1st confirmation of underground passageway: KCTV shows footage of Kim Jong-Un in tunnel w Hwasong-12 (KC-17) on TELhttps://t.co/Udf7UM6Txu

— Noon in Korea (@NoonInKorea) July 15, 2017

Visitors look at a giant beetle sculpture on display at the KINTEX exhibition hall, northwest of Seoul, on July 14, 2017, as the World Insect Fair opened for a run till Aug. 20, featuring 30,000 live insects, including 100 rare ones. (Yonhap)

Considering in the past rapists would go free because victims did not resist enough, the fact this teacher received six years is surprising:

A high school teacher has been jailed for six years for sexually harassing a female student multiple times.

The Daegu High Court’s ruling on Sunday did not change the lower court sentence of the man, who is in his 50s, on charges of infringing laws on sexually protecting adolescents and teenagers.

The court heard that at about 7:20 p.m. last September the man called the student, who had recently broken up with her boyfriend, to a teachers’ office, saying he had advice on the matter.

The teacher asked her to take off her clothes, saying he would “personally check if she had had illicit experience with her boyfriend.”

The man told the girl to do this four times in one month, calling her to isolated places in the school.

The court said the victim “suffered extreme mental distress and embarrassment, which may disrupt her sexual security or socio-interactive understanding to be formed in future.”

However, the court took into account the man’s clean criminal record and the fact that he had admitted the offenses.  [Korea Times]

Here is an interesting interview with a journalist who worked for six months as an English teacher in North Korea:

In 2011, American journalist Suki Kim secured a job teaching English at an all-male university in North Korea. Pyongyang University of Science and Technology had just 270 students, all of whom were the sons of North Korean elites.

Kim spent six months at the college, recording notes for what would become her 2014 book, Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Korea’s Elite.

Last week, after the news that North Korea had conducted yet another missile test, I reached out to Kim by phone. Her perspective is valuable and rare; few Americans have spent much time on the ground there. I wanted to know what daily life was like for average citizens of North Korea, the world’s most reclusive country.

“The level of fear is unimaginable,” she told me. “It’s possible to be both happy and terrified all at once, and I think that’s the case for many North Koreans.”  [VOX.com]

Here is a small snippet from the interview:

Sean Illing

If the Kim Jong Un regime were to collapse tomorrow, and North Koreans were suddenly liberated, how do you think they would react?

Suki Kim

I feel like they would probably be relieved about the system. But I also think they’d find something else to believe in absolutely, some kind of faith that requires total fidelity. There’s a deeper layer of psychological trauma here that is difficult to grasp. I think they’re conditioned to follow whoever is in power, whoever is appointed the leader.

We’ve now had three generations of tyrannical rule and abuse, and people who have lived under this their entire life have never thought for themselves. How do you fully account for that kind of damage? My suspicion is that they’d blindly follow whoever would ascend to power. I hate to say it, but the soil is ripe for future dictatorships.

You can read the whole interview at the link.

It would be political suicide if the Moon administration forced the 12 North Koreans who defected from a restaurant in China to be repatriated:

South Korea may propose inter-Korean military talks as early as this week to follow up on President Moon Jae-in’s offer to stop all acts of hostility on the border, a government official said Sunday.

The unification, military and other relevant ministries are discussing the plan one day after Pyongyang first reacted to Moon’s suggestion, according to the official who asked not to be named de to sensitivity of the issue.

During his speech in Berlin on July 6, Moon laid out his vision for bringing peace to the Korean Peninsula, including a proposal to mutually halt acts of hostility along their tense border as of the July 27 anniversary of the armistice treaty that ended the three-year Korean War in 1953.

He also offered to hold reunions of families torn apart by the war on Oct. 4, Korea’s lunar fall harvest holiday and the 10th anniversary of the second inter-Korean summit.

The Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the North’s ruling party, carried a commentary by a private writer, on Saturday saying it seemed “fortunate” as Moon included his government’s committment to the landmark joint declarations signed at the inter-Korean summits in 2000 and 2007. The two declarations aim to foster cross-border cooperation, exchanges and reconciliation.

The newspaper emphasized that the first step to improve relations should be the resolution of the fundamental issue of military confrontation.  (………..)

But experts said the resumption of the event may take a bumpy road since the communist state continued in the commentary to demand South Korea repatriate 12 female North Koreans who worked at a Pyongyang-run restaurant in China and defected to Seoul en masse last year.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Pay attention to this: N. Korea likely developing more accurate close-range ballistic missiles: report https://t.co/OL0KrAawkN

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) July 15, 2017

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un takes part in a ceremony at Mansudae Assembly Hall in Pyongyang to praise the officials who contributed to what the North said was the successful launch of a Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile, in this photo released by North Korea’s state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper on July 13, 2017. (Yonhap)

Test of foreigners applying to become English teachers in South Korea may have ended, but a stigma may remain according to this article:

And while organizations like the Korean Federation for AIDS Prevention provides foreigners with HIV/AIDS resources and free, anonymous testing, HIV-positive foreigners are vulnerable to deportation out of the country, as potential “persons carrying an epidemic disease, narcotic addicts or other persons deemed likely to cause danger and harm to the public health” defined in Article 11 of the Immigration Control Act.

According to Michael Solis, a visiting researcher at the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, the government had deported more than 500 foreigners who were HIV-positive as of 2007. Kwon said that in 2010, following UNAIDS criticism of South Korean travel restrictions, the government stopped banning and deporting foreign teachers with HIV. But for those who test positive, it remains difficult to afford treatment or be hired as teachers and educators, she added.

Stigma around foreigners and HIV/AIDS remains.  [Korea Expose]

You can read the rest at the link.

Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.

It looks like missile defense will continue to be a growth industry for US defense contractors:

The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed a defense bill calling for increased spending on missile defense programs amid North Korea’s evolving threats.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018 (H.R. 2810) passed 344-81 to order US$696 billion for defense in the fiscal year 2018, including some $12.5 billion for missile defense programs.

“The Committee continues to be a strong supporter of a robust missile defense program given the increasing threats against our homeland and regional allies posed by North Korea, Iran and others,” the House Committee on Armed Services said in a summary of the bill posted on its website. “The bill adds $2.5 billion above the President’s budget request to meet critical missile defense needs. It also recognizes the increasing quantitative and qualitative nature of the ballistic missile threats we face as a nation.”  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.