Here we go again with another crazy guy committing a mass shooting:
This photo from social media shows Fort Lauderdale airport shooting suspect Esteban Santiago, according to multiple law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation. When and where the photo was taken is not clear, but the images have been circulated to law enforcement in the context of the ongoing criminal investigation. [NBC News]
The man police say opened fire with a gun from his checked baggage at a Florida airport had a history of mental health issues — some of which followed his military service in Iraq — and was receiving psychological treatment at his home in Alaska, his relatives said Friday after the deadly shooting.
“Only thing I could tell you was when he came out of Iraq, he wasn’t feeling too good,” his uncle, Hernan Rivera, told The Record newspaper.
Esteban Santiago, 26, deployed in 2010 as part of the Puerto Rico National Guard, spending a year with an engineering battalion, according to Guard spokesman Maj. Paul Dahlen. [Associated Press]
You can read more at the link, but we have heard this claim before of service in Iraq or Afghanistan being the reason someone committed a crime to find out later they were a Fobbit that never saw active combat. I won’t believe his service in Iraq had anything to do with him committing this crime until I hear what his service record was in Iraq. There is actually a pretty good chance he did not see active combat considering the timeframe he was in Iraq in 2010-2011 was when the pullout happened.
Additionally according to what the media has reported so far all he received from his Iraq deployment was a Iraq Campaign Medal and a Global War on Terrorism Service Medal which everyone gets. If he was participating in active combat you would think he would have received at least an AAM or ARCOM plus a Combat Action Badge. Based on the information currently available I would not be surprised if Santiago’s mental issues are unrelated to his military service.
The Japanese government has responded to the installation of a comfort woman statue in front of their consulate in Busan:
South Korea expressed “strong regret” over steps taken by Japan on Friday, including recalling its ambassador, in protest against a statue recently set up in front of its consulate office to shed light on its wartime atrocities of forcing women into sexual slavery.
“We express our strong regret over the action taken by Japan with regard to the statue,” the foreign ministry said in a comment issued in the name of its spokesman.
“The government wants to make it clear again that both countries should keep advancing their bilateral ties based on trust regardless of any challenging issues,” it added.
Earlier, Japan decided to temporarily call in Yasumasa Nagamine, its ambassador to South Korea, in protest against the statue installed at the end of last year by a civic group in front of its Consulate General building in the southern port city of Busan. He will likely return to Japan next week.
Tokyo also announced a halt to the ongoing negotiation on a currency swap agreement between the two countries — an emergeny channel of and the postponement of a high-level economic cooperation meeting. [Yonhap]
You can read the rest at the link, but I am still waiting for the installation of a statue in front of the Chinese embassy in protest of all the modern day Korean comfort women in that country that these activist groups don’t care about.
An elk dashes ahead of a car on a road in Hamyang in South Korea’s southeast province of South Gyeongsang on Jan. 5, 2017, as the amount of roadkill has been increasing, in this photo released by the Hamyang municipality. The road leads to Mount Jiri, South Korea’s second tallest mountain located in the southern region in the country. (Yonhap)
This seems a bit overkill to put the guy in a prison jump suit, handcuff him and perp walk him in front of the media for having a teaching assistant take a test for a student:
Lyou Chul-gyun, center, better known by his penname Yi In-hwa, was arrested by the police on Jan. 1. He is one of several faculty members at Ewha Womans University who were systematically involved in the plot to help Chung Yoo-ra, the daughter of the scandal-ridden Choi Soojn-sil, maintain her student status by granting academic favors. / Yonhap
4 years after he rose to literary stardom for his 1993 fiction “Eternal Empire” which sold over 1 million copies.
The then-27-year-old writer fascinated his readers with the well-investigated historical fiction about the murder of Joseon King Jeongjo (1752-1800), a conspiracy theory that had been passed down for centuries through the descendents of the Noron faction, one of the two dominant political factions of the Joseon era.
Owing to his early success, he was able to become a full-time faculty member at Ewha Womans University when he was 29 years old, even before completing his doctoral degree at Seoul National University’s Department of Korean Studies.
But the reason for Lyou’s recent reemergence into the public eye is something disgraceful. He is under fire for coercing his teaching assistant to take the final exam of his “Understanding Storytelling in Movies” course on behalf of Chung Yoo-ra, the daughter of the trouble-hit Choi Soon-sil. Chung never showed up for his class all semester and didn’t even take the final exam. But she earned a passing grade to maintain her status as a student, stirring suspicions of academic fraud.
Lyou, 51, reportedly threatened his reluctant assistant into helping, saying she would face the consequences if she rejected his call because she would be blacklisted and as a result would never be able to find a job in a university or research institution even after successfully defending her dissertation. He was arrested earlier this week.
