South Korean actress Lee Young-ae poses for a photo during the Seoul International Drama Awards 2015 at the National Theater in Seoul on Sept. 10, 2015. (Yonhap)

That is what the below report in the Hankyoreh is speculating could happen if North Korea launches a rocket in October:

The main variable in future diplomatic trends is the question of whether North Korea will launch a long-range rocket. There has been discussion of the possibility of North Korea testing a long-range rocket on the pretext of putting a satellite into orbit on Oct. 10, the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the Korean Workers’ Party.

Indeed, a video was posted on Uriminzokkiri, a website that North Korea uses to send propaganda to South Korea, in which the anchor said, “South Korea’s opposition parties, press, and experts urged the government not to cast a chill on inter-Korean relations, which are starting to thaw at last, simply because North Korea launches a satellite.”Experts suspect that North Korea’s suggestive comments are intended to provide justification for the upcoming rocket launch.   (………………)

This could also lead to renewed calls from the US and Japan to deploy THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) on the Korean Peninsula to defend against North Korean rockets. If South Korea is dragged into a discussion of THAAD, opposition from China could strain relations between the two countries.  [Hankyoreh]

You can read more at the link.

A terrible accident involving two ROK Army servicemembers recently happened in Daegu:

One Army sergeant was killed and two recruits were wounded Friday when a hand grenade exploded during a training session in this southern city, military officials said.

The accident took place at 11:13 a.m. at a drill camp of the South Korean Army in Daegu, North Gyeongsang Province, some 300 kilometers southeast of the capital city.

The explosion killed a 27-year-old instructor, Kim. He was rushed to a hospital but was later pronounced dead there at 12:53 p.m.

It also blew off the right hand of a 20-year-old recruit, surnamed Sohn, who was holding the grenade and injured 27-year-old recruit Park, who was waiting for his turn outside the trench, sources said.

The moment the military instructor ordered the trainee to “fling” his grenade, it went off, they added.

The military is investigating the exact cause of the explosion, including the possibility of defects or a mistake in handling the grenade.  [Yonhap]

Just like in the US the Korean government has found that the demonization of smokers is an effective way to raise revenue.  Then again another way to look at it is that smokers put more demand on the health care system and thus should be expected to pay more:

When the administration calculated its 2016 budget, it predicted that total cigarette consumption (shipping) would be 3.46 billion packs, or 600 million (21%) more than this year. Cigarette consumption has fallen by 34% since taxes per pack were raised by 2,000 won (US$1.67) at the beginning of the year, but revenues were projected to increase by 2.854 trillion won (US$2.38 billion) over the year, including national and local taxes.Yet in the administration’s calculations, the projected 2016 shipments were down by just 21.2% from the annual average of 4.39 billion packs for the four years from 2010 to 2013. Critics are now charging that the goal of the cigarette tax hike was not to discourage smoking as claimed – but to raise more tax revenues.  [Hankyoreh]

You can read more at the link.

Both South Korea and Japan are being criticized in an opinion piece in the USA Today by a UN staffer for not allowing in Syrian and other refugees fleeing violence in the Middle East.  However,the article seems to be less a criticism of accepting refugees and more a criticism of Korea not wanting to become a multicultural nation.  I just do not see how it is in South Korea or Japan’s interest to accept thousands of refugees who cannot speak the language, will be culturally isolated, and will likely become long term wards of the state?  South Korea already has the burden of accepting thousands of refugees from North Korea who have their own problems integrating with South Korean society and the UN thinks refugees from the Middle East would do any better?

Japan and South Korea are like estranged fraternal siblings. Both have more in common than they care to admit: an aging population, abysmal birthrates and gender inequality. Both are in danger of losing their workforces unless they open their doors to migrants and refugees. Yet both face resistance from populations that have long taken pride in their ethnic homogeneity and are wary of the outside world.

Whenever a boat overloaded with refugees turns up on other countries’ shores, there are sighs of relief in Seoul and Tokyo that it is happening elsewhere.

South Korea and Japan are both signatories to the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention, which obliges them to protect and provide refugees with basic rights and social services. Even so, their records of accepting asylum seekers are appallingly low. Last year, South Korea granted refugee status to 94 asylum seekers — a bump from 57 in 2013 — out of some 2,900 applicants from Asia, Africa and the Middle East (this doesn’t include North Korean defectors, who are considered South Korean citizens by law).  [USA Today]

You can read more at the link.

151 years ago, General Sherman gave America its best definition of war http://t.co/a77zK5otZO pic.twitter.com/u0jVxDvIGb

— Task & Purpose (@TaskandPurpose) September 12, 2015

If anyone is wondering below is what is being taught now a days in America’s colleges about 9/11.  It is one thing to present an opposing view, but if students are penalized by the instructor for not agreeing with it as described in the article, than I have a problem with that.  Has anyone recently been through a college course that teaches such anti-US propaganda liked described in the article?:

Not all of us will be mourning 9/11 victims and their families this Friday on the 14th anniversary of the attacks. Hundreds of college kids across the country will instead be taught to sympathize with the terrorists.

That’s because their America-hating leftist professors are systematically indoctrinating them into believing it’s all our fault, that the US deserved punishment for “imperialism” — and the kids are too young to remember or understand what really happened that horrific day.

Case in point is a freshman-level English class taught at several major universities across the country called “The Literature of 9/11” — which focuses almost entirely on writings from the perspective of the Islamic terrorists, rather than the nearly 3,000 Americans who were slaughtered by them.  The syllabus, which includes books like “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” and “Poems from Guantanamo: Detainees Speak,” portray terrorists as “freedom fighters” driven by oppressive US foreign policies.  [NY Post]

You can read the rest at the link.

Korea Bang has the translation of an SBS report that researches whether a mother and her two sons were raped and kept as sex slaves.  It is a very odd story that features domestic violence, a religious cult, claims of drugged fueled orgies, rape, and even a mysterious shaman:

On October 29th, 2014, a woman in her 40s and her two sons held a press conference. The title was “Press conference to demand thorough investigation of Mr. Heo and his father’s sexual crimes”. She mainly claimed that her husband, Pastor Heo, her father-in-law and her own parents’ family members all worked together to rape her and her sons. She even claimed that they had had orgies.

Lee: “Would you believe my sons and I had sex with my husband and father-in-law? But it really happened. Sometimes, my father-in-law brought a dozen of his believers. On such a day, we would have an orgy.” (The older son and younger son will be called by false names Junho and Junsu hereafter.)  [Korea Bang]

Read the whole thing at the link.

It looks like General Scaparrotti is not happy that the new OPLAN developed between the US and South Korean militaries has been leaked to the media:

Commander of the United States Forces Korea (USFK) Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti has requested a joint investigation into the leakage to the media of a new military operation plan signed recently with the South Korean military, according to a parliamentary audit into Seoul’s Defense Ministry.

“It is a fact that there has been a request (from Scaparrotti) for a joint probe,” Cho Hyun-chun, the head of the Defense Security Command, said in response to a lawmaker’s query on the recent media coverage of the new OPLAN 2015 during the parliamentary audit session.

Adding to the admission, Defense Minister Han Min-koo said the USFK commander raised a complaint over the media coverage of OPLAN

2015 during their meeting last month to review the performance of their joint Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise.  [Korea Herald]

You can read more at the link.