This will be a significant development in ROK and Japanese relations if this intelligence sharing agreement does become operationalized:

The United States has been implementing a trilateral military intelligence sharing agreement with South Korea and Japan, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

The memorandum of understanding, which was signed in December last year, calls for voluntary sharing of military secrets on North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

The agreement was put into action earlier this year, but questions have arisen after Assistant Secretary of Defense David Shear said earlier this month that the U.S. hopes to “operationalize” the agreement.

“We are implementing the arrangement,” Cmdr. Bill Urban, a U.S. Defense Department spokesman, said in response to a question from Yonhap News Agency. The official declined to provide further details, including how many times information sharing has taken place.  [Yonhap]

You can read the rest at the link.

Sour note lifted in kimchi war as North Korea gets taste of victory at UN: https://t.co/DcBFL5aXcr via @GuardianNK

— NK NEWS (@nknewsorg) November 24, 2015

Bora of girl group Sistar poses for photos after being named as the promotional envoy for emergency medical services at a ceremony in Seoul on Nov. 20, 2015. (Yonhap)

Via a reader tip comes this sad news that two Soldiers from the 2nd Combat Aviation Brigade were killed in a helicopter crash near Wonju:

A U.S. military helicopter crashed in South Korea during a routine training mission Monday, killing both American pilots on board, the U.S. Army and South Korean police said.

The AH-64 Apache helicopter crashed on a road in Wonju, about 80 miles east of Seoul, a Wonju police officer said.

Two bodies recovered from the helicopter were severely damaged and officials couldn’t immediately confirm their identities. There were no reports of casualties on the ground.

The U.S. Army in South Korea later confirmed the crash, saying the cause of the accident was under investigation.  [Fox News]

You can read more at the link, but condolences to the families of the pilots after this tragic crash.

This sounds like an off the cuff remark that President Park should not have said because as bad as the KCTU is they are not ISIS.  With that said if the KCTU would not hold violent protests there would be no need for masks in the first place:

South Korean President Park Geun Hye on Tuesday (Nov 24) called for a ban on masks at demonstrations, less than two weeks after huge anti-government protests rocked Seoul, as she warned “terrorist elements” may infiltrate demonstrations.

The president also drew parallels between masked protesters and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) – prompting organisers of the recent rally to say her comments had left them “speechless”.

More than 60,000 people protested against the conservative government’s push for labour reform and state-issued history textbooks in Seoul on Nov 14, in the biggest protest in the country for nearly a decade.

Many scuffled with police, who responded with water cannon and liquid pepper spray, leaving dozens injured and one protester in a critical condition.

Police have come under fire for what critics describe as excessive use of force, while about 200 demonstrators are being investigated after dozens of police buses were damaged.

Park described the clashes on Nov 14 as an “unacceptable” incident and called for “strong measures” against the protesters, especially those in masks.

“At a time when acts of terrorism are taking many lives around the world, some terrorist elements may sneak into such protests and pose a threat to the lives of our people,” she said at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

“In particular, masks in protests should not be tolerated. Isn’t that what the ISIS is doing these days, with their faces hidden like that?” she added.  [New Straits Times]

You can read the rest at the link.

It has already been 5 years since North Korea’s deadly artillery shelling of Yeonpyeong Island which the Kim regime has never taken responsibility for:

South Korea’s Marine Corps held a live-fire drill in the Yellow Sea on Monday, as the country marked the fifth anniversary of North Korea’s shelling of Yeonpyeong Island.

The live-fire exercise, which mobilized K-9 self-propelled artillery launchers, was held despite warnings from North Korea on Sunday that it would react “mercilessly” if the South pushed ahead with the scheduled drill near the tense maritime border.

Monday marked the fifth anniversary of the Yeonpyeong Island shelling, which was North Korea’s first attack on South Korean soil since the 1950-53 Korean War. The bombardment of shells left two Marines and two civilians dead and further froze inter-Korean relations under the Lee Myung-bak government, which had accused the North of torpedoing the Cheonan warship in the Yellow Sea eight months earlier. The North denies responsibility for the sinking, which killed 46 sailors.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link.

Here is another example of small, but still significant engagement with the Chinese military:

Three Chinese navy ships will stop in Hawaii on the final leg of an around-the-world deployment meant to show China’s expanding global military capability, but also highlighting ongoing relations between the United States and People’s Liberation Army despite disagreement in the South China Sea.

Chinese media reported the destroyer Jinan, frigate Yiyang and oiler Qiandaohu will stop in Acapulco, Mexico, and then Hawaii following a port call in Cuba. The flotilla also made China’s first navy visit to the East Coast earlier this month, visiting Naval Station Mayport in Florida and conducting a passing exercise with U.S. Navy ships.

The “20th Chinese naval escort task force” started the deployment Aug. 23, after completing civil ship escort missions in the Gulf of Aden and off the Somali coast. The ships have since visited Sudan, Egypt, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Poland, Portugal and other nations.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

I saw this posted over at the Marmot’s Hole about how a professor from Sejong University Park Yu-ha was charged without detention for writing her book “Comfort Women of the Empire”.  What crime did she commit writing this book?  The crime was defamation due to her attempting to accurately portray an unbiased history of the comfort women issue:

“she wrote the book in an attempt to re-portray them in light of the variety of testimonies provided by former comfort women.  She said their words opened her eyes to the sheer diversity of the circumstances and experiences of Korean comfort women, and to the bigger picture of ‘an empire and its colony.’