Lyou is one of several faculty members at Ewha Womans University who were systematically involved in the plot to help Chung maintain her student status by granting academic favors, despite her substandard academic performance. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but it appears that anyone even remotely related to the Choi Soon-sil influence peddling scandal can expect to get perp walked in a prison jump suit for the Korean media.
The real question I have which the Korean media so far has no interest in answering is, how prevalent in Korean universities is this special treatment for well connected students? I find it hard to believe that Chung Yoo-ra was the only person getting special treatment.
Here is a real dirtbag that hopefully will be spending the rest of his life in prison:
A man who killed his pregnant girlfriend also attempted to murder his ex-lover, a court said Monday.
Daejeon High Court, sitting as an appeal court, sentenced the man, 37, whose name has been withheld, to 35 years’ jail, increasing the initial 30-year sentence because of his “inhumane sin.”
The court said the man went to Jeju Island with his girlfriend last November to search for a place to open a restaurant. The couple spent a night at a motel and next morning had an argument over financial issues. The man then tried to strangle the woman because she “disrespected him.” When he found she was not dead, he made another attempt using a hairdryer cord.
The man then put the woman’s body into their rental car and set the vehicle alight to make her death look like it was the result of an accident. [Korea Times]
You can read the rest at the link, but the guy was recently out of prison for trying to kill his ex-girlfriend.
This is what the North Korea experts are saying about President-Elect Trump’s emphasis on pressuring China to do something about the North Korean nuclear and missile programs:
“Trump will soon learn that he can’t just tweet away North Korea’s ICBM and nuclear programs,” said Robert Manning, a senior analyst at the Atlantic Council. “He is flat out wrong about North Korea not developing a nuclear weapon that can reach the U.S. The only question is when. But it is likely to acquire that capability during his first term.”
Since the election, Trump has repeatedly criticized China for not helping with the North, even raising questions why the U.S. should stick to the “one-China” policy of diplomatically recognizing only Beijing, not Taiwan, when China is uncooperative over the North.
That’s in line with Trump’s campaign remarks that the North is China’s problem to fix.
Experts, however, were skeptical about the idea of pressuring China to resolve the problem.
“He has unrealistic expectations about China’s ability and/or willingness to achieve outcomes in regard to North Korea. He has equally wrong and outdated assumptions about U.S. leverage with China and will learn that through making really dumb mistakes in his first year,” Manning said.
“Trump has already shown his profound ignorance by threatening to discard the One-China policy that is the foundation of US-China relations, threatening to impose 45% tariffs on Chines goods — and then asking Beijing to solve his North Korea problem. That is complete incoherence — and he hasn’t even taken office yet,” he said.
The expert noted that there is little the U.S. can do about the problem in the near term that does not risk a war, “other than strengthening deterrence, imposing tough sanctions that remove North Korea from the international financial system.”
Scott Snyder, a senior expert on Korea at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Trump’s tweets show he thinks North Korea is a priority issue that is closely linked to China.
“For Trump, the issue is strongly connected to relations with China. However, at present there are few, if any, formal diplomatic channels by which Trump can communicate with the Chinese leadership, and the Chinese foreign ministry appears to have rejected diplomacy by tweet,” Snyder said.
“In addition, Trump appears to have rejected the idea that North Korea’s development of a preemptive strike capability will happen or that it provides Pyongyang with a basis for making demands such as an end annual US-ROK military exercises,” he said.
Joel Wit, a former State Department negotiator with North Korea and currently editor of the website 38 North specializing in North Korean affairs, expressed strong skepticism about Trump’s idea of resolving the problem by pressuring China.
“If he pursues the avenue of trying to get China to solve this problem for the U.S., then he is going to fail just like the Obama administration,” he said. [Yonhap]
The Korean navy’s P-3CK on patrol. / Courtesy of Twitter
A Korean navy’s P-3CK, a maritime patrol aircraft, accidentally dropped weapons into the East Sea on Sunday.
The accident happened around 6:10 a.m. during a patrol off the coast of Yangyang county, Gangwon Province, when a co-pilot accidentally pressed the emergency weapons release switch.
“One of the plane’s crew mistakenly touched the emergency weapons release switch instead of a buoy that detects submarine sound waves,” said a navy official. “The weapons were not armed and did not explode.”
The missing weapons include two harpoon missiles, two torpedoes and two depth charges and are worth about 4 billion won ($3.3 million).
The navy has sent a mine sweeper and salvage ship to salvage the weapons if possible. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but I am surprised it is that easy to drop live missiles by pressing the wrong switch like this. You would think there would be some kind of safety mechanism over the switch.
Kim Bok-dong (L), a victim of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery, approaches a statue of her during the 1,264th “Wednesday rally” in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on Jan. 4, 2017, a weekly protest which victims of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery and activists have held since 1992. (Yonhap)
