https://twitter.com/SouthKoreaDaily/status/622492365006114816
A member of the Solidarity for the Peace and Reunification of Korea, a progressive civic group, speaks during a rally in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on July 16, 2015, to voice her objection to Japan exercising the right to collective self-defense. Japan’s ruling coalition pushed controversial security bills through the lower house that would allow it to exercise that right the same day. (Yonhap)
It is good to see that this former sailor was able to be reunited with daughter:
The words that Navy veteran James Walker had longed to hear for almost 46 years appeared on his Facebook page Saturday.
“Your search is over .. I am found .. i love you Dad,” said the message from a woman claiming to be the daughter he left behind in Japan when he went off to fight in the Vietnam War.
Walker contacted the person who made the post, Emi McGowan of Sarasota, Fla., and then questioned her mother, Tomie Miller of Mesa, Ariz.
“I called her mother, and she told me things that only her mother would know,” he said, noting that he’s been contacted by numerous scam artists claiming to be his daughter since Stars and Stripes ran a story about his search in March.
“You never know if somebody is trying to pull something over on you,” he said.
Now, he’s convinced that his search is over.
Shortly after his daughter’s birth in 1968, Walker got orders to return to the U.S. from Japan. At the time, he was a petty officer third class at Naval Air Facility Atsugi, near Tokyo.
Walker wrote to the girl many times and made other unsuccessful efforts to track her down, including a trip back to their old neighborhood near Atsugi. He credited the Stars and Stripes article, which was translated into Japanese and widely shared on Facebook, with helping him make the breakthrough.
McGowan, who said she has been searching for her father since she was 18, reported that a friend saw the story and sent her the accompanying photo.
“I looked at the baby in the picture and I was looking at myself in the mirror. My face has really not changed,” she said. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read the rest at the link, but Walker’s daughter hasn’t had an easy life because she currently has three kids and is homeless.
Considering that South Korea is home to Hitler Bars it should be no surprise that anti-Semitism is so open in the media:
U.S. hedge fund Elliott Management’s bid to block the merger of two affiliates of business giant Samsung was always going to generate plenty of contentious media coverage in South Korea. Samsung Group, after all, accounts for roughly 20 percent of the country’s economy; any shakeup in its organization, or foreign move to prevent it, would be a big deal.
Less easy to predict may have been the deluge of coverage about the hedge fund’s Jewish connections. Leaning heavily on anti-Semitic tropes that would meet nods of approval on Stormfront, several media outlets honed in on the Jewish background of CEO Paul Singer, who on Friday ultimately lost his bid to convince shareholders to reject the merger.
Speaking to prominent weekly magazine Sisa Journal this week, Park Jae-seon, a former ambassador to Morocco and a current member of the preparation committee for the PyeongChang 2018 Olympics, warned of the outsized influence of Jews in global finance.
“The scary thing about Jews is they are grabbing the currency markets and financial investment companies,” he said.
Park, described as the “country’s top expert on Jews,” continued: “Their network is tight knit beyond one’s imagination.”
Mainstream outlets Money Today and YTN joined the fray with similar stereotype-laden reports. But the most egregious offender was Mediapen, which rallied against the supposed Jewish conspiracy to hurt South Korea over the course of several articles. [The Diplomat via One Free Korea]
You can read the rest at the link, but reading what is written about Jewish business people these anti-semitic types in South Korea make them out to be the equivalent of ISIS by secretly coordinating for world domination with Samsung being one of their targets.
Via Adam Cathcart comes this interesting historic US Army footage from the opening months of the Korean War. A lot of interesting footage of old Seoul and the destruction the opening days of the war brought to it and other Korean cities. Also a lot of pictures of the North Korean executions that took place after they retreated from the cities they held. An interesting fact from the film footage is that 1 out of every 20 US soldiers during the opening months of the Korean War were killed as POWs by the North Koreans:
https://youtu.be/BqfKsFzajjE
Most expensive photo-op this year? North Korean ambassadors & diplomats in a calculated frenzy for Kim Jong-un. pic.twitter.com/qrzF5MOlrO
— Adam Cathcart (@adamcathcart) July 16, 2015
A choir performs during a memorial service at the National Cemetery in Seoul on July 17, 2015, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of former President Rhee Syng-man, who served as the nation’s first chief executive from 1948 to 1960. (Yonhap)
It looks like the US embassy had some useful idiots stop by recently. If they are so concerned about toxins in South Korea how come they are not busy protesting the companies that deliberately dumped 3000 tons of dangerous chemicals into the Han River for people to drink instead of anthrax spores mistakenly sent to South Korea that infected nobody?:
South Korean police said Saturday that two people were arrested for carrying out an illegal protest in front of the U.S. Embassy in Seoul.
“A man and a woman were arrested after they displayed banners and leaflets calling for ousting U.S. troops from the country,” authorities said. “The protest was never authorized, so they broke the law.”
Police said the two lashed out at U.S. troops for bringing in live anthrax spores into the country earlier in the year. They said both were members of the Corean Alliance, a local civic group, whose headquarters was raided by authorities Wednesday.
The raid was carried out because the group was accused of promoting North Korean ideologies in breach of the anti-North Korea law. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link.
It will be interesting to see if this guy’s suicide note is ever released to public to see what the “national interest” information is:
An employee of South Korea’s spy agency has been found dead in his car with his will, which contains information about a hacking incident that has triggered a controversy in the country, police said Saturday.
Police said that the person identified only by his family name Lim worked for the National Intelligence Service (NIS) and was discovered around noon on a mountain road in Yongin, south of Seoul. Investigators present at the site said there was a burnt coal inside the car and no sign of forced entry, making it likely that the 45-year-old took his own life.
They also said he left a three-page, handwritten will on the front passenger seat that expressed his feelings about family and work, which included matters of “national interest.”
Police said they could not release more details about the will because relatives were opposed to the contents becoming public.
Family members reported his disappearance after Lim left home around 5 a.m. and could not be contacted, authorities said.
The apparent suicide and the will are expected to further stoke the controversy surrounding where and how the NIS used the hacking program.
The software program, which uses Remote Control System technology, allows hackers to manipulate and track smartphones and computers by installing spyware.
The NIS said it bought the program made by an Italian company in 2012 and confirmed it can be used to hack into up to 20 mobile phones simultaneously.
The NIS claimed it used the program for the purpose of strengthening cyber warfare capabilities against Pyongyang.
Such explanations, however, are met with skepticism by many in the country, and in particular, the main opposition party, which thinks the NIS used the program to spy on South Korean civilians. [Yonhap]
https://twitter.com/freekorea_us/status/622415624891932672
