Members of a local environmental group hold a street campaign in central Seoul on July 4, 2016, to discourage the use of plastic bags for carrying items purchased at stores. The event took place one day after International Plastic Bag Free Day dedicated to heightening awareness about the problem of plastic waste, which takes a long time to degrade and contributes to air, water and soil pollution. (Yonhap)
It doesn’t appear to be an asymmetric attack like the North Koreans have done before, but instead just a response to the heavy rains that have hit the peninsula:
North Korea discharged water from a dam near the border with South Korea Wednesday, prompting the South to evacuate border-area residents for fears of flooding.
“It seems that North Korea discharged water from Hwanggang Dam at around 6 a.m.,” a South Korean military official said. “North Korea opened the floodgates of the dam bit by bit from early morning.”
The North did not notify the South of the dam water discharge in advance despite their previous agreement to do so, the official said.
Still, Seoul ruled out the possibility that the sudden water release has anything to do with flooding attacks, he added.
The water level at the North Korean dam had been detected to have risen to full capacity with the area having massive rainfalls in recent weeks.
Six South Koreans were killed in September 2009 after North Korea released a massive amount of water from the border dam without prior warning. [Yonhap]
Considering the short time of flight of incoming enemy missiles, missile defense operators in South Korea do not have time to call the South Korean Defense Minister for approval to engage an incoming target. It is also pretty ridiculous that there is even a debate on whether a missile from North Korea projected to impact within South Korea should be considered a wartime act or not:
A debate is escalating over command of THAAD, the U.S. anti-missile defense system, and whether the United States or South Korea is to have the final say on a response in the case of a North Korea attack.
South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo told parliamentarians Tuesday in a scenario of a North Korean ballistic missile attack, Seoul has four to eight minutes to respond, local newspaper Kyunghyang Shinmun reported.
“A very sophisticated operation management procedure has been developed,” Han said.
Han’s response, however, evaded a question from Justice Party spokesman Kim Jong-dae, who had asked Han which military would issue the command to intercept an incoming missile, Yonhap reported.
Han later added South Korea holds “operational control” during peacetime and U.S. Forces Korea plays a role in support of that strategy.
But Han did not say whether a fired missile coming from North Korea qualifies as an action of peacetime or wartime. [UPI]
The Joong Ang Ilbo has an extensive profile on the life of Hwang In-cheol who is the son of a 32-year old MBC producer that was kidnapped by North Korea on a hijacked plane. You can read about this story at my prior DMZ Flashpoints posting. This hijacking is just one of the many terrorist incidents the Kim regime has never been held accountable for and to this day some how remains off of the US’s state sponsors of terrorism list:
When Hwang In-cheol was 2 years old, his father disappeared.
“Maybe he’ll come back on Christmas Day,” Hwang’s mother said.
Hwang counted down the days, imagining his father coming through the door laden down with presents.
It didn’t happen.
“Maybe next Christmas,” his mother said.
It wasn’t until Hwang was in the third grade that his father’s brother decided he should know the truth.
Hwang Won was a 32-year-old producer for Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) based in Gangwon. On Dec. 11, 1969, he boarded a Korean Air flight from Gangneung, Gangwon, for Gimpo International Airport in Seoul to attend an MBC internal meeting. A senior colleague who was supposed to attend was busy. He ordered Hwang to fill in for him.
Ten minutes after takeoff, a North Korean spy hijacked the YS-11 aircraft and the 50 other people on it, all South Koreans, to Wonsan, some 207 kilometers (128.6 miles) east of Pyongyang, the North’s capital.
The producer left behind his wife, a 3-month-old daughter and 2-year-old Hwang In-cheol.
It was the second – and last – instance of a South Korean aircraft being hijacked by the North. On Feb. 16, 1958, a Korean Air flight from Busan to Seoul was abducted midway with 34 people on board, including a few foreigners. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), South Korea’s second-largest umbrella labor union, hold a rally in front of the Seoul Central District Court in southern Seoul on July 4, 2016, calling for the release of its jailed leader. In a high-profile ruling the same day, the court sentenced KCTU leader Han Sang-gyun to five years in jail for leading last year’s violent rallies in downtown Seoul. (Yonhap)
Like I have always said, with such a large population of servicemembers on Okinawa these incidents are going to keep happening regardless of how many restrictions are put on troops. So the anti-US activists are going to continue to find reasons to bash the US military presence on Okinawa:
A U.S. airman was taken into custody after being pulled over for driving erratically around 4:30 a.m. Monday and then failing a Breathalyzer test, according to a police spokesman in Okinawa City.
Staff Sgt. Christopher Aaron Platte, 27, assigned to Kadena Air Base, was driving in the Chatan area near the Jagaru highway intersection when police spotted a car moving in a zigzag manner, the spokesman said.
Police conducted a Breathalyzer test after smelling alcohol on his breath. They said he denied drinking, then tested just under 0.04 percent blood alcohol content, above Japan’s legal limit of 0.03. [Stars & Stripes]
I am sure everyone saw this coming, but I am still surprised she wasn’t at least fined like General Petraeus was for mishandling classified information:
FBI Director James Comey makes a statement at FBI Headquarters in Washington, Tuesday, July 5, 2016. CLIFF OWEN/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The FBI won’t recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server while secretary of state, agency Director James Comey said Tuesday, lifting a major legal threat to her presidential campaign.
Comey’s decision almost certainly brings the legal part of the issue to a close and removes the threat of criminal charges. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said last week that she would accept the recommendations of the FBI director and of career prosecutors.
“No charges are appropriate in this case,” Comey said in making his announcement.
But Comey made that statement after he delivered a blistering review of Clinton’s actions, saying the FBI found that 110 emails were sent or received on Clinton’s server containing classified information. He said Clinton and her aides were “extremely careless” and added that it was possible that people hostile to the U.S. had gained access to her personal email account. [Associated Press]
Apparently this elderly couple had their son plus his wife and children visit on weekends which created a lot of noise which for whatever reason set this guy off. Sadly the elderly woman was killed by the stabbing:
The 34-year-old man suspected of having stabbed a senior couple that lived upstairs from him in in Hanam, Gyeonggi, for ignoring his requests to quiet down was caught by the police at a sauna in Incheon, Hanam Police said on Monday.
The suspect is accused of having planned the crime in advance, as he allegedly had a knife with him, which was purchased one month ago, when he visited the elderly couple at about 5:50 p.m. on Saturday. The suspect had also allegedly installed a video camera in front of the victim’s home in order to find out the door passcode.
Although the husband, 68, and the wife, 67, were both stabbed, the wife died after being transferred to a hospital while the husband is in stable condition, police have announced.
“I remember having locked the door,” testified the husband. “I don’t know how he managed to open it.”
“I faced difficulties in my daily life because of the loud noise coming from upstairs,” the suspect later testified to police. “I personally went upstairs twice in March and told them to be quiet, but they kept making noise. I just got more and more stressed out as the days went by, and that’s why I did what I did.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Kim Jong-un is not only using the Chinese fishing boats as part of a asymmetric warfare strategy, but he is also making money at the expense of food for his own people:
The cash-strapped Pyongyang regime, under heavy international sanctions in 2016, sold $30 million worth of fishing rights to more than a 1,000 Chinese vessels, The Korea Herald reported Friday.
The number of licenses issued has tripled from previous years, said Lee Wan-young, a South Korean lawmaker of the ruling Saenuri party, after a meeting with the National Intelligence Service.
“North Korean people, too, are unhappy because it has shrunk the catch and caused common complaints with their southern counterparts regarding worsening environmental damage such as from fuel oil sludge at sea,” Lee said. [UPI]
You can read more at the link, but so much for China supposedly aggressively applying financial sanctions on North Korea.
