North Korea is continuing to double down on their support to Russia’s war against Ukraine:
North Korea appears to have deployed additional troops to support Russia’s war against Ukraine, although the number of recently deployed troops is being assessed, South Korea’s spy agency said Thursday.
“Following about a monthlong lull, North Korean troops were placed back in the frontline region of Kursk starting in the first week of February,” the National Intelligence Service (NIS) said in a note to the press.
“It appears that there has been a deployment of additional troops, but their size is still being examined,” the NIS said.
The assessment follows a news report that between 1,000 and 3,000 North Korean troops were newly transported to Kursk via Russian cargo ships and military airplanes between January and February in the second round of such troop deployment.
You can read more at the link.
Honestly I don’t have too much sympathy for people who lose money in bitcoin. The risks of fraud and theft are so well known no one should be surprised if they find themselves getting ripped off by a bitcoin scheme:
A company which fell victim to what’s thought to be the world’s biggest ever theft is seeking to recover some of its losses by crowdsourcing online bounty hunters.
Last week, hackers believed to be from North Korea’s notorious Lazarus Group stole $1.46bn (£1.1bn) of cryptocurrency from ByBit, a crypto trading platform.
The criminals are trying to rapidly cash out the hoard through a complex online money laundering process.
ByBit is now offering cash rewards to anyone who spots and prevents them from cashing out.
“Join us on war against Lazarus” the company’s CEO Ben Zhou posted online with a link to a new website offering a bounty to anyone who can help.
Cryptocurrencies are stored in public wallets anyone can look up so it’s possible to follow the money as the criminals split it into smaller chunks and send it through various channels to obscure its origins.
The new website has a live leader board showing companies and individuals who have successfully located some of the coins.
The bounty scheme gives 5% of the sum identified to individuals who successfully persuade a company that has control of the funds to freeze the money.
It’s also awarding 5% to the companies that take action.
You can read more at the link.
Hopefully this ends up being a sustainable increase:
The number of babies born in South Korea increased for the first time in nine years in 2024, driven by a post-pandemic rise in marriages, evolving attitudes toward parenthood and demographic changes, the statistics agency said Wednesday.
A total of 238,300 babies were born last year, up 3.6 percent from a record low of 230,000 in 2023, according to Statistics Korea. The figure had been declining since 2015, when it stood at 438,400.
The total fertility rate, the average number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime, also rebounded for the first time in nine years, reaching 0.75 in 2024, up from 0.72 tallied a year earlier.
You can read more at the link.
Imagine if American politicians could be jailed for lying to the public? The U.S. wouldn’t have a government:
Prosecutors on Wednesday demanded a two-year prison term for opposition leader Lee Jae-myung on charges of lying as a presidential candidate during the 2022 election.
Lee of the Democratic Party (DP) is considered the presidential frontrunner in the event President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment is upheld, but confirmation of his lower court sentence of one year in prison, suspended for two years, would bar him from running in the next presidential election in 2027.
The opposition leader is accused of lying during a media interview in December 2021 that he did not know the late Kim Moon-ki, a former executive of Seongnam Development Corp., which was behind a corruption-ridden development project in Seongnam, south of Seoul, when Lee was the city’s mayor.
During the final hearing of his appellate trial in the day, the prosecution said Lee deserves “a heavy punishment for distorting voters’ choices by telling a lie.”
You can read more at the link.
It is amazing how many of Korea’s elites have been involved with plagiarism to attain their degrees:
South Korean first lady Kim Keon Hee’s master’s thesis submitted to Sookmyung Women’s University looks set to be deemed plagiarized, according to local reports Tuesday.
In 1999, Kim earned a master’s degree in art education from the Graduate School of Education at Sookmyung. Plagiarism allegations first surfaced decades later, in December 2021, as scrutiny of her credentials intensified after her husband, Yoon Suk Yeol, emerged as a strong presidential candidate at the time.
Following an accusation filed by an alumnae group calling themselves the “Democratic Alumnae Association,” Sookmyung’s research ethics committee officially launched a preliminary investigation into the case in February 2022. After 10 months, in December 2022, a full-fledged probe began.
The process was criticized for taking an unusually long time, far exceeding the 60-day period designated for a preliminary review and the 30 days within which a decision to launch a full investigation should have been made.
Finally this January, the university concluded that Kim in fact committed plagiarism.
You can read more at the link, but Kim Keon-hee may lost her Master’s degree and possibly even her Phd due to this plagiarism finding.
Yoon wants to make changes to the Constitution if he is reinstated and the changes are made he will step down:
Impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol said Tuesday he will focus on revising the Constitution if reinstated, suggesting he could step down before the end of his single, five-year term.
Yoon made the remark in his final statement before the Constitutional Court, which is expected to deliver a ruling by mid-March on whether to uphold or dismiss his impeachment over his short-lived imposition of martial law in December.
“I will gather the will of the people and swiftly push for a constitutional amendment, doing my best to produce a Constitution and political structure that fit the changes in our society,” he said during the final hearing of his impeachment trial at the court.
“If a constitutional amendment and political reform are pursued correctly, I believe the separated and divided people will unite in the process,” he said.
“If that happens, there will be no reason to cling to the remainder of my term as guaranteed under the Constitution, and if anything, it will be a great honor,” he added.
South Korea’s Constitution limits presidents to a single, five-year term, but Yoon’s remark suggests he could accept calls to change the limit to two four-year terms and apply the rule to himself.
You can read more at the link, but this seems almost like a last effort hail mary in order to sway the court to not uphold the impeachment.
A new development in this story: the restaurant owner was confronted by another Japanese livestreamer and got on his knees to bow in apology.
He claimed he regrets making threatening phone calls to the other streamer and will close his restaurant. https://t.co/7i58U9SA9s pic.twitter.com/A2LyLFp1z2— Jeffrey J. Hall 🇯🇵🇺🇸 (@mrjeffu) February 21, 2025
