It looks like Kim Jong-un is setting conditions for a Key Resolve fireworks show:
North Korea is likely to conduct missile provocations in the first half as the country announced that its preparation for test-firing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) has entered the final stage, experts said Sunday.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in his New Year’s message claimed the country is in the final stage of preparing to launch an ICBM, heralding the country’s intent to jack up tensions in coming months.
Pyongyang is known to be developing a road-mobile ICBM, known as KN-08, which has a range of more than 13,000 kilometers and may be capable of flying as far as the U.S. mainland. But the North has never conducted an actual test of that missile.
Experts said that North Korea will focus on advancing its nuclear and missile capability in the new year, raising the possibility it would be engage in more powerful provocations around its key anniversaries in the first half. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but for those unfamiliar with Key Resolve it is an annual US-ROK military exercise that happens every March that the North Koreans typically commit some kind of provocation in response to.
I am still waiting to see what evidence the ROK authorities have on Chung Yoo-ra to implicate her for corruption at Ewha Women’s University much less the ROK Presidential corruption scandal. According to this interview she gave she wanted to drop out of the Ewha and her mom would not let her:
Chung Yoo-ra, daughter of Choi Soon-sil, the friend of impeached President Park Geun-hye, gives an interview to a group of Korean reporters during a break in a detention hearing at a local court in Aalborg, a northern city in Denmark, on Monday. [YONHAP]Chung Yoo-ra, daughter of Choi Soon-sil, told reporters in Denmark that she has nothing to do with the corruption charges against her and that any controversy involving her was the result of her mother’s scheming.“All I did was sign certain documents, whose contents were covered up by Post-its,” Chung told a group of Korean reporters during a break in a detention hearing at a local court in Aalborg, a northern city of Denmark, on Monday. “I don’t know a thing about what’s been going on in my mother’s business, as it was run by her and her aides.”Chung, 21, is accused of receiving unjust admission to and preferential treatment at Ewha Womans University. She is central to a probe into a corruption scandal involving the Korea Equestrian Federation and Samsung Electronics. Samsung pledged 22 billion won ($18.3 million) for Chung’s equestrian training. It was also the largest benefactor of two nonprofit foundations that Choi practically controlled, contributing 20.4 billion won.
“I thought I was going to be expelled [from Ewha Womans University],” Chung said. “But my mother and I met with then-President Choi Kyung-hee and professor Ryu Chul-kyun. I left the meeting before my mother did and then I found out later that I got the academic credits.
“I even told my mother that I wanted to drop out,” she added, “but it didn’t work out.”
Chung also denied knowledge of how Samsung came to finance her training.
“My mother told me that Samsung decided to sponsor six equestrian athletes,” Chung said. “I was just one of the six who were sponsored.
“I don’t know how much funding I received or from where,” she added. “Only my mother and my training coach would know.”
Chung denied having close ties with President Park Geun-hye.
“The last time I met her was when my father was still working [for Park],” she said. Chung Yoon-hoi, ex-husband to Choi, was chief of staff to Park from 1998 to 2004. “I think I was an elementary school student then.”
She also denied knowledge of what the president may have done during a mysterious seven-hour absence on the day of the Sewol ferry’s sinking in 2014, in which 304 passengers died after a delayed government response.
“I was pregnant at the time, and my mother and I had fallen out because of it,” she said. “I was living in Sillim-dong and my mother in Gangnam District [of southern Seoul], and we had no contact. So I have no knowledge of what might have happened in the government at the time.”
Chung was arrested by authorities in Denmark’s northern city of Aalborg on Sunday on the charge of illegally staying in the country. She was arrested with four other people, including her 19-month-old son.
The court in Aalborg on Monday extended Chung’s detention to Jan. 30, even after she told it, “There is no one to look after my 19-month-old son if I am detained.” Chung’s lawyer in Denmark is reportedly planning to file an appeal. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
It seems like ROK authorities can very easily have Chung return to Korea whenever they want if they allow her to have some kind of home detention with her baby:
Chung Yoo-ra, the daughter of Choi Soon-sil, the confidante of disgraced President Park Geun-hye, in custody after her court hearing Monday, in Aalborg, Denmark. Korean authorities are understood to be working to get Chung Yoo-ra returned home in connection with an alleged corruption scandal. [AP/YONHAP]Chung said after her arrest that she will not try to avoid extradition to Korea and will cooperate with an independent counsel’s probe of the allegations surrounding her and her mother – as long as she can be investigated without being detained.
Chung told the reporters in Aalborg that she would return to Korea in a heartbeat as long as she can stay with her son.
“It doesn’t matter if the child needs to stay at a nursery [when I’m being investigated], or with a social welfare group, or at a hospital,” she said. “I just miss my baby.”
If Chung returns to Korea, she will be separated from her son after she is arrested. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
It looks like if the ROK authorities want to prove President Park Geun-hye committed corruption they better find the evidence because she is not admitting to any wrong doing; likewise in regards to her actions during the Sewol ferry boat disaster:
President Park Geun-hye denied, Sunday, all allegations leveled against her regarding her mysterious whereabouts during the sinking of the Sewol and the corruption and influence-peddling scandal involving her confidant Choi Soon-sil.
Park held an unscheduled press conference at Cheong Wa Dae _ her first public appearance since she was impeached, Dec. 9 _ and she used the 50-minute meeting to dismiss allegations surrounding her as “unfair and absurd.”
Park stressed that she was on “normal duty” on the day of the Sewol sinking on April 16, 2014, dismissing allegations of her unknown whereabouts for seven hours as groundless rumors.
“First it was reported that I was having an affair with someone, and then I was engaged in an exorcism ritual. Then it was about me undergoing cosmetic surgery. It was utterly, utterly senseless,” she said.
“I’m sure to say that I was receiving reports on the tragic accident and keeping an eye on it as usual routine.”
She continued, “I ordered that rescuers should not miss any single person left behind through a thorough rescue operation, but then there was a report saying all have been rescued, which made me feel relieved. After it turned out to be false, I intended to head to the emergency measures headquarters immediately. But the security team delayed it. I rushed to the place as soon as everything was ready. I think I did whatever I had to do.”
Park denied the allegation that she had a beauty treatment on the day, saying, “It is totally not true. It is impossible to happen even from a commonsense point of view.”
She added that she did not meet anyone from outside Cheong Wa Dae except a hairdresser and someone who brought medicine for her neck.
She reiterated that she did not seek any personal interest or favor certain companies or figures, refuting charges of collusion with Choi, who is accused of having illegitimately meddled in state affairs and extorting tens of millions of dollars from conglomerates.
She repudiated the bribery allegations that Samsung made a large sum of donations to the two foundations controlled by Choi in return for the presidential office’s support of the conglomerate’s controversial merger of two Samsung units _ Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries. [Korea Times]
Kim Jae-joong, a member of boy band JYJ, salutes fans and reporters after being discharged from military service on Dec. 30, 2016, at an Army infantry division in Yongin, south of Seoul. Kim served 21 months in compulsory military duty. (Yonhap)
The most wanted Korean woman in the world who was on the run in Germany has now been arrested in Denmark:
Chung Yoo-ra
The daughter of President Park Geun-hye’s close friend, who is at the heart of an influence-peddling scandal that has led to the president’s impeachment, has been arrested in Denmark, police said Monday.
According to the National Police Agency, law enforcement authorities in the European country notified their South Korean counterparts that Chung Yoo-ra was arrested in the northern Danish city of Aalborg on Sunday on charges of illegal stay.
Chung, a former member of the national equestrian team, is suspected of receiving undue favors from Seoul-based Ewha Womans University regarding admission and academic affairs by taking advantage of her mother’s ties to the president.
Special prosecutors looking into the corruption scandal allegedly surrounding President Park and her friend Choi Soon-sil had requested that Interpol put Choi’s daughter on the wanted list after she declined to respond to the investigation team’s repeated summons.
The investigation team said it is collaborating with the relevant bodies to bring Chung to South Korea.
The justice ministry said it has submitted an extradition request to the National Police Agency to swiftly get Chung back home. [Yonhap]
Interestingly according to the Danish media it was a Korean journalist who tracked down Chung:
The daughter of Choi Soon-Sil, the woman at the centre of a corruption scandal that led to the impeachment of South Korea’s President, has been arrested in Denmark after months in hiding, Seoul prosecutors said on Monday.
Chung Yoo-Ra, the 20-year-old daughter of the woman dubbed South Korea’s “Rasputin”, is one of the figures in the influence-peddling scandal that sparked massive street protests demanding the removal of President Park Geun-Hye.
Danish police arrested Chung on Sunday night for overstaying her visa, Korean prosecutors said, adding they were in talks with Danish authorities to have her deported to Seoul.
Chung was arrested in the northern town of Aalborg after a tip-off from a Korean journalist, Danish police said in a statement on Monday.
At a court hearing at 1pm on Monday, police would ask that Chung be detained “until the issue of extradition is decided upon”.
Danish police said Chung was aware that South Korean authorities wanted to talk to her. She was in the country “in connection with equestrian sports”. [The Local]
Here is more details about the arrest from the Copenhagen Post which reveals that JTBC the Korean news organization who found the tablet computer the opened up the entire South Korean Presidential scandal are the ones that tracked her down:
Five South Korean nationals were arrested in Aalborg last night under suspicion they are illegally staying in the country.
However, this is no ordinary case, and it has grabbed the attention of the international media.
One of those under custody is Chung Yoo-ra, 20, the daughter of a confidant of South Korean President Park Geun-hye, who a special investigation team want to question in connection with the leader’s impeachment.
In recent days, South Korea’s foreign ministry has been making great efforts to track her down, enlisting the help of the German authorities and even Interpol.
But in the end, it was thanks to a number of South Korean journalists at JTBC TV that the Danish police were able to find her in the north Jutland city last night at 19:00.
Questionable paperwork
It is believed that Chung had the necessary visa to partake in equestrian training in Germany, but that the ministry has subsequently tried to invalidate it.
The authorities in Denmark, which has an extradition treaty with South Korea, reportedly have until 19:00 today to charge Chung will illegally staying in Denmark. [Copenhagen Post]
It seems that Chung was pretty incompetent in regards to hiding considering she was traveling with an entourage of Koreans and staying at luxury hotels. The fact she was on the run with a one-year child further made her stand out. She stood out enough that the JTBC reporter was able to find her. What will be interesting is the evidence that the ROK authorities have to produce to show she was in Denmark illegally.
When Chung does end up back in South Korea it will be interesting to see if her arrest cracks her mom, Choi Soon-sil to give up whatever information she knows that could implicate former President Park Geun-hye in any corruption. It seems that the ROK authorities working so hard to arrest Chung is an indication they don’t have a lot of solid evidence yet to prove corruption.
Here we go again with netizen conspiracy theories:
The deadly sinking of the Sewol ferry two years ago was an accident, which left 295 dead and nine missing, not caused by the ship colliding with a submarine, the Navy said Tuesday.
The response comes after an online commenter named “Zaro — Netizens’ investigation team” argued that the ferry sinking was the result of the the passenger ship hitting a submarine in a nearly nine-hour-long documentary released Monday via YouTube.
But the Navy flatly denied the documentary as being based on “groundless” suspicions, saying there was no submarine in operation or conducting drills in the nearby waters on April 16, 2014, when the accident took place.
“The waters are 37 meters deep on average and not suitable for submarine action due to rapid currents and heavy commercial shipping and fishing boat traffic,” the Navy said in a statement.
In the documentary, the commenter pointed out that the route taken by the ill-fated ferry didn’t match conventional routes and external factors such as a submarine collision can explain the disaster. [The Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but I see no way that the ROK Navy could keep something like this quiet considering the amount of people that would have known about it.
I wonder how much of news story the search for Chung Yoo-ra is in Germany? I scanned through various English language German news sites and could find no articles describing the search for Chung. It seems as long as the search for Chung does not become a major national news story in Germany she should be able to hide out pretty effectively from the Korean media searching for her:
Chung, who reportedly raised 10 large dogs and a cat, renovated her Frankfurt mansion just for her pets.
As Korean prosecutors search for Chung Yoo-ra to question her over how much she benefited from the corruption scandal involving her mother Choi Soon-sil and President Park Geun-hye, it was reported that Chung had abandoned more than 10 pets at her German home before fleeing.
Chung reportedly stayed at a luxury hotel in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe, some 140 kilometers south of Frankfurt, from late November until early December. She did not have her 10 large dogs and a cat with her, according to TV Chosun.
“It appears that she abandoned her pets because carrying them will make her more noticeable to public eyes while on the run,” the report said, after reporters visited the hotel’s most expensive suite that Chung paid 300,000 won ($248) a day for. [Korea Times]