“Park believes that Japan did not recruit comfort women in Korea, which was part of Japan from Tokyo’s perspective, in quite the same way that it did on the front lines and in occupied areas, such as in the Philippines. In those areas, records show that Japanese soldiers were directly involved in the forcible and violent taking away of comfort women. ‘Many of the Korean comfort women were apparently recruited while being cheated by agents of prostitution, some of whom were Koreans, or being sold by their parents,’ Park said. ‘While some have testified they were forcibly taken away by military personnel, I suppose that such cases, if there were any, were exceptional.’

But Park emphasized that Japan is not exempt from its responsibility for the comfort women, who were taken to ‘comfort stations’ against their will and experienced pain. That is because she sees the relationship of an empire and a colony in the backdrop of the Korean comfort women issue.  [Asahi Shimbun]

You can read the rest at the link, but the Korean public likes to think that all the comfort women were girls sleeping in bed and kidnapped by evil Japanese soldiers while the Japanese rightists like to think they were all willing prostitutes.  Both historical narratives are untrue if one really looks at the history.

What Professor Park writes about is the same historical narrative that Sarah Soh wrote about in her book “The Comfort Women“.  In the book Soh provides documented evidence that most of the Korean women put into the comfort women system were sold by Korean brokers.  The actual kidnapping of Korean women by Japanese soldiers would be a very rare occurrence when the broker system made so many of these women readily available.  This does not absolve the Imperial Japanese from responsibility since they ran the comfort woman system that provided the demand for the Korean brokers to meet.  To make even worse is that many of these girls were teenagers when sold into prostitution.  I see no way that a young teenager should be considered a willing prostitute.  Especially when many girls were sold by their families into prostitution for money due to the extreme poverty.  This was actually a practice that was going on well into the US military era in South Korea.

It is pretty clear that the comfort women issue is not black and white, but has more nuance to it then each side is willing to admit.  Ultimately the Imperial Japanese government was responsible for the actions of the Korean brokers that supplied the majority of the Korean girls.  The Imperial Japanese had to have known how young the girls were and the unethical and deceptive actions the Korean brokers were taking to make them available to the Japanese military.  There is no need to rewrite the history of what happened to the comfort women when the truth is bad enough.

An illegal immigrant from Indonesia, a suspected follower of a terrorist group linked to al-Qaida, leaves a Seoul court on Nov. 20, 2015 after deliberations on his arrest warrant. The 32-year-old was detained on Nov. 18 on suspicions that he supports al-Nusra Front. Police confiscated a model of an M16 rifle and books on Islam fundamentalism from his home. The suspect uploaded on his SNS accounts photos of himself waving the flag of the terrorist group and wearing a cap with the group’s logo. (Photo captured from Yonhap News TV) (Yonhap)

The Joong Ang Ilbo is continuing its fascinating series of interviews with the 89 year old former Korean Prime Minister Kim Jong-pil.  This next interview describes how Kim Jong-pil started the first tangerine orchard on Jeju Island and started his own cattle ranch which was ultimately seized by the military dictator Chun Doo-hwan:

During my 46-day confinement at the Army Security Command in 1980, only once did I cry. It was after I heard the news that the security command had announced in corruption charges that I had illegally accumulated 21.6 billion won ($18.6 million). A number of my assets were to be confiscated included a tangerine orchard on Jeju Island and a cattle ranch in South Chungcheong that I had donated to the Unjong Scholarship Foundation. I could not keep myself from crying after learning of the Chun Doo Hwan group’s perfidy. During my lifetime, I shed tears just a few times. I cried at the funeral for President Park Chung Hee in 1979. Recently, I cried when my wife Young-ok passed away.I shed tears in the interrogation room 35 years ago because the Chun group took away my dreams and ambition. Though 35 years have passed, I feel compelled to raise the issue in regard to the Unjong Scholarship Foundation. In May 1968, I declared my retirement from politics and relinquished all formal positions. I was determined to contribute to the improvement of the country through other means. I remembered a line from a book on Napoleon that I had read in middle school. The Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon in the battle of Waterloo, was asked how he had beaten the French emperor. He said he had fought in the spirit of Eton College and the victory was possible because of what he had learned on that school’s playing fields. His remark inspired me deeply and led me to nurture ambitions that I would one day set up a school just like Eton.

To set up an educational institution, I needed financial means. So I decided on a pioneering farming venture. In June 1968, I visited a vast track of land in Seogwipo, Jeju Island, and decided to turn it into a tangerine orchard. Agricultural experts told me I would fail and said the land was not suitable to such farming. But I pushed ahead. I bought 430,000 square meters of land for 32.5 million won. The price was very cheap because everyone thought the land was infertile. I deployed a crane and even dynamite to break through rock. I set up a tent nearby and spent the whole winter of 1968 there. I purchased 49,840 tangerine seedlings from Japan and planted them. About three years later, they bore fruit.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link which includes how he started his cattle ranch in Seosan and how Chun Doo-hwan seized these two agricultural properties from him.