Considering that the suspect is an ethnic Korean it will be interesting to see if the Korean media tries to keep a low key approach to this case or not:
An American soldier of Korean ethnicity has been charged with raping a Korean woman at a Busan guesthouse.
Busan Jungbu police have charged the man, 21, with raping the woman, 24.
The soldier, from a U.S. Forces Korea camp in Gyeonggi Province, made the woman’s acquaintance through an online dating app.
On Feb. 18, he met her in person in Busan while on a brief vacation. At about 4:30 a.m., after they had been drinking, the soldier took her to a guesthouse, where he allegedly raped her.
Police said the man had denied the charge.
The police plan to refer the case to U.S. military police, who will deal with it according to the Status of Forces Agreement between Seoul and Washington. [Korea Times]
The man in the video who arrived at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport does have a pretty good resemblance to Kim Jong-nam:
There is no sign of Kim Han-sol at Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 (KLIA2) following speculation that he was on his way here.
As at 11pm Monday, reporters were seen leaving KLIA2 after failing to confirm the arrival of Han-sol, the son of the Kim Jong-nam who was killed last Monday.
However, there was a slight commotion when a man, whom media suspected of being Han-sol stepped out of the domestic arrival gate.
The man, who was wearing a cap, earphones and a black face mask, walked away before the gathered media were able to ask him any questions.
Earlier in the day, a message circulated among the media that the 22-year-old son of murdered Kim Jong-nam would be touching down at KLIA2 at around 7.30pm. [The Star]
Rep. Lee Cheol-woo, chairman of the National Assembly’s intelligence committee; Kim Kwan-yong, governor of North Gyeongsang Province; and Rep. Lee Wan-young of the ruling Liberty Korea Party (L to R) call for the deployment of an advanced U.S. missile defense system, dubbed “the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD),” on the country’s soil during a news conference in Seoul on Feb. 16, 2017. The main opposition Democratic Party opposes the deployment. (Yonhap)
Via a reader tip comes this news that North Korea is looking for English teachers willing to work for many years in the country, but there is a catch you can’t leave campus:
Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), North Korea’s first privately funded university, is recruiting English teachers.
The school is receiving applications from candidates in dozens of countries, many of which are ironically non-English speaking countries such as South Korea, China and Japan.
Preference is given to candidates who have a long-term mindset and are open to staying at PUST for a number of years,” the university says in its recruiting message on www.heysuccess.com , a British recruiting website.
“English teachers are required to commit to an entire 15-week semester. The spring semester begins in early March and finishes in mid-June. The fall semester begins in early September and finishes in mid-December.”
Detailed working conditions such as salary and welfare are unknown.
The university says the ideal candidate will be an “energetic, responsible, and well-qualified professional teacher with relevant English teaching experience.” It It says an English teaching qualification (TEFL/ CELTA/ TESOL) is also highly preferred.
Successful applicants are supposed to have a campus-based lifestyle, meaning they may not be allowed to travel outside the campus. [Korea Times]
This sounds more like a jail sentence then an English teaching job.
Someone has leaked the footage captured at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport of the attack and murder of Kim Jong-nam:
The biggest thing I take from this footage is that this was supposed to be a prank as the suspects have claimed what was supposed to be so funny about it? The Indonesian woman Siti Aisyah can be seen talking to Kim Jong-nam and then almost immediately afterwards the Vietnamese woman Doan Thi Huong violently puts a cloth around his face and they both casually walk off. Looking at the video I could understand how Aisyah may have thought she was part of a prank, but Huong looked like she knew this wasn’t a prank in my opinion.
I was surprised that Kim did not immediately try to get to the restroom and get some water to wash off his face. Instead he wasted time talking to authorities who eventually walked him over to a medical clinic. Who knows if it would have made a difference, but I would think immediately washing the poison off his face at least would have given him a better chance to survive the attack.
Here is an interesting theory on why South Koreans hate the Japanese so much:
Korean school children draw anti-Japanese pictures to post at a subway station.
