Good lord: video of Kirk's racist comment to Tammy Duckworth even worst than the transcript. pic.twitter.com/ETLc6X11TK

— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) October 28, 2016

If the contents from the hacked email are true then it appears that Kim Jong-il genuinely had a liking for Bill Clinton and even invited him to vacation in North Korea:

A memo attached to a hacked email shows that in 2009, former President Bill Clinton was invited to go sightseeing in North Korea by then-ruler Kim Jong Il, and seemed open to the offer.

Clinton was in North Korea to help with negotiations to free two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who had been arrested and jailed; he was successful, and the women were released. The memo was apparently written by David Straub, a Stanford University professor whose name was at the bottom of it, BuzzFeed reports, and it was attached to an email forwarded to John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman and Bill Clinton’s former White House chief of staff. It’s believed Podesta’s email was hacked by Russians.  [The Week]

You can read more at the link.

President Park’s long-time friend, Choi Soon-shil who is at the center of the current political influence scandal in South Korea has spoken out about the issue from a hotel in Germany:

Choi, who has known the president for some 40 years, is the fifth daughter of Park’s late mentor Choi Tae-min, a leader of a questionable religious group who died in 1994. Observers said Park developed a friendship with the Choi family after her mother and then-first lady Yook Young-soo was assassinated in 1974.

The South Korean public has been casting watchful eyes on the scandal, with some even claiming that the case may have a religious connection, although Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn ruled out such assumptions. Choi’s father reportedly founded a religion in the 1970s that combined Buddhist, Christian and indigenous faith practices.

“Choi is ready to receive punishment if investigations reveal any lawbreaking activities,” he said, adding Choi has no intention to flee or hide.

She, however, asked for “mercy” concerning her daughter through the lawyer. She earlier said in the interview that she traveled overseas to “protect” the daughter, who is also embroiled in controversy on speculations that she was unfairly accepted to Seoul-based Ewha Womans University. Some of the university’s students argued that Choi’s daughter received relatively higher grades compared to her actual achievements.

The emotionally appealing remark by Choi’s legal representatives came amid mounting anger among the South Korean public.

Reflecting the sentiment, local pollster Gallup Korea said Friday that Park’s approval rating was at 17 percent from Tuesday to Thursday this week, marking an 8 percentage point drop from a seven-day period earlier. It marks the lowest rating since she took office and a decrease for the sixth consecutive week.

A whopping 74 percent of the respondents were negative about Park’s achievements in state affairs, soaring 10 percentage points on-week.  [Yonhap]

You can read the rest at the link, but it looks like President Park is continuing the trend of South Korean presidents entering office with high approval ratings and then leaving office with incredibly low ratings.

If Tokyo can keep some of their political leaders from making controversial statements about the comfort women and Dokdo issues maybe the negotiations this time will actually get completed:

The South Korean government on Thursday announced it will resume negotiations on a sensitive military intelligence-sharing pact with Japan for the first time in four years to better respond to Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile threats.

“North Korea conducted two nuclear tests and launched over 20 ballistic missiles this year alone, and its nuclear and missile threats are escalating by the day, so our security situation is becoming more critical,” said Moon Sang-gyun, spokesman for the Ministry of National Defense, as he announced Seoul’s decision to restart talks on signing a General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) with Tokyo.

A meeting of the National Security Council at the Blue House was convened earlier in the day to reach the decision to resume negotiations.

Sealing a bilateral intelligence-sharing agreement with Japan has been a sensitive issue for Korea in the past, and efforts to negotiate a GSOMIA between Seoul and Tokyo were halted since June 2012, when negotiations broke off.

A deal to share information with Tokyo fell apart at the last minute amid domestic outcry over the secretive nature of the closed-door negotiations and ongoing bilateral tensions and mistrust over unresolved historical and territorial disputes with Japan stemming back to colonial rule.

South Korea has continued to hesitate to sign a bilateral GSOMIA to share intelligence directly with Tokyo, though it agreed to a trilateral information-sharing arrangement with Washington as an intermediary in December 2014.

“The decision to resume talks that would allow the two countries to exchange military intelligence came in the face of unprecedented nuclear and missile threats from North Korea,” said Vice Foreign Minister Lim Sung-nam in a press conference in Tokyo Thursday.

Earlier in the day, Lim held a trilateral meeting with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Shinsuke Sugiyama to discuss a coordinated response to the threat posed by the North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

Sugiyama said Japan will “sincerely respond” to the decision to resume GSOMIA negotiations.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

South Koreans Call for President’s Impeachment Over Influence Scandal https://t.co/0IOMI6jClk pic.twitter.com/wGqe8ddm8M

— The Diplomat (@Diplomat_APAC) October 28, 2016

North Korea’s women’s football team is welcomed with elaborate fanfare in Pyongyang on Oct. 25, 2016, after winning the 2016 FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup. The North’s Korean Central News Agency, which released this photo, said they were greeted at the airport by senior officials from the government and the ruling party. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)

Welcome to Korea Finder.  The way this contest works is that each week a new image is posted and the first reader to accurately describe or locate the image gets a point.  At the end of the year the reader with the highest amount of points will win a Korea related book of their choice.

Who knows the location of this photo in South Korea?:

2016 Korea Finder Leaders Board

1. Comfortable Chairs – 9
2. MTB Rider – 6
3. Smokes – 4
4. Dd – 2, Setnaffa – 2
5. JoeC – 1, Nullscan -1, sfasdfsadf – 1

This is a horrible way to commit suicide if in fact that is what happened:

A soldier of the South Korean Army died on Thursday when a grenade exploded during a training exercise in the Demilitarized Zone along the border with the North, military officials said, suspecting that it could be a suicide.

The Army PFC, identified only by his last name Yang, died when a grenade went off at around 2:20 p.m. Approximately 10 soldiers, including Yang, were engaged in a military drill in the DMZ near the border town when it happened, according to the officials.

The exact cause of the explosion has not been determined, but the military officials suspect that Yang might have committed suicide using his own grenade.

A note he allegedly wrote was reported to have been found later which read, “(This) has nothing to do with (his) military unit.”  [Yonhap]

This sounds just like the campaign to end smoking in North Korea where Kim Jong-un is still seen going around smoking cigarettes despite the campaign:

Kim Jong Un called for an end to the worship of imports, calling the popular preference for foreign-made goods a “disease” that must be eradicated.

The North Korean leader, known for his fondness of French wine, Swiss watches and British fabrics, made the statement at the seventh assembly of the General Federation of Trade Unions of Korea on Tuesday, in a letter titled “The contemporary mission of the working class of Kim Il Sung–Kim Jong Il“, state-controlled news agency KCNA reported Thursday, local time.

GFTUK is the sole legal trade union federation in North Korea formed on November 30, 1945.

In the letter Kim said North Korean workers must “uphold the honor of the fatherland and the know-how of the people, and with pride and courage make with their own hands products better than [other countries], thereby eradicating the disease of imports.”  [UPI]

You can read more at the link.

“I want, maybe in the next two years, my country free of presence of foreign military troops. I want them out.” — Duterte in Tokyo. pic.twitter.com/aD6nh1b5iK

— Erik Slavin (@eslavin_stripes) October 26, 2016