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Better a financial crisis in China than a nuclear war in Korea. https://t.co/9PIxjuQZ5W

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) October 1, 2016

Won Buddhism believers hold a rally in front of the Defense Ministry in Seoul on Sept. 30, 2016, to protest a ministry decision to pick a golf course in the southeastern county of Seongju as the “final” site for an advanced U.S. missile defense system known as Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD). The golf course is about 500 meters away from the religion’s sacred ground. (Yonhap)

Maybe the ROK is taking the approach President Duerte takes for drug dealers and applying it to Chinese fishermen who continue to plague the country’s waters:

Three Chinese fishermen were killed on Thursday in a fire that broke out on their boat when South Korean coastguard men trying to apprehend them for illegal fishing threw flash grenades into a room they were hiding in, a South Korean official said.

Disputes over illegal fishing are an irritant in relations between China and U.S. ally South Korea, even as their economic relations grow close. They also share concern about North Korea’s nuclear weapon and missile programs.

The three men were believed to have suffocated, a coastguard official in the South Korean port city of Mokpo said, adding that the incident was being investigated.

The fire broke out in the boat’s steering room, the official, who is not authorized to speak with media and declined to be identified, told Reuters by telephone.

South Korean authorities were questioning the 14 surviving crew and coastguard members involved in the operation, the official added.

China’s Foreign Ministry said it had lodged a protest with Seoul about the incident.

Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a daily news briefing Beijing was also urging South Korea to hold a “comprehensive and objective” investigation into the incident, along with China.  [Reuters via reader tip]

You can read more at the link, but definitely compared to the past where these fishermen having actually murdered Korean Coast Guard personnel it is clear ROK authorities have taken a more aggressive stance to stop them.

Further Reading:

https://www.rokdrop.net/2014/10/korean-coast-guard-kills-chinese-fishermen-during-raid/

That is what Mr. Richard Haas from the Council on Foreign Relations believes should be considered:

The U.S. should try to dispel China’s concern about potential negative effects on its national interests in the event of North Korea’s collapse in order to win Beijing’s help in pressuring Pyongyang to give up its nuclear programs, a U.S. expert said.

Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, also said in an article that should such persuasive efforts toward China fail, the U.S. would have to either live with a North Korea capable of striking the U.S. with nuclear missiles or launch military action to take out the North’s nuclear and missile facilities.  (…….)

“One would be to live with a North Korea in possession of missiles that could bring nuclear bombs to U.S. soil,” he said. “The policy would become one of defense (deploying additional anti-missile systems) and deterrence, with North Korea understanding that any use or spread of nuclear weapons would lead to the end of the regime and possibly nuclear retaliation.”

The second option would be a military attack on the North’s nuclear and missile capabilities, he said.

“The danger is that such a strike might not achieve all of its objectives and trigger either a conventional military attack on South Korea (where nearly 30,000 US troops are based) or even a nuclear attack from the North,” he said.

The third option would be to launch such a conventional military attack only if intelligence showed North Korea was putting its missiles on alert and readying them for imminent use, but the danger in that option is the intelligence might not be sufficiently clear or come early enough, he said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but I don’t believe we are at that point yet considering that other options such as aggressively sanctioning Chinese banks and businesses have not be used yet.  Allowing South Korea to develop their own nuclear deterrent would be preferable to a preemptive military strike that could ignite a second Korean War.

Further Reading:

https://www.rokdrop.net/2016/09/nearly-60-of-south-koreans-want-country-to-develop-nuclear-weapons/

Here is something interesting, the U.K. is going to take part in a joint military drill with the US and the ROK in November:

To counter the rising threats from North Korea’s intensified nuclear and missile tests, South Korea and its allies – the US and the UK – are gearing up for a joint military drill in November.

Earlier in the week, South Korea and the US conducted a joint naval drill in the Sea of Japan in the Korean peninsula, which was said to be a show of force by the two countries against North Korea. The countries are also discussing imposing tougher sanctions against Kim Jong-un’s regime to stop him from pursuing the banned nuclear programme.

The South Korean Air Force said in a statement that the maiden joint military drill will be conducted between 4 and 10 November at Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, 70 km south of the South Korean capital Seoul. The drill, dubbed the “Invincible Shield” will involve a combined aerial exercise, the first of its kind, the statement added.

The UK is planning to send four Eurofighter Typhoon combat jets, Voyager tanker aircraft and C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft to take part in the exercise. F-15K and KF-16 fighters from South Korea will also participate in the drill with the US’s F-16 fighters, the statement added.  [International Business Times]

You can read more at the link.

NK maths prodigy defector reportedly left Hong Kong for SKorea over the weekend after only a two month stay. https://t.co/aL0E2pE0LW

— Sokeel Park (@Sokeel) September 28, 2016

From this Daum blog comes this photo of an inspector checking the measurements of a woman wearing a mini-skirt in 1973 Seoul:

Over at One Free Korea there is a good posting up about how the Senate in a bi-partisan manner recently grilled State Department officials about the lack of sanctions against Chinese banks:

 

I’ve never worked in the Senate, so I wouldn’t know if that’s standard procedure there, but past hearings I’ve watched didn’t run this well. Gardner himself was in complete command of both the material and the room, and gave every appearance of being a man with limitless potential. Indeed, all of the senators were well-prepared. All, regardless of their party or tribal affiliations, asked good or excellent questions. 

In the end, however, no one can hurt you more than the people who love you. At 58:17, Senator Menendez began questioning Fried by arguing for secondary sanctions against Chinese banks. He then embarked on a well-prepared, determined, and lawyerly cross-examination of Fried about this. Pressured by Menendez’s questioning and clearly unsure of his material, Fried told Menendez that Dandong Hongxiang was a bank (not true). I don’t think Fried was lying, but he didn’t have command of the facts, and when he got out of his depth, he swam into a rip current. Mendendez pinned Fried down on his answer. Then, when his time expired, he went back and pulled Treasury’s announcement, probably talked to his staff, and confirmed that this wasn’t true. At 1:35:30, Menendez returned, rearmed. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what it’s like to have a bad day in the United States Senate.  [One Free Korea]

You can read the transcript at the link of the bad day Mr. Daniel Fried, the State Department’s Coordinator for Sanctions Policy had being grilled by the Senate.  The fact that he did not immediately know that the Treasury Department has not sanctioned any Chinese banks is worrisome.

It has long been suspected that the Lotte Sky Hill Golf Course would be the final site for the deployment of the US THAAD battery and the ROK government has finally made it official:

South Korea selected a golf course in the southeastern part of the nation as the “final” site for an advanced U.S. missile defense system to better counter North Korea’s evolving missile and nuclear threat, the defense ministry said Friday.

The decision comes nearly three months after Seoul and Washington originally chose the Seongsan anti-aircraft missile base in Seongju, 296 kilometers southeast of Seoul, to host the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system by 2017.

“We have conducted a simulation-based evaluation on three alternative sites in Seongju. The test results showed the Lotte Skyhill Country Club is the most optimal site for THAAD in terms of six principles,” Moon Sang-gyun, a spokesman for the Ministry of National Defense, told Yonhap News Agency.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.