This is a lot of money and a lot of people who were scammed:
Police arrested a group of people with hearing disabilities for allegedly pulling off a fraud scheme and snatching some 28 billion won ($24 million) from about 500 deaf people in Changwon, South Gyeongsang, on Thursday.
The Changwon Jungbu Police Precinct found that eight people with hearing disabilities allegedly told their victims from 2010 to 2016 that if they invested in a real estate development project to build apartments and factories, they would receive three to five times the amount of their investment within three months.
They also allegedly told victims that if the project proved successful, they would be granted expensive cars and pensions in return. Many of the victims borrowed money to make the investments.
These eight suspects, arrested for fraud and organized crime, and their roughly 500 alleged victims all belong to the same private online association of deaf people. Authorities found that the suspects and victims communicated via a group account on a mobile and internet app for non-public communications called Naver Band. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
If you are on Osan AB and see random people congregating and looking into their smartphones at certain locations this may be why:
Pokemon Go recently launched in South Korea, and the post office at Osan Air Base is one of the many Pokestops available to servicemembers there.
Serra said it’s not bad exercise either, but don’t expect the local sergeant major to cancel physical training anytime soon.
A quick stroll around Osan Air Base reveals Pokestops at the post office, Turumi Lodge and the officer’s club. Players who reach level 5 can challenge a level-7 gym at the Tuskegee Airman statue.
Military officials caution that common sense and military regulations still apply.
Bob McElroy, a spokesman for Camp Humphreys, said servicemembers are free to play across base but need to refrain from using the game where operational security or sensitivity is a concern. [Stars & Stripes]
This photo, provided by the organizing committee for the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics on Feb. 10, 2017, shows the Alpine Center for the international winter event in Jeongseon, 214 kilometers east of Seoul. (Yonhap)
One of the Army’s most promising generals will be demoted to one star and retired following a scandal that involved sex clubs in Seoul and Rome, high-priced booze and indiscretions with young female troops, the Army announced Thursday.
Ron Lewis, who had been a three-star general and top aide to the then-Defense secretary Ash Carter, will also lose about $10,000 a year in pension payments due to the demotion.
The Pentagon Inspector General “substantiated allegations that Maj. Gen. Lewis misused his government travel charge card for personal expenses, made false official statements regarding his (credit card) misuse, and engaged in conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman on multiple occasions,” Cynthia Smith, an Army spokeswoman, said in a statement. (……)
Army investigators found that Lewis spent more than $1,100 in April 2015 during a visit to the “Candy Bar” in Seoul. The bar, in the city’s red-light district known as “Hooker Hill,” had been deemed off limits to troops. When questioned about the charge, Lewis denied it was his, the Pentagon challenged the expense and got him a new card. [Stars & Stripes]
I wonder if we will see a trend of Korean pilots growing beards now:
A Seoul appeals court ruled on Wednesday that the regulation by Asiana Airlines Co., South Korea’s No. 2 flag carrier, to ban its pilots from growing facial hair is illegitimate, a ruling in favor of its employee who was barred from flying for nearly a month due to his beard.
Overturning a lower court’s decision, the Seoul High Court rejected the case filed by the flight operator in July 2015 to nullify a local labor commission’s order to compensate the pilot for what he could have earned if he was not barred from flying. He was allowed to return to the cockpit in October 2014, only after he promised to no longer grow a beard.
The pilot brought the case to the labor commission in June 2015, saying the company’s regulation that only allows foreign pilots to have beards and not for Korean nationals is unfair.
The Seoul Administrative Court had ruled in favor of Asiana Airlines in May 2016, saying flight operators can regulate workers’ outfits and looks in a wider scope than other companies considering the need to respect customers’ satisfaction and trust.
The appellate court, however, said the regulation which bans locals from growing a beard based on nationality violates the Constitution, and said it cannot acknowledge the necessity or find reasonable cause for the ban in the filed case. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but Asiana Airlines rule for not allowing beards was because it creates a perception of untidiness which may effect the confidence that passengers have in the pilot.
The State Department’s travel warning seems pretty pointless to me. Anyone willing to go to North Korea has to have knowledge of all the Americans detained over the past decade and still people keep going there:
The U.S. State Department on Tuesday issued a new warning against traveling to North Korea.
“The Department of State strongly urges U.S. citizens to avoid all travel to North Korea/the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) due to the serious risk of arrest and long-term detention under North Korea’s system of law enforcement,” the department said.
“This system imposes unduly harsh sentences for actions that would not be considered crimes in the United States and threatens U.S. citizen detainees with being treated in accordance with ‘wartime law of the DPRK,'” it said.
At least 14 U.S. citizens have been detained in North Korea in the past 10 years, it said. [Yonhap]
Of those 14 citizens detained all of them did something stupid to get detained on top of being stupid enough to travel to North Korea in the first place.
South Korea’s endangered natural monument, the white-tailed eagle, flies while holding a fish over a lake in Gangneung, Gangwon Province, on Feb. 7, 2017. (Yonhap)
A ROK Drop favorite Nicholas Eberstadt has an article published on the Fox News website that discusses his viewpoint in regards to what to do about the North Korean nuclear program:
Nicholas Eberstadt
As bizarre and satire-prone as the North Korean regime’s buffoonish-looking Kim Jong-Un and his servile courtiers may be, Pyongyang’s leadership is neither irrational nor suicidal. The rationale behind this confrontation would actually be to achieve a maximum of strategic gain with a minimum of actual destruction and violence.
The basic idea is to force Washington to blink in an escalating crisis on the Korean peninsula—a crisis of Pyongyang’s own making, at a time and under circumstances of Pyongyang’s own choosing.
If America hesitates or climbs down in the face of a future, stage-managed exercise in tactical North Korean aggression, Pyongyang will have undermined the credibility of the U.S. military alliance with South Korea.
The formal end to that alliance, and the exit of American troops from Korea, could quickly follow. (…….)
Likewise more and better missile defense: the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems against ballistic missiles that the U.S. has offered South Korea and Japan is a good step, and so is moving forward in earnest on missile defense for the USA.
As for weakening the DPRK’s military economy, the foundation for all its offensive capabilities: we should put Pyongyang back on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list—it never should have been removed in 2008. Sanctions with genuine bite should be implemented—the dysfunctional DPRK economy is uniquely susceptible to them.
The United Nations has already gotten a comprehensive report on North Korea’s grisly human rights record from its Commission of Inquiry on the situation in the DPRK: let governments of conscience now seek international criminal accountability for North Korea’s leadership.
Then there is the China question. It is by no means impossible for America and her allies to pressure the DPRK if China does not cooperate. That said: it is time for Beijing to pay a penalty for its support for the most odious regime on the planet today. [Fox News]
You can read more at the link, but I fully agree with Eberstadt’s statement that people need to understand that the Kim regime is not irrational or suicidal. From their perspective everything they have been doing makes sense. A nuclear deterrent ensures regime survival; their provocation cycles have historically been successful in getting concessions from South Korea and the US. Why stop now?
