking of the hurricane but tomorrow is 9/11. I reread this story every year. So should you. https://t.co/Vf1c2uxgiG

— Arie Friedman, MD (@ArieFriedman) September 11, 2017

Meanwhile in California:

I would not be surprised if this guy is a North Korean plant in South Korea to say propaganda like what is in this article or is being told to say these things for fear of harm to family members back in North Korea.  It is like he is just repeating things straight from the Uriminzokkiri Twitter account:

Five years into his resettlement, the defector says the social environment is so different from the North that calls for unification no longer ring true for him.

“It’s better there is no unification,” he said. “If unification takes place now, only civil war and chaos would erupt,” as South Korea is not ready to deal with a flood of refugees coming to Seoul in the event of the Kim regime’s collapse.

He said discrimination is an obstacle and his fellow defectors struggle in menial jobs.

It is frosty indifference that is the greatest barrier to adjustment, he said, suggesting the real “nuclear” catastrophe on the peninsula has already happened with the nuclearization of Korean lives.

South Koreans “take no interest in your life,” he said. “There is not one person who wants to be your friend. In apartment buildings here, they do not even know who their next-door neighbors are.”

By contrast, in North Korean apartment communities, families “gather on the rooftop to play together, drink soju together and eat,” he said. “In South Korea you cannot have that kind of enjoyment. South Koreans only seek you out when they need you.”

He also criticized South Korea’s politics.

“South Korea has no ideology of its own,” he said.

“I came hoping to contribute to the healing of a divided country…but after living here I think it’s accurate to say South Koreans are [American] puppets,” he added, using the term commonly used to refer to South Korea in North Korea propaganda.

He also said South Koreans fear being at odds with the United States. “That’s why Americans don’t even regard [South] Koreans as human beings, or Asians in general,” he said.  [UPI]

Here is what he had to say about defectors who have testified about human rights abuses:

“There’s too much focus on North Korea’s human rights abuses, too little on how it is a society constructed for the people,” he said, adding the defectors who expose human rights violations represent the worst of North Korean society.

“If you only bring together people who spent time in prison, all you get is the gutter,” he said, adding that many defector testimonies in United Nations Commission of Inquiry reports are “lies.”

“They should all be put away.”  [UPI]

You can read more at the link.