This article makes me wonder how many “white envelopes” are being passed to teachers in South Korea? Is this just the tip of the iceberg?:

A case involving the principal and two teachers of a private girls’ high school in Gwangju was sent to prosecutors on charges of fabricating the school records of 25 students in order to help them gain admission to good colleges, police said Wednesday.

The three educators are suspected to have either raised the test scores of 12 students in the 11th grade and 13 students in the 12th grade or lied about their extracurricular activities.

Authorities did not say exactly how many students were aware of the plot, but hinted that “several” must have known because they were called into the teacher’s office and specifically asked what details the teachers could add to their documents to make them look better.

Some parents were said to have paid each teacher about 2 million won ($1,828) for the service, said police.   [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but I am a bit surprised by how cheap the bribe was.

Here is an article that provides a reminder of how difficult the life for many North Korean defectors has been before finding refuge:

Back in my home country, I was charged with trying to escape North Korea and sent to a jail where a dozen male and female, young and old prisoners were squeezed into a room no bigger than a metre square. There was only one toilet in the corner of the room and no privacy.
Like other inmates, I was treated as an enemy of the state and forced to do hard labour, clearing the hills of trees so that crops could be planted. I became so malnourished that my skin turned black and my body was skeletal. I lost big clumps of hair and felt utter despair. But the greatest pain was in my heart. I couldn’t bear being separated from my child. On days I thought about death, the thought of seeing my son again was all that kept me going.We were not allowed to wear shoes in the prison, in case we tried to run away. Slowly the skin on my feet became broken and calloused from the rough stones on the ground. My wounds became infected until finally gangrene set in. It was desperately painful, but what I didn’t realise was this would be my passport to freedom. The prison doctor told me that the United Nations had intervened to condemn the conditions in North Korea’s prisons, and he persuaded the guards that I needed rest.

Thanks to him, I was sent to a prison for children where I was to stay until I was well enough to return to finish my two-year sentence. But after two months, when I was able to walk with a limp, I begged the guards to let me leave. My father had passed away just after I left for China, and I told them I wanted to visit his grave. In a rare moment of generosity, they agreed to let me go and, the minute I was out, I headed for the Chinese border again. I had no money, and I knew the only hope of seeing my son again was to approach another trafficker on the North Korean side and tell him I wanted to be sold again into marriage. Once inside China, I managed to escape.  [Yahoo News]

You can read much more at the link, but this North Korean defector went through a lot before getting to England.  This article is also a reminder of the modern day comfort woman trade that the Chinese government indirectly sponsors with North Korean refuge women in China.

If you believe in the results of computerized wargames than the North Koreans do not stand a chance against USFK:

This year’s joint exercise with U.S. forces demonstrated that the military might of the two allies could bring the North Korean command to its knees, a senior military official said Tuesday.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the 2016 Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG), carried out between Aug. 22 and Sept. 2, and involving a simulated war game pitting Korea-U.S. joint forces against the North Korean military, was run with the Operation Plan (Oplan) 5015, which was first included in the UFG exercise last year.

Oplan 5015 calls for pre-emptive strikes against North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missiles facilities as well as its top leaders.

“At the early phase of the simulation war game,” said the official, “the two sides had a series of fierce battles. But as time went by, the allied forces were able to strike back and advance towards the north of Pyongyang and eventually annihilated the leadership in the capital.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

https://twitter.com/AskAKorean/status/772193851545190401

People lay wreathes around a statue of Kang Woo-kyu (1855-1920), a Korean fighter for independence from Japanese colonial rule, during a ceremony at a plaza in front of the former Seoul Station on Sept. 2, 2016, to mark the 97th anniversary of an unsuccessful attempt in 1919 by Kang to assassinate Makoto Saito, the Japanese governor-general in Korea. Korea was under Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule. (Yonhap)

This Wall Street Journal article makes a good point, how did the civil service allow Secretary Clinton to get away with using a private email server for so long?:

Forget the new dump of Hillary Clinton emails. Forget the phony claims that the missing communications were all about wedding plans and yoga routines. Forget, too, the many requests from Doug Band in which the Clinton Foundation honcho hoped his quos (hefty donations to the Clinton Foundation) would translate into quids (e.g., special access to the secretary).

Forget them all. The most disturbing aspect about the FBI dump may not be fresh evidence of another Clinton lie. The most disturbing thing about Mrs. Clinton’s continuing email drama may be where she’s telling the truth.

Or at least a half-truth. Mrs. Clinton told the FBI it was “common knowledge” at State that she used private email. Agents further quote her as saying she “could not recall anyone raising concerns with her regarding the sensitivity of the information she received at her email address.”

However unseemly the cashing in of the Clinton family, whatever the trampling of the ethics accord the Clinton Foundation had signed with the White House, even apart from the walking conflicts-of-interests that were Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, the much larger stink here is this: Mrs. Clinton was allowed to spend her four years as secretary of state off the grid.

It isn’t so much that Mrs. Clinton set up a personal server so she would not be accountable the way normal political appointees are held accountable. It’s that no one in government stopped her.  [Wall Street Journal]

You can read more at the link, but in the military I have never heard or seen a senior officer use a private email address.  If someone did it would immediately raise eyebrows and eventually an IG complaint from someone if it continued.

I think this article makes a good point that the more the Chinese government complains, the more it creates a selling point for Lockheed Martin to other potential customers about how effective the THAAD system is:

According to The Wall Street Journal, 74% of South Koreans supported the installation of the THAAD missile shield, but there is opposition primarily focussed on strained relations with China, the South’s largest economic partner.

Other opposition is coming from areas where the THAAD system will be deployed and environmentalists concerned about health hazards and other environmental impacts.

Lockheed, however, may eventually benefit from North Korea’s latest launches if the South increases the size of its order or even if it can parlay China’s fears about the system into a selling point to other customers.  [24/7 Wall Street]

You can read more at the link.

I don’t know what to make of this guy, but I have been reading that Duterte is extremely popular in the Philippines.  Maybe people have just had enough of the crime:

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte warned President Barack Obama on Monday not to question him about extrajudicial killings, or “son of a bitch I will swear at you” when they meet in Laos during a regional summit.

Duterte said before flying to Laos that he is a leader of a sovereign country and is answerable only to the Filipino people. He was answering a reporter’s question about how he intends to explain the extrajudicial killings to Obama. More than 2,000 suspected drug pushers and users have been killed since Duterte launched a war on drugs after taking office on June 30.

In his typical foul-mouthed style, Duterte responded: “I am a president of a sovereign state and we have long ceased to be a colony. I do not have any master except the Filipino people, nobody but nobody. You must be respectful. Do not just throw questions. Putang ina I will swear at you in that forum,” he said, using the Tagalog phrase for son of a bitch.  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link, but Duterte blames the violence in the southern Philippines due to the American crackdown on the Moros over 100 years ago.  However, the Moros were fighting outsiders long before the Americans ever showed up.

Guess which police number is for emergencies in Korea. pic.twitter.com/7bw2cAkx4Z

— Alastair Gale (@AlastairGale) September 3, 2016

South Korean President Park Geun-hye (L) shakes hands with her Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping prior to their summit talks in Hangzhou, eastern China, on Sept. 5, 2016. The meeting came amid strains in their relations over the planned deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, in South Korea. (Yonhap)