The people most needed to fight the North Koreans, the younger generation are the ones the least likely to want to fight according to the below survey.  I guess this survey could be used to justify why the ROK continues to need the mandatory service requirement:

A government survey finds that 72 percent of South Koreans are willing to fight for the country if a war breaks out.

According to the survey by the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs, those in their 50s were the most willing to participate at 83-point-five percent, followed by those in their 60s at 81-point-five percent.

The rate was 50-point-seven percent among those in their 20s, with the rate for those in their 30s reaching 59 percent.

The rate was lower among younger people, white-collar workers, students and highly-educated people.

Fifty-five percent of the respondents said that the country should side with the U.S. if a war breaks out between the U.S. and North Korea. Twenty-four percent said the country should remain neutral, while five-point-eight percent said the country should side with North Korea.

About half of the respondents viewed the country’s security conditions as serious.

The ministry conducted the survey on about one-thousand people age 15 or order in November last year.   [KBS World Radio]

Drink/drive limit toughened on US military bases in Japan, in line with Japanese standard: https://t.co/aK8MyPkc68 pic.twitter.com/0BQioioflO

— Erik Slavin (@eslavin_stripes) March 28, 2016

Miss Korea 2015 Lee Min-ji (C) poses for a photo alongside runners-up Kim Jung-jin (L) and Kim Ye-rin during a ceremony in Seoul on March 28, 2016, to mark their appointments as honorary ambassadors for the Military Manpower Administration. (Yonhap)

Great opportunity for those interested on April 9th, 2016 to be part of a tour of where the Gloster Regiment made their final stand along the Imjim River during the Korean War.  The tour will be led by a ROK Drop favorite Andrew Salmon:

History writer and journalist Andrew Salmon will run a tour to one of the Korean War’s most notorious battlefields next week under a Royal Asiatic Society tour.

Salmon will guide the group around the hills that surround the Imjingang River, where the British Gloucester Regiment was wiped out holding back a Chinese assault.

The attack was part of the largest communist offensive of the war, and though the Glosters were eventually overrun, their actions blunted the assault sufficiently for U.N. forces to repel the Chinese before they could take Seoul.

The battle has since been compared to the battle of Thermopylae because of the extent to which the British regiment was outnumbered.

Two of the Glosters were awarded the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest military medal for their actions in the battle. Salmon will look at where one of them, Lt. Philip Curtis, died in actions that would later see him honored and suggest an explanation for why he acted in the way he did.  [Korea Herald]

Read the details at the link.

It seems to me that the ROK Navy does have a point here because if these protesters were conducting illegal actions that caused cost overruns why should the Korean taxpayer be on the hook for this?:

The South Korean Navy is demanding damages from local groups and residents in Jeju Island for “taxpayer losses” incurred by their opposition to the construction of a new naval base.The groups targeted include the village association of Gangjeong in the city of Seogwipo.“On Mar. 28, we filed a suit with Seoul Central District Court for the exercise of indemnity rights for the Jeju multi-purpose port complex,” the Navy announced in a press release on Mar. 29.“The purpose of this exercise of indemnity rights is to hold those responsible accountable for losses in taxpayer money from among the additional costs of 27.5 billion won (US$23.8 million) incurred due to the [14-month] delay in the port’s construction period owing to illegal obstruction of operations,” it added.

The total compensation claim amounted to 3.4 billion won (US$2.9 million) of the additional costs, with the Gangjeong village association listed among the defendants alongside five groups and 117 residents and activities who took action to oppose the naval base construction.Last year, Samsung C&T demanded 36 billion won (US$31.2 million) in compensation from the Navy for delays in the construction schedule; a figure of 27.5 billion won (US$23.8 million) was finally settled on after mediation by the Korean Commercial Arbitration Board. Mediation is currently under way for Daelim Construction’s claim for 23 billion won (US$19.9 million) in compensation.  [Hankyoreh]

You can read more at the link.