If South Korea can only weakly legitimate itself through democracy, and with race-nationalism so powerful, Seoul must go head-to-head with Pyongyang over who is the best custodian of the minjok and its glorious 5000 year history. This is a tussle South Korea cannot win, not only because of the North’s mendacious willingness to falsify history, but South Korea’s Westernized culture, massive U.S. presence, rising multiculturalism leading to mixed race citizens, and so on.
The North’s purer minjok nationalism will always have resonance in the South, where for a generation former dictator Park Chung Hee invoked race for legitimacy, 10% of the public voted for an openly pro-North Korean party in the last parliamentary election, and the main left-wing party has consistently equivocated on whether the U.S. represents a greater threat to South Korea than North Korea does.
Enter Japan, then, as a useful ‘other’ to South Korea, in the place that really should be held by North Korea. All Koreans, north and south, right and left, agree that the colonial take-over was bad. The morality of criticizing Japan is undisputed, whereas criticizing North Korea quickly gets tangled up in the ‘who-can-out-minjok-who’ issues raised above. [The National Interest]
I recommend reading the whole article at the link, but likewise the anti-Japanese hatred is irrational when compared to the Chinese as well. The Chinese are actively conducting anti-Korean initiatives because of the THAAD issue, have a territorial dispute with Korea, are the chief benefactor of North Korea, a country committed to the destruction of the ROK, and China was the last country to invade the ROK and nearly destroyed it during the Korean War. Heck the Chinese embassy even sent protestors into the streets of Seoul to beatdown Koreans during the Olympic torch protest.
Despite all of this, hatred is directed towards the Japanese who should be a natural geopolitical ally. I have always believed that the persistent anti-Japanese sentiment and rotating bouts of anti-US sentiment is because South Koreans know they can protest both countries without repercussions. As the current THAAD dispute shows the Chinese government does not sit idly by without retaliating against Korea, likewise for North Korea. If South Koreans push North Korea too much a ROK ship may get sunk or artillery rounds may land in the ROK. Protest Japan or the United States and little to nothing happens. That makes both countries easy targets to direct Korean nationalism towards especially for domestic political reasons.
I don’t expect this dynamic to change unless South Koreans are put into a position where they have to forgive and forget with Japan for national security reasons. As long as the US-ROK alliance this is something Koreans do not have to worry about.
This is so stupid I don’t even know where to begin:
Local United States Department of Veterans Affairs staffers were left horrified after a coworker put up a “Make Killing Great Again” poster on his office door.
It all played out earlier this month at a VA office building on Clairmont road in DeKalb County.
After a source inside the agency sent Channel 2 Investigative Reporter Aaron Diamant a picture of that disturbing poster Thursday night, he spent this afternoon working to find out what the agency is doing to ease workers fears and hold the staffer who put it up accountable.
“I’m afraid. I’m truly afraid,” a VA staffer, who spotted the poster and asked not to be identified, told Diamant.
The long-time VA employee, who asked not to be identified, told Diamant she’s terrified every time she returns to work at the building that houses the Healthcare Eligibility Center.
The poster on a 3rd-floor office door contained an image of Secretary of Defense James Mattis and the words, “Make Killing Great Again.”
“I thought that he would come in there any day and at any time and start shooting the office up,” the employee said. [WSB-TV Atlanta]
You can read more at the link, but this poster is clearly a parody of President Trump’s “Making America Great Again” tagline that anyone with a sense of humor would understand. The fact the media is calling the poster “disturbing” and someone working at the VA is “truly afraid” of the poster I think says more about them then the person who put the poster up in their cubicle.
With that all said the work place should be a professional environment which the poster clearly does not contribute to. When asked to take the poster down by the union the worker took the poster down. Yet people going running to the media hoping to blow this up and want the guy investigated, for what?
The North Korean Embassy in Kuala Lumpur is filled with an air of silence on Feb. 16, 2017, following the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s half brother Kim Jong-nam. Kim was killed allegedly by North Korean agents at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Feb. 13. (Yonhap)
