South Korea’s Pak Se-ri, who has won 25 victories and five major championships during nearly two decades on the LPGA Tour, smiles during the first round of the LPGA KEB Hana Bank Championship at Sky 72 Golf & Resort’s Ocean Course, next to Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, on Oct. 13, 2016. The first round was the last round in Pak’s golf career as the LPGA Hall of Famer retired afterwards. (Photo courtesy of LPGA KEB Hana Bank Championship) (Yonhap)
Three Korean victims found earlier this week in a remote sugarcane field in the Philippines with gunshot wounds to their heads were identified as primary suspects in a multi-million-dollar investment fraud, local media reported Friday.
The three Koreans were found dead by a local farmer on Tuesday in a sugarcane field in the rural town of Bacolor, 75 kilometers (47 miles) northwest of Manila.
They were a 48-year-old man, a 52-year-old man and a 49-year-old woman. The victims were confirmed by their fingerprints to be Korean nationals on Wednesday.
The Korean police told local media on Friday that the three victims were suspects of an investment fraud worth 15 billion won ($13.25 million).
The three individuals left the country before police formally launched an investigation, the Yonhap News Agency reported.
The victims were executives in an investment corporation that they created last year, and the 48-year-old male victim worked as its president.
They jointly operated the company for approximately one year, using a multi-level marketing investment scheme based on foreign exchange margin trading, police were quoted as saying.
While the president of the firm and the female victim were not married, they pretended to be, police said, luring investors to trust them with large sums of money with the promise of high returns.
Victims of the alleged fraud requested police since the summer to investigate the suspects. One petition was filed at the Songpa District Precinct in August and two more were filed to the Suseo District Precinct in September.
Police said the victims left Korea as the investigation was forming. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but I wonder if they were working for a Korean organized crime group and killing them was a way to keep them quiet after they were targeted to be investigated by authorities?
North Korea over the weekend tried to conduct a seventh Musudan missile test and it blew up shortly after launch:
North Korea test-fired an intermediate-range missile Saturday in its latest military provocation, but the missile exploded seconds after its launch, the South Korean military reported Sunday.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff reported that the North launched what appeared to have been a Musudan missile from the northwestern city of Kusong in North Pyongan Province at around 12:33 p.m. Saturday. A Musudan missile has a range between 3,000 and 4,000 kilometers (1,864 and 2,485 miles), long enough to reach U.S. military installations in Guam.
“The missile exploded in the air just seconds after launch. We are now looking into the cause of the failure,” said a military official on condition of anonymity. The official said South Korea and the United States had closely cooperated in analyzing Saturday’s failed launch and assessed it was a Musudan missile launch. The official added that South Korea’s military analyzed the failed launch by sharing surveillance data provided by the U.S. military obtained by its intelligence assets including satellites. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but this failure means that in seven test launches they have had one successful firing of the Musudan missile.
Merchants at the Taewha traditional market in UIsan, 414 kilometers southeast of Seoul, clap for soldiers on Oct. 12, 2016, in a gesture to express thanks for their efforts to help them restore their market that was severely damaged by the powerful Typhoon Chaba early in the month. (photo courtesy of army) (Yonhap)
This has to be one of the weakest sexual harassment claims I have seen yet:
Minjoo Party of Korea Rep. Yoo Eun-hye, second from right, stands with party lawmakers to announce that they will report Saenuri Party Rep. Han Sun-kyo to the Special Committee on Ethics for making a “sexually harassing” remark to Rep. Yoo during National Assembly audit sessions Thursday. / Yonhap
Rep. Han Sun-kyo has become the target of opposition criticism after making what female lawmakers claimed was a “sexually harassing” remark to Rep. Yoo Eun-hye during National Assembly audit sessions on Thursday.
Han, a ruling Saenuri Party lawmaker, was addressing sessions held to question the Education, Culture and Tourism Committee, of which he is a member. As he mentioned the rising controversies of the Mir and K-Sports foundations, he caught some of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK) lawmakers, including Yoo, laughing.
Apparently angered, Han, a former MBC news reader, asked Yoo, “What is so funny? Do you find me attractive or something?”
Yoo, offended by the comment, demanded Han apologize. MPK’s poet-turned-lawmaker Do Jong-hwan and Park Kyung-mi joined Yoo in criticizing Han.
Han apologized, saying he and Yoo are from the same alumni circle.
“I guess I might have lost grip since I perceived her as my colleague,” Han said during the audit’s follow-up session in the afternoon. “If she is still uncomfortable about what I said, I will make further apologies.”
Yoo was not moved by his apology.
