Two high-ranking officials from the North Korean embassy in Beijing – including a man who had overseen leader Kim Jong-un’s health care – defected with their families last month, a source well-informed on North Korea revealed.
“On Sept. 28, a heavyweight representative in North Korea’s mission in Beijing – who came from the Health Ministry – escaped with his wife and daughter,” the source exclusively told the JoongAng Ilbo on Tuesday. “This family made contact with the Japanese Embassy in China to begin the procedure to head to Japan.”
The official has relatives in Japan, which was why he chose to defect to Tokyo rather than Seoul.
As a high-ranking Health Ministry official, he would have overseen the Bonghwa Medical Center, which treats North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his family, as well as the Namsan Hospital and the Red Cross Hospital. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but I wonder if the health official is fleeing because he is getting blamed for the poor health of Kim Jong-un? It must be a stressful job trying to keep that guy healthy.
Typhoon Chaba struck South Korea pretty hard causing a handful of deaths and missing people. I don’t mean to make light of the people who died or missing but scrambling on to your roof, hanging out at a construction site or trying to tie down your fishing boat are not activities I recommend in the middle of a major typhoon:
Vehicles are submerged in a parking lot near the Taehwa River in Ulsan Wednesday as the river flooded due to the impact of Typhoon Chaba, which headed toward Japan later. [NEWSIS]Typhoon Chaba slammed through southern cities Wednesday morning, killing at least four people, paralyzing flights and trains and knocking out power for a few hours.
According to the Ministry of Public Safety and Security, 1,183 hectares of farmland was flooded in South Jeolla, 950 cars get trapped in water in Ulsan and Jeju, and some 210,000 houses lost power in Jeju, South Jeolla and South Gyeongsang.
The Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) issued typhoon warnings in Busan, Ulsan and South Gyeongsang regions from 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, as the tropical storm that passed through Jeju Island Tuesday approached. The maximum wind speed reached 115 kilometers per hour (71 miles per hour) on Wednesday afternoon.
According to authorities, four people died and two went missing on Wednesday.
According to Busan police, a 90-year-old woman fell from the rooftop of her house in Mangmi-dong due to strong winds and died. A 59-year-old construction worker died when he was crushed by a falling crane at a construction site at Kosin University. A 56-year-old surnamed Heo, who was reportedly checking whether his boat was fastened to a breakwater in Daehang-dong, was swept away by waves and later found dead.
A resident of Ulsan was found dead some 60 meters (197 feet) from his apartment entrance, and a rescue worker in Ulsan and a fisherman in Jeju went missing, according to local authorities. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Considering how Trump has repeatedly said that he is going to make Koreans pay more for their defense and increase taxes on imports to protect American businesses is it any wonder why Hillary Clinton is polling so high in South Korea?:
Hillary Clinton meets then-ROK President Lee Myung-bak during her time as secretary of state.
If South Koreans could vote in the U.S. presidential election next month, Hillary Clinton would win by a landslide. More than 8 in 10 would throw their weight behind the Democratic candidate, who is surging in popularity both domestically and abroad, a survey released September 30 suggests.
In the poll of over 44,000 adults in 45 countries from August to September, WIN/Gallup International found that 82 percent of South Koreans would have voted for Clinton as the next U.S. president, compared to 3 percent backing her Republican opponent Donald Trump and 15 percent undecided or declining to answer.
South Koreans were Clinton’s third-strongest supporters behind only Finland and Portugal, which backed her 86 and 85 percent, respectively. The former first lady, senator, and secretary of state found support across the board, with Russia the only surveyed country preferring her business mogul rival and China nearly split on the candidates. [The Diplomat via a reader tip]
Placards are hung on street lamps in Myeongdong, downtown Seoul, on Sept. 30, 2016, to open the welcome week for foreigners on the eve of China’s weeklong National Day holiday. A variety of performances will be held in Myeondong and seven other tourist attractions in the capital during the week, when some 250,000 Chinese tourists are expected to visit South Korea. (Yonhap)
President Park Geun-hye is getting some love from Elle magazine:
Before becoming South Korea’s first-ever female president in 2013, Park Geun-hye acted as the chairwoman of the Conservative Grand National Party and as a member of the Korean National Assembly. Geun-hye, whose father served as president for nearly two decades, is often called one of the most powerful women in the world. During her time in office, she has worked to prioritize national security, particularly in relationship to North Korea, and to revitalize the South Korean economy, which is the 14th largest in the world. [Elle]
If you live on the southern coast of South Korea it is best to take precautions for the flooding that Typhoon Chaba is likely to bring:
Typhoon Chaba will threaten lives and property across mainland Japan and South Korea this week after lashing the Ryukyu Islands on Monday night.