AP Investigation: China is emerging as an international hub for money laundering https://t.co/GgMJjU0uyi

— Hannah Bae @hannahbae.bsky.social (@hanbae) March 28, 2016

Lee Jun-seok (C) answers questions during a special hearing on the 2014 sinking of the ferry Sewol held in Seoul City Hall on March 28, 2016. Lee, 70, has been sentenced to life in prison for willfully neglecting his duty as a captain to evacuate passengers when the ferry sank off the southwest coast on April 16, leaving 304 people dead. (Yonhap)

If anyone cares at this point, it looks like North Korea has continued with its weapons testing:

North Korea fired a short-range projectile from an area near its eastern coast on Tuesday, South Korean officials said, in what appears to be another weapons test seen as a response to ongoing military drills between Washington and Seoul.

The projectile was fired near the North Korean port city of Wonsan and flew about 200 kilometers (125 miles) before crashing into land northeast of the launch site, South Korean military officials said.

It was unclear whether the projectile was a ballistic missile or an artillery shell, said a Joint Chiefs of Staff official who didn’t want to be identified, citing office rules. It was too early to tell whether North Korea used a land target to test the accuracy and range of its weapons or experienced problems after planning a launch into the sea, said an official from Seoul’s Defense Ministry, who also didn’t want to be named because of department rules.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

I have always said that Trump’s claims that South Korea is getting a free ride is inaccurate and Ambassador Lippert is calling him out on it as well.  Trump should specify what he thinks South Korea should pay if he wants to criticize like this because South Korea pays a lot more than many other nations getting a free ride off of the US defense umbrella.  With that said Trump probably fully knows that South Korea pays a lot already and is just repeating the claim that resonates with low information voters:

U.S. Ambassador to Seoul Mark Lippert on Monday dismissed accusations by Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump that South Korea is paying little to keep American troops on its soil.

Without naming Trump, Lippert cited various reasons why the allegations aren’t true, including the fact that South Korea shoulders 55 percent of all non-personnel costs and increases its defense spending by 3 to 5 percent annually.

“We feel very good about the resource sharing that we and the Republic of Korea do together as an alliance,” the ambassador said during a meeting with members of the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea. “It is remarkable.”

Lippert was responding to a request for comments on a “U.S. political candidate’s” contentions that the country receives little from South Korea in exchange for its support.

Trump has made repeated claims that South Korea is getting a free ride on defense, saying recently that the U.S. is “constantly sending our ships, sending our planes, doing our war games” but being “reimbursed a fraction of what this is all costing.” He also told The New York Times he would withdraw American troops from South Korea and Japan unless they boost their financial contributions to the upkeep of the U.S. military presence.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

I wonder how much not selling this shoe in South Korea impacts Nike’s bottom line?  I would think not much considering they are moving forward with the sale of this shoe world wide.  It seems to me that they will have problems trying to sell this shoe in China as well:

A professor at a university in Korea has sent a letter of protest to key executives at Nike about its iconic Michael Jordan shoes, calling for the sportswear giant to stop using the Japanese Rising Sun flag as a design on its sneakers.

Professor Seo Kyoung-duk at Sungshin Women’s University, who is also a dedicated Dokdo campaigner, said Thursday that he sent the letter to Nike President and CEO Mark Parker, Vice President for Design Tinker Hatfield, six other executives of the company and also Jordan.

He said the multinational market player and its high-profile shoes should consider the overwhelming impact of its products on young people worldwide.

This is the third time for the company to use the flag’s design on their shoes, a symbol of Japan’s militarism and imperialism in the late 19th and 20th centuries, despite criticism here in Korea, with the previous incidents occurring in 2009 and 2013.

“I wanted to let the company know what it did was wrong and why,” he said. “I would like to encourage the executives to avoid making the same mistakes in the future by helping them realize their insensitivity, indifference, and ignorance of historical facts.”

Alongside the letter, he sent a picture and video footage in English explaining that Japan’s Rising Sun flag symbolizes Japan’s wartime atrocities like the Hakenkreuz, or swastika, the symbol used by the Nazi Party in Germany.  [The Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.