“Before I am your colleague, I am a lawmaker representing my citizens and we are in the middle of an Assembly audit session,” Yoo said. “Your comment embarrassed me and neither is it appropriate to the committee.” [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but I find it ironic these opposition lawmakers are claiming that Han’s comment was inappropriate during a committee meeting when they were the ones giggling and disturbing the meeting in the first place.
In the latest email leak involving the Hillary Clinton campaign her private views on China have been revealed and it is nothing surprising though I do like her comment about calling the Pacific Ocean the “American Sea”:
Then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shakes hands with then Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang in Beijing on Sept. 5, 2012. In emails released by WikiLeaks on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2016, Clinton said the U.S. would “ring China with missile defense” if the Chinese government failed to curb North Korea’s nuclear program.
Hillary Clinton privately said the U.S. would “ring China with missile defense” if the Chinese government failed to curb North Korea’s nuclear program, a potential hint at how the former secretary of state would act if elected president.
Clinton’s remarks were revealed by WikiLeaks in a hack of the Clinton campaign chairman’s personal account. The emails include a document excerpting Clinton’s private speech transcripts, which she has refused to release.
A section on China features several issues in which Clinton said she confronted the Chinese while leading the U.S. State Department.
China has harshly criticized the U.S. and South Korea’s planned deployment of a missile-defense system against North Korea, which conducted its fifth nuclear test this year. But Clinton said she told Chinese officials that the U.S. might deploy additional ships to the region to contain the North Korean missile threat.
If North Korea successfully obtains a ballistic missile, it could threaten not just American allies in the Pacific, “but they could actually reach Hawaii and the west coast theoretically,” Clinton said.
“We’re going to ring China with missile defense. We’re going to put more of our fleet in the area,” Clinton said in a 2013 speech. “So China, come on. You either control them or we’re going to have to defend against them.”
China is North Korea’s economic lifeline and the closest thing it has to a diplomatic ally, and has been criticized by the U.S. and others for not doing enough to rein in Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions. Chinese officials and state media have responded by saying that North Korea is not solely China’s responsibility, and that Beijing has limited influence with secretive leader Kim Jong Un’s hard-line communist regime.
Clinton also privately criticized China’s position on another sensitive issue, the South China Sea. China claims almost the entirety of the strategically vital waterbody and has lashed out at an international tribunal’s July ruling rejecting its claims.
Clinton told a different audience in 2013 that by China’s logic, the U.S. after World War II could have labeled the Pacific Ocean the “American Sea.”
“My counterpart sat up very straight and goes, ‘Well, you can’t do that,'” she said. “And I said, ‘Well, we have as much right to claim that as you do. I mean, you claim (the South China Sea) based on pottery shards from, you know, some fishing vessel that ran aground in an atoll somewhere.” [Stars & Stripes]
Here is the latest exercise held between the ROK and the United States to further deter North Korea:
This photo taken on Oct. 14, 2016, shows a Super Hornet jet landing on the USS Ronald Reagan during a flight operation unveiled to South Korean reporters in the sea north of Jeju Island. (Yonhap)
The flight deck of the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier was bustling with sailors and planes Friday to demonstrate air flight operations to dozens of South Korean reporters who arrived on board after an hour-long flight from a U.S. air base near Seoul.
The first thing that greeted reporters was pilots in the cockpits of their Super Hornet fighter jets getting ready to take off and the flight deck crew assisting in the operations in waters some 240 kilometers from Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul, and north of Jeju Island.
Before the planned demonstration, Rear Adm. Charles Williams, commander of the carrier battle group of the U.S. 7th Fleet, delivered a short briefing on the ongoing joint exercise between South Korean and U.S. navies amid ever-growing nuclear and missile threats from North Korea.
“Our operations on the Korean peninsula are part of the ongoing partnership with our Republic of Korea Navy counterparts that has been around for more than 5 decades now. The work we have done with our counterparts has proven to strengthen our alliance,” the flag officer said.
As for the meaning of the combined exercise, Lt. Commander Aaron V. Kakiel, a spokesman for Carrier Strike Group 5, which the nuclear carrier is a part of, said, “This exercise has been planned for a very long time. We’ve been working with our Korean counterparts to exercise our interoperability in this area. It is not a direct response to any (provocative) actions (by any country). It is meant to be training for us to work together for a stronger alliance.”
During the 30-minute demonstration, nine fighter jets took off and 15 fighter jets made landings. Most of the fighter jets were FA-18 Super Hornets. Others were the E-2C Hawk Eye early warning plane and the EA-18G Growler, the fleet’s electronics warfare plane.
U.S. and South Korean navy officials said the joint exercise will further improve interoperability to be fully ready to strike back against any military attacks by North Korea. [Yonhap]
