Here is a story which shows after all these years how the Korean War continues to affect people’s lives:

Jorja Elliott-Reyburn, 67, was only 2 years old when her father, James H. Elliott, disappeared in combat. He went out on patrol one night during the battle of the Pusan Perimeter, a large-scale battle between United Nations forces and forces from the North Korean People’s Army in 1950. 

He was last seen near Waegwan, a small town in North Gyeongsang near the Nakdong River. 

On Sunday, Elliott-Reyburn traveled from her home in Star, Idaho, to Korea and reached the spot where her father was last seen. 

She scattered the ashes of her mother, Ardyne Elliott Blackstone, in the river. Blackstone died of cancer in February at the age of 87. 

It was her last wish to have her remains as close as possible to those of her husband. 

Attending a memorial for U.S. soldiers who went missing during the war on Wednesday in Paju, Gyeonggi, Elliott-Reyburn read a letter that she composed for her father. 

In the letter, Elliott-Reyburn expressed how much her mother missed her husband, the love of her life. 

“She got involved in all the research to find you,” Elliott-Reyburn read. “She was hoping as we were that someday we will have closure by finding you and bringing you at home” 

After Elliott went missing, his wife worked for years for the Gold Star Wives of America, an organization to support family members of people who died while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

It will be interesting to see if President Park’s solar initiatives goes anywhere:

Hanwha Group, the world’s largest solar cell maker, said it plans to open the nation’s first zero-carbon town run solely on solar power on Jukdo Island, a small island on the nation’s west coast, in cooperation with small and medium-sized enterprises in the solar industry. 

This will be a signature project for the South Chungcheong Creative Economy Innovation Center, which Hanwha Group jointly opened with the central government in Cheonan, South Chungcheong, on Friday. 

The South Chungcheong center is the nation’s 11th creative economy center out of a total of 17 planned under President Park Geun-hye’s creative economy initiative, the administration’s attempt to revitalize Korea’s economy through innovation. 

More than 150 people including President Park, Hanwha Group Chairman Kim Seung-youn and South Chungcheong Gov. Ahn Hee-jung attended the center’s opening. 

“In the 20th century, Korea used to rely on imports for 100 percent of its energy needs,” said Park in a congratulatory speech. “The era of fossil fuels coming to the end is a challenge but also can be an opportunity for the Korean economy. 
“If we move proactively in new energy-related technologies and commercialize them as soon as possible, the Korean solar-energy model will lead the world’s renewable energy market,” Park added.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link. 

Just the fact that they paid money to the Kim regime to travel to North Korea shows they care little about human rights and more about promoting themselves:

A group of foreign women activists crossed the heavily fortified inter-Korean border from North Korea on Sunday, voicing hope that their move could help bring lasting peace to a divided peninsula.

   About 30 female activists from around the world, including U.S. activist Gloria Steinem and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire, marched down from the North to the South across the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) to mark the International Women’s Day for Disarmament.

   The DMZ, which bisects the Korean Peninsula, is a 259-kilometer-long and 4-kilometer-wide strip of rugged no-man’s land stretching from coast to coast, serving as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

   “We are feeling very positive (about) what we’ve accomplished … which is a trip for peace, for reconciliation and for human rights and a trip to which both governments agreed,” Steinem told a press conference in South Korea. “We were able to be citizens’ diplomats.”. [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link such as how the North Korean media reported how this group paid homage to Kim Il-sung which they deny. Their denials are irrelevant because by agreeing to travel to North Korea in the first place they made themselves willing propaganda pieces for the Kim regime.  

I don’t see Hollywood changing their stereotype of military veterans any time soon even with this film festival:

My stepbrother is in the military, and he always wishes that the movies would be a better advocate for the American soldier,” actor Ethan Hawke said during an interview to promote “Good Kill,” a new drama about drone warfare. “Hollywood has a bad habit of either being so nationalistic and flag-waving that it kind of dehumanizes everybody and makes it a recruitment tool, or being so left-wing with conspiracy theories that project all of this negativity. Of course, the truth is somewhere in the middle.”

The GI Film Festival opens in Washington this week in its ninth year as a corrective to the one-dimensional portrayals that many observers fear have influenced how the public sees the military. The festival runs May 18 through May 24 and features 60 movies, including shorts, documentaries, comedies and dramas. All are either made by veterans or feature military characters.

At a time when only 0.5 percent of the population is on active duty, many in the military community argue that even the cinema offerings that attempt to give a sympathetic portrayal of soldiers and veterans — such as the acclaimed “American Sniper” — end up breeding harmful stereotypes.

Recent films have also portrayed vets as murderers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (“In the Valley of Elah,” “Redacted”); as deserters suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (“Stop-Loss”); and as mavericks so addicted to combat that they can’t reintegrate into American society (“The Hurt Locker”).

“People believe what they see in the movies,” said Laura Law-Millett, a veteran who founded the GI Film Festival with her civilian husband, Brandon Millett. “If someone had seen some of these films who had never met anyone in the military, prior to about 2007, they would say, ‘Oh, so everyone who joins the Army becomes a drug dealer or a rapist or a murderer?'”  [Washington Post]

You can read more at the link, but with Bush out of office the amount of movies and documentaries depicting troops as murderers and rapists seems to have decreased.  It seems now they focus more on veterans being heroic or broken from PTSD. 

A woman and a girl photograph themselves with wax figures of American actor Brad Pitt and actress Angelina Jolie during a publicity event at Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul on May 19, 2015, to commemorate the opening of a global wax museum, Madame Tussauds, in Seoul. (Yonhap)

Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section. 

Kim Yu-na on pictorial magazine

Retired figure skater Kim Yu-na is seen on the cover of a pictorial magazine, in this photo released by Allure Korea, a beauty and lifestyle magazine, on May 18, 2015. (Yonhap)

This does not surprise me at all because I doubted their launch claims from the beginning:

Photographs showing a North Korean missile launched from a submarine were manipulