Woo Byung-woo a former Presidential Secretary for Civil Affairs under the Park administration has been hiding from questioning for 47 days which caused a nationwide effort by average Koreans to located him.  It appears the pressure to find him has worked because he recently testified to lawmakers about his role in the Choi Soon-sil scandal where he denies everything:

Facing a series of condemning questions and mockery from lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, Woo Byung-woo, former senior presidential secretary for civil affairs, denied Thursday any wrongdoing in the unprecedented abuse of power scandal that led to the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye.

Woo made his first public appearance in 47 days to attend a hearing by the parliamentary special committee into the Choi Soon-sil scandal, and his presence generated high media and public interest, reflecting rampant suspicions that the former prosecutor colluded with Choi and her circle to allow her to pull strings from behind the scenes in state affairs.

Woo’s position as civil affairs senior secretary empowered him to monitor any legal or ethical breach by public officials. He refuted all allegations against him, a response that drew ridicule from lawmakers.

“I do not personally know Choi,” Woo testified. “I first heard about her when media reports came out on her husband Chung Yoon-hoi [in November 2014].”

When asked if he refuted media reports that he had let Choi interfere in state affairs and colluded with President Park’s three most trusted aides, nicknamed “the three doorknobs,” he said, “I do.”

Aside from allegations that Woo turned a blind eye to Choi’s interference, he is also accused of tax evasion and embezzlement from a real estate company run by his family. He is also suspected to have obstructed an investigation into the sinking of the Sewol ferry in 2014 that left 304 dead by ordering prosecutors to not raid offices of the Coast Guard in a probe of the botched rescue efforts.   [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but what I find surprising so far is the lack evidence presented.  If lawmakers are trying to prove that people like Woo were acting in concert with Choi you would think they would have emails to prove the connection?

It seems the Blue House wants to get the THAAD missile defense system in place before the race to replace impeached President Park begins to make it a non-campaign issue:

Acting President and Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn said Wednesday that an advanced U.S. anti-missile system has to be deployed to South Korea as soon as possible to counter North Korea’s growing nuclear and missile threats.

Hwang made the remarks amid calls from opposition parties to delay the planned deployment of the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to the Korean Peninsula given the lack of public consensus and China’s vehement opposition to it.

Seoul hopes to install a THAAD battery in the southern county of Seongju, 296 kilometers southeast of Seoul, by May next year.

“For security, (we) have to deploy (THAAD),” he said during a parliamentary interpellation session. “As we cannot wait even for a moment to cope with North Korea’s nuclear provocations, we have to do what we can do first.”  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

I share the below story about Saddam Hussein because it makes me wonder how much we really know about Kim Jong-un?  Every week it seems there is some new sensational report about Kim Jong-un sourced to some anonymous defector account much like with Saddam Hussein.  How accurate are these accounts?  I have speculated before that I don’t think Kim Jong-un is as all powerful as believed.  I believe he instead rules with the consensus of a regime inner circle which it appears that Saddam had largely handed off power to in his country before the war 2003:

Saddam Hussein was an inept dictator during his final years in charge, thought 9/11 would bring Iraq and America closer together and took partial blame for his eventual fall from power after the 2003 US-led invasion, according to a new book by one of the men who interrogated the ex-Iraqi president.

The revelations are contained in the upcoming John Nixon book “Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein.” Nixon was a CIA analyst in Iraq who had been assigned the task of finding Saddam and then getting information out of him. But he quickly found that “Saddam seemed clueless.”

“He was inattentive to what his government was doing, had no real plan for the defense of Iraq and could not comprehend the immensity of the approaching storm,” Nixon wrote in the book excerpt published by The Daily Mail.

Saddam, who was hanged in 2006 for crimes against humanity, was frequently defiant while being interviewed and even mocked the US rationale for the war: that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

“You found a traitor who led you to Saddam Hussein. Isn’t there one traitor who can tell you where the WMDs are?” Hussein said shortly after he was found hiding, dirty and grizzled, inside an underground “spider hole” on Dec. 13, 2003.

The sadistic despot said Iraq had never thought about using WMDs and questioned why “anyone with full faculties” would deploy chemical weapons unprovoked.  [New York Post]

You can read more at the link.

Does South Korea protest too much? https://t.co/TPVgwdbKyB via @WSJ

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) December 20, 2016

Lee Kyu-nam (L), the head of Korean Air pilots’ union, and Lee Sang-joo, the head of the airline’s union, express opinions on their planned strike in Seoul on Dec. 21, 2016, one day before their labor action. The unionized pilots earlier decided to go on a 10-day strike, demanding a pay rise. (Yonhap)

This is just another example of how North Korea gets around sanctions to bring in hard currency.  Of course the Chinese are once again involved in making this possible:

The brightly coloured packages advertising “Walleye Pollock” at the West Market in Yanji, a Chinese city near the border with North Korea, say the fish came from China.

But 15 vendors interviewed at the market say the fish came in from North Korea to be processed, packaged and mostly sold in China. They say they buy the fish from Chinese wholesalers who deal with their North Korean counterparts at the border.

The packaged fish is also exported to countries that ban North Korean products, including South Korea, Japan and the United States, say the vendors, who are also involved in the export of their products.

“All the dried fish is from North Korea but we package it here so we say the fish is from here,” said one vendor who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Smaller packets sell for around 40 yuan ($5.80) while the bigger ones which are often given as gifts sell for at least 100 yuan.

“We export everywhere, mostly to South Korea and Japan. I’ve even exported to the U.S.,” said another vendor. “We sell some of our fish here, but we mostly export overseas.”

The official newspaper of the government of Jilin province, where Yanji is located, said in a September article that North Korean and Russian seafood is processed in a town near Yanji, before being exported to South Korea, Japan, the United States and Europe.

Reuters could not independently confirm that North Korean seafood from Yanji or nearby towns is being exported to South Korea, Japan and the United States.  [Reuters]

You can read more at the link.

Richard Marx and Daisy Fuentes to the rescue?  Via a reader tip, that is what happened on a recent Korean Air flight:

Richard Marx heroically fought off and restrained an out-of-control passenger during a flight from Vietnam to South Korea … and his wife, Daisy Fuentes, captured the whole ordeal.

Daisy took a bunch of pics as Korean Air flight attendants and the ’80s hitmaker teamed up to take down the man. You can see Richard was throwing elbows and even holding the rope tied around the guy.

According to Daisy and Richard … the flight crew was “completely ill trained” for combat. One of the flight attendants had a taser, but had no clue how to use it … at least that’s how Daisy saw it.

She says they battled the attacker for 4 hours, and 2 passengers and a crew member were injured. Seoul police arrested the guy when they landed.  [TMZ]

You can read more at the link, but here is video of the altercation:

I would have to think this guy is either extremely drunk on drugs judging by his behavior which is absolutely ridiculous. I have to give credit to the passenger who was helping to restrain him and kept getting spit in the face. I think many people would have hit the guy in the face after getting spat on repeatedly like that passenger was.

This issue of pollutants found at a Seoul subway station has been going on for years and it is amazing that no one has yet to figure out where it is coming from:

The Seoul city government said Monday that contaminants detected in underground water tables near a U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) garrison in the capital city were 500 times higher than normal standards.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government said an average of 0.532 milligrams per liter of benzene was found around Noksapyeong Station, located near the U.S. Army base in Yongsan, central Seoul in 2016. The base has long been suspected as the source of oil leaks that have polluted both water and land.

The figure went as high as 8.811 milligrams per liter, which is some 587 times higher than the allowable level of 0.015 milligrams per liter, it said.

The total amount of petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) found near Camp Kim, within Yongsan Garrison, was 20.4 milligrams per liter on average and reached up to 768.7, which is some 512 times higher than the standard of 1.5 milligrams per liter, according to the city government.

Municipal authorities have been conducting a water table purification project since 2003, but petroleum-based contaminants have still been detected in water near the U.S. base, it said.

“Considering that the base will be returned (to South Korea) at the end of 2017, we need to establish plans on how we will clean up the pollutants,” the city government said in a press release. “But at the moment, we are not even fully aware of the circumstances surrounding the pollution.” [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Instead of summoning this diplomat back to South Korea they should force this pedophile scumbag to face legal consequences back in Chile for his crimes:

A South Korean diplomat in Chile accused of sexually assaulting teenage girls was summoned home, Tuesday, to face questioning by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, according to diplomatic sources.

“The diplomat returned home early this morning in accordance with the ministry’s summons,” the source said on condition of anonymity.

The diplomat, named Park Jeong-hak, was in charge of promoting K-pop at the Korean Embassy to Chile. He was accused of making improper physical contact with a 14-year-old Chilean girl in September while teaching Korean.

Park’s inappropriate actions were made public after a Chilean broadcaster aired, Sunday (local time), film of him sexually abusing an actress disguised as a teenage girl captured by a hidden camera. The broadcaster planned the program, in which it had the actress deliberately lure him, after receiving a tip-off from the parents of a victim.

After the airing of the program called “En Su Propia Trampa” (In Your Own Trap), which sparked public fury in the Latin American country, Yoon Seo-ho, a Korean immigrant who has lived in Chile for 12 years, told a CBS radio program, Tuesday, that the diplomat had been notorious for his sexual offenses even before the program was aired.

The diplomat was also accused of raping a 12-year-old girl as well as sexually harassing the Chilean wife of a Korean immigrant, Yoon said. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

For South Korea’s Samsung, 2016 was an explosive year. Literally. https://t.co/rtflTa81V3

— Scott Snyder (@snydersas) December 20, 2016