A group of North Korean soldiers watches a delegation of South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo and his U.S. counterpart Ashton Carter visit the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom inside the Demilitarized Zone, which separates the two Koreas, on Nov. 1, 2015. Carter arrived in South Korea to hold the Security Consultative Meeting, the highest channel for reviewing and coordinating far-reaching issues between the allies, with South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo the next day. (Pool photo) (Yonhap)

This report makes it sound like the US and the ROK will just wake up one day and decide to launch a preemptive attack against North Korea.  The reality is that this “4D” concept would likely happen in response to a North Korean provocation to where there is clear intent to launch missiles against the ROK and the US:

The new operational concept jointly adopted by South Korea and the United States to destroy North Korea’s nuclear and missile facilities is expected to prompt the North to launch fresh provocations, sources said Tuesday.

The allies approved the implementation guidance on the “4D Operational Concept” during the annual Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) held in Seoul, Monday, as a means to carry out preemptive strikes against the North’s missile threats, containing nuclear, chemical and biological warheads.

The guidance, which is designed to detect, disrupt, destroy and defend — the 4 “D’s” — has the major implication that the allies have revived the concept of preemptive strikes against the North’s strategic facilities. A ministry official noted on condition of anonymity that “disrupt and destroy” contains the connotation of preemptive strikes.

In an apparent response to the allies’ endorsement of the new operational concept, the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Tuesday that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un observed a live-fire exercise for anti-aircraft artillery.

Kim was quoted as saying by the KCNA: “We should actively push for the development of a variety of advanced anti-aircraft guns that meet the requirements of modern warfare.”

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies, told reporters, “The report came right after South Korea and the U.S. approved the 4D Operational Concept. It seems the North had the intention to respond to the allies’ cooperation.”

Officials said Seoul and Washington have prepared the guidance since 2013 while having experienced various provocations from Pyongyang including a third nuclear test in February that year and the test-firing of a submarine-launched ballistic missile in May this year.

The preparation comes at a time when the six-party talks aimed at denuclearizing the North remain stalled since late 2008, due to the insistence by the North that it should join the talks with the status of a nuclear power and without any conditions attached.

The guidance will reportedly be reflected in a new joint wartime operational plan between the allies, dubbed Operation Plan (OPLAN) 5015, focused on preemptive strikes on strategic sites in the North. The allies signed OPLAN 5015 in June to replace the existing OPLAN 5027, which was more about how to defend the South. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

I am just trying to understand why the Canadians would have this program in the first place where they give free schooling to the kids of foreign students?:

A crammer in Seoul’s affluent Gangnam area that specializes in preparing students for schools overseas recently held a well-attended seminar devoted to Canadian universities. But the smartly dressed audience had not come to find out how their kids can gain admission but how to apply themselves.

The draw is Canada’s study permit program, which guarantees free schooling for the children of foreign students at public universities.

Word first spread among Gangnam’s ambitious mothers three or four years ago, and now the weakening Canadian dollar has made the program even more attractive.

Mothers are rediscovering their thirst for knowledge because college tuition there is cheaper than the cost of their kids to school overseas. They can save W10-20 million (US$1=W1,133) a year per child.

According to Canadian government figures, a foreign university student spends on average 22,753 Canadian dollars a year.

One woman with three children explained the math. “If I sent the kids to a Canadian public school it would cost me W13-17 million per child, so I save anywhere between W20 million and W30 million if I enroll in a public university myself.”
[Chosun Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link, but the Canadian government is now trying to take measures to crackdown on abuse of this program.

I have to agree that even though the Park-Abe summit did not lead to any breakthroughs, just the fact they met was significant considering all the bickering the past few years.  Hopefully this will lead to better future cooperation as long as Prime Minister Abe can keep his political team in check in regards to making controversial comments that inflame tensions with Seoul:

Experts on South Korea-Japan ties welcomed the results of Monday’s summit between President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, saying the meeting paved the way for better bilateral relations even without producing concrete outcomes.

Park and Abe held their first bilateral talks in Seoul on the sidelines of a trilateral summit with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. The format was intended to keep the first South Korea-Japan summit in three and a half years as low-key and practical as possible amid disputes over shared history.

A major stumbling block in the two countries’ relations has been the issue of Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery for Japanese troops during World War II. South Korea demands Japan offer a sincere apology and compensation to the victims before they all die, while Tokyo insists all issues related to its 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula were settled under the normalization treaty of 1965. [Yonhap]

You can read the rest at the link.

Jae Jin recently reached freedom through our networks. Read his story: https://t.co/HYUsSNGwws pic.twitter.com/UP9umkQkUW

— Liberty in North Korea (@LibertyinNK) October 30, 2015

South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo (L, front) and his U.S. counterpart, Ashton Carter (R, front), joined by Gen. Lee Sun-jin (L, rear), the South Korean chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his U.S. counterpart, Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, review a guard of honor as they take part in a welcome ceremony at the defense ministry in Seoul on Nov. 2, 2015, ahead of this year’s Security Consultative Meeting, an annual defense meeting between the two allies. (Yonhap)

I am pretty impressed that North Korea’s Pyeongwha Motors is able to have enough demand in North Korea to support 25 different models of cars:

The United States has Ford. Germany has Volkswagen. Japan has Toyota. And North Korea has Pyeonghwa Motors.  Run by Kim Jong-un’s regime, the company produces a tiny number of vehicles at its factory in the city of Nampo, a seaport on North Korea’s west coast. At its sole dealership in the capital Pyongyang, visitors can view its lineup up close, take a test drive and even purchase spare parts. Andray Abrahamian, research director at North Korea-focused nonprofit Choson Exchange, visited the showroom last month, and provided Mashable brochures on the current selection of 25 models:  [Mashable]

You can read the rest at the link, but Pyeonghwa Motors was actually started by the South Korean Unification Church and ownership given to the Kim regime.  Their cars also average about 80 horsepower which is incredibly slow anywhere else, but like many thing good enough for North Korea.

The Atlantic has a long article published about how the United States has become a Chickenhawk Nation.  The author believes the American public doesn’t mind going to war as long as it doesn’t involve them.  He believes this mentality is what is allowing the endless warfare we find ourselves currently in to continue:

Too much complacency regarding our military, and too weak a tragic imagination about the consequences if the next engagement goes wrong, have been part of Americans’ willingness to wade into conflict after conflict, blithely assuming we would win. “Did we have the sense that America cared how we were doing? We did not,” Seth Moulton told me about his experience as a marine during the Iraq War. Moulton became a Marine Corps officer after graduating from Harvard in 2001, believing (as he told me) that when many classmates were heading to Wall Street it was useful to set an example of public service. He opposed the decision to invade Iraq but ended up serving four tours there out of a sense of duty to his comrades. “America was very disconnected. We were proud to serve, but we knew it was a little group of people doing the country’s work.”

Moulton told me, as did many others with Iraq-era military experience, that if more members of Congress or the business and media elite had had children in uniform, the United States would probably not have gone to war in Iraq at all. Because he felt strongly enough about that failure of elite accountability, Moulton decided while in Iraq to get involved in politics after he left the military. “I actually remember the moment,” Moulton told me. “It was after a difficult day in Najaf in 2004. A young marine in my platoon said, ‘Sir, you should run for Congress someday. So this shit doesn’t happen again.’ ” In January, Moulton takes office as a freshman Democratic representative from Massachusetts’s Sixth District, north of Boston.

What Moulton described was desire for a kind of accountability. It is striking how rare accountability has been for our modern wars. Hillary Clinton paid a price for her vote to authorize the Iraq War, since that is what gave the barely known Barack Obama an opening to run against her in 2008. George W. Bush, who, like most ex-presidents, has grown more popular the longer he’s been out of office, would perhaps be playing a more visible role in public and political life if not for the overhang of Iraq. But those two are the exceptions. Most other public figures, from Dick Cheney and Colin Powell on down, have put Iraq behind them. In part this is because of the Obama administration’s decision from the start to “look forward, not back” about why things had gone so badly wrong with America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But such willed amnesia would have been harder if more Americans had felt affected by the wars’ outcome. For our generals, our politicians, and most of our citizenry, there is almost no accountability or personal consequence for military failure. This is a dangerous development—and one whose dangers multiply the longer it persists.

Ours is the best-equipped fighting force in history, and it is incomparably the most expensive. By all measures, today’s professionalized military is also better trained, motivated, and disciplined than during the draft-army years. No decent person who is exposed to today’s troops can be anything but respectful of them and grateful for what they do.

Yet repeatedly this force has been defeated by less modern, worse-equipped, barely funded foes. Or it has won skirmishes and battles only to lose or get bogged down in a larger war.  [The Atlantic]

You can read the whole article at the link, but I think the author is correct that if the kids of the elite in this country had to face being drafted we probably would not be in as many conflicts as we are now.  With that said I do not agree with his viewpoint that the US military has been defeated by less foes.  The US military did not make the strategy to invade Iraq, politicians did.  When invading Iraq the military was not sourced for a long term occupation once again because of political considerations.  When General Shinseki spoke up about this he was strongly rebuked by the Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.  Also the US military did not make the decision to withdraw from Iraq which led to the current ISIS occupation, politicians did and now the US military is back trying to put a band-aid on a poor strategic decision.

The bottomline is that the US military is only as good as the strategy they are given by the political leadership to execute.

#Breaking Chinese Premier #LiKeqiang meets with Japanese PM Shinzo Abe in Seoul at the request of Japan. pic.twitter.com/Gjc6uYul5O

— CGTN (@CGTNOfficial) November 1, 2015

Taken from a program aired on the North’s Korean Central TV Station on Oct. 27, 2015, the photo shows North Korean modern dancers performing during a celebration marking the 70th anniversary of the country’s ruling Workers’ Party. The broadcast carried 220 minutes of the recorded event. (Yonhap)