No details on what caused this death other than the soldier was found unresponsive on post in the middle of the day:

The 8th Army said Tuesday that a soldier has died while attending the Warrior Leader Course at the Noncommissioned Officer Academy at Camp Jackson.

The soldier was found unresponsive by South Koreans near the base’s northern boundary Monday, taken to a local hospital and pronounced dead at 12:52 p.m., according to an 8th Army statement.

The incident is under investigation. The soldier’s name is being withheld pending notification of next of kin.  [Stars & Stripes]

It will probably take just one kid to get infected by MERS to cause all these schools to get shutdown again:

President Park Geun-hye on Tuesday visited a primary school in southern Seoul, which has reopened following the weeklong shutdown over the deadly MERS virus.

The visit is the latest in a series of public activities designed to allay public fears about the spread of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome that has killed 19 South Koreans.

The school had been closed for seven days last week as a precautionary measure against the virus. The school is located near Samsung Medical Center, which has been a major source of infections.

“I will do my best to ensure that (the virus) is brought to an end,” Park said in a meeting with students during a separate visit to a middle school in western Seoul. The middle school was closed for two days last week.

The visit came as South Korea reported four new cases of the viral respiratory illness that put the total number of people diagnosed with the disease at 154 — about half of them infected in Samsung Medical Center.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

It just wouldn’t be a major construction project in Korea without a bribery scandal of some kind and USFK is not immune to this:

Police said Tuesday that they have raided SK Engineering & Construction Co. and its construction site on a U.S. base in central South Korea over slush fund allegations involving a U.S. military official.

The National Police Agency confiscated materials including account books and computer hard disks from the head office of SK E&C in Seoul and its work site at the U.S. Forces Korea base in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, a police official said on condition of anonymity.

An SK E&C subcontractor allegedly stashed away about 1 billion won (US$890,000) and handed it over to a then USFK official in 2010, according to the official. The now-defunct subcontractor is headed by a former South Korean field officer.

The police have already obtained witness accounts from former employees of the subcontractor. They are currently investigating whether SK E&C was involved.

They have also sent investigators to the U.S. to ask U.S. law enforcement authorities for cooperation in searching for the former USFK official.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but $890,000 bribe has got to be one of the biggest bribery scandals in USFK history.  That is a lot of money.  If anyone is wondering, corruption involving USFK personnel is nothing new. What is important is that these people are caught and punished to discourage others from trying to pull off the same scams.

Syrian delegation in Pyongyang clearly has an inside track to Kim Jong-un, who regales them w/ mushrooms & dolphins http://t.co/m1JqvWMx1i

— Adam Cathcart (@adamcathcart) June 15, 2015

Health officials spray disinfectant solution in a bus in Seoul’s Seongdong Ward on June 15, 2015, as a precaution against the spread of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). South Korea reported one more death from MERS on the day, along with five new cases that brought the total number of people diagnosed with the disease here to 150. The latest fatality raised the number of MERS-related deaths in South Korea to 16. (Yonhap)

Hopefully the spread of MERS is contained so the people in Pyeongtaek can get back to normal lives.  Fortunately the ROK Air Force servicemember who tested positive for MERS recently has recovered:

PYEONGTAEK, South Korea—A city best known by many for its nearby U.S. military base and surrounding rice paddies became ground zero as a deadly virus rarely seen outside the Middle East began to spread through South Korea.

At St. Mary’s Hospital in a newly developing industrial area of Pyeongtaek, about 35 miles south of Seoul, doctors puzzled for three days in mid-May over the flulike condition of a 68-year-old man, who hadn’t disclosed at that point that he had recently returned from the Middle East.

The man left St. Mary’s and was later admitted to a larger hospital in Seoul, where he was ultimately diagnosed with Middle East respiratory syndrome and was quarantined. But during that time in St. Mary’s, the man spread the MERS virus to more than 30 people.  (…………………………)

A South Korean Defense Ministry official said one Korean man stationed at the Osan Air Base near Pyeongtaek who tested positive for MERS would be released on Thursday. The air base is close to the main U.S. military base of Camp Humphreys for which Pyeongtaek is known.

St. Mary’s was the first hospital named by the government as being part of the MERS outbreak. All patients, including MERS sufferers, have been moved to other hospitals.  [Wall Street Journal via reader tip]

You can read more at the link, but it is going to be interesting to learn why MERS spread so widely in various hospitals as well as why so few people have died compared to outbreaks in the Middle East.

It will be interesting to see where this important airbase is relocated to and if the Patriot missile units located there will follow them:

U.S. military officials have yet to determine where a Patriot missile battery will be stationed after its current site, a South Korean air base, closes.

Suwon Air Base, roughly 20 miles south of Seoul, will be relocated following noise and damage complaints and a formal request from the local government, South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense recently announced.

Four batteries with the U.S. 35th Air Defense Artillery Brigade are stationed there along with South Korea’s 10th Fighter Wing. A U.S. airman from the 607th Materiel Maintenance Squadron is also permanently stationed at Suwon.

The base’s relocation, which could take a decade, is projected to cost $6.3 million, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency has reported. The defense ministry said the search for a new site will begin soon. No particular sites are under consideration for the relocation of the base or the U.S. forces stationed there, an MND spokesman said.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but fortunately the ROK Air Force has given themselves 10 years to figure out where the new airbase will go.

I wonder if this means there is some kind of back channel negotiations going on or this could just be simple propaganda BS:

North Korea claimed through its state-controlled media Saturday that the United States has recognized it as a nuclear weapons state, a claim that has never been acknowledged by Washington.

Rodong Sinmun, an official newspaper of the North’s ruling Communist Party of Korea, said in an editorial that the United States is reluctantly moving to accept Pyongyang as a nuclear power.

The editorial, carried by the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), said that the Communist country, in reality, has nuclear weapons, whether other countries recognize it or not.

After carrying out underground nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013, North Korea has openly declared itself as a nuclear weapons state and is now demanding that the U.S. and other countries accept it as a fact.

The United States, South Korea, Japan and other regional players have refused to comply with the North’s demand, saying that their position on the matter won’t change.

North Korea, in that newspaper article, did not say why it thought the U.S. has acknowledged its nuclear status but it has long been demanding that the United States sit with it at the negotiating table to discuss mutual disarmament.  [Yonhap]

Here is a rare method of defection from North Korea:

A North Korean soldier defected to South Korea through the inter-Korean border Monday, an official from the Ministry of National Defense said.

“A North Korean man presumed to be a serviceperson defected to our side earlier this morning,” a ministry official said, requesting anonymity.

“He crossed the border in Hwacheon, Gangwon Province, on foot, and expressed his will to defect,” he added, noting that he has been under investigation by relevant authorities.

Other details including the identity of the man and his motive are yet to be known.

Over the past several years, South Korea has seen a series of defection cases from the poverty-stricken communist neighbor. But it is not usual for North Korean soldiers to walk crossing the Military Demarcation Line to defect. [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but I hope this soldier did not have any immediate family because if he did they are likely heading to the gulag.

China’s Maritime Disputes: Trouble to the South, but the East Stays Quiet http://t.co/4A7YwgcXDC pic.twitter.com/LJIShgF3Yb

— The Diplomat (@Diplomat_APAC) June 13, 2015