Chaba reached super-typhoon status, strengthening to the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane, on Monday afternoon, local time. Chaba has since weakened below super-typhoon status, but residents of Japan and South Korea should not let their guard down.
Powerful winds, torrential rain and rough seas around Chaba’s center will pose significant danger to shipping interests across the East China Sea, Korea Strait and Sea of Japan through Wednesday night.
Residents of southern mainland Japan and southern South Korea need to prepare for Chaba to make a direct hit or pass dangerously close on Tuesday night into Wednesday. [AccuWeather]
If the Japanese made such a film that gloats about marching into Seoul I am willing to bet the reaction from South Korea would be much different. However, since it is China making a film gloating about marching into Seoul I bet there will hardly be any notice:
A teaser for a patriotic film that features Chinese veterans of the Korean war has ignited controversy in China and revived debate over the country’s controversial role in the deadly conflict six decades ago. It has also triggered calls on Chinese social media to boycott My War, by Hong Kong director Oxide Pang and due to premiere on Thursday, as some internet users said the film treated poorly historical facts of the war that killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers from China and more from the two Koreas, which remain divided and hostile to each other.
The two-minute teaser shows a group of elderly Chinese tourists on a bus in Seoul as a young Korean tour guide welcomes them on their first trip to South Korea’s capital city.
An old lady interrupts, telling the guide they had visited before in the past.
“Lady, we came here before, about 60 years ago,” an old man says.
“We held the Chinese flag and came here,” another man explains.
The tour guide, wearing traditional Korean dress, looks puzzled, asking how they would hold the Chinese flag in Seoul.
The tourists tell the guide she will realise how they did so after she sees My War.
“Resist US aggression and aid Korea, protect our home and defend our country,” the tourists chant at the end of the teaser.
The slogan is widely used in Communist propaganda to describe China’s role in coming to North Korea’s aid in 1950, resulting in the deaths of between 149,000 and 400,000 Chinese soldiers. [South China Morning Post via a reader tip]
You can read the rest at the link, but if someone made that such comments to me I would have responded if they brought their Chinese flag back with him when they ran with their tails between their legs out of the city from the United Nations forces?
Anyway here is a Youtube clip of the movie’s controversial promotion video:
Radars are extremely hi-tech and complicated pieces of equipment that require maintenance and some ROK politicians are using maintenance outages to criticize the ROK military:
The country’s two Green Pine antiballistic radar units, which play a key role in detecting North Korea’s ballistic missile launches, have malfunctioned 21 times in the past three years, according to a military report that was submitted to Rep. Lee Chul-gyu of the ruling Saenuri Party and exclusively acquired by the JoongAng Ilbo on Sunday.
Considering that the military operates one radar unit at a time biweekly and it takes two hours to turn on the other radar when one breaks down, 21 malfunctions means the South went 42 hours with neither radar working.
The Air Force acknowledged the malfunctions as well as the gap of 42 hours, but said there wasn’t a single time that both units were simultaneously broken.
The military said that the radars stopped working mainly when droplets of water formed inside the machine due to a temperature difference with the outside layer, which paralyzed the system’s transmission output.
According to Lee, the military has recently decided to spend an extra 13 billion won to build a dome that would cover the radars, decreasing the temperature difference to prevent future malfunctioning.
“I can’t help but doubt the military’s professionalism,” said Lee. “How could they pay 200 billion won for each radar and not have prevented dew forming?” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
![Vehicles are submerged in a parking lot near the Taehwa River in Ulsan Wednesday as the river flooded due to the impact of Typhoon Chaba, which headed toward Japan later. [NEWSIS]](https://i0.wp.com/pds.joins.com/jmnet/koreajoongangdaily/_data/photo/2016/10/05202738.jpg?resize=320%2C441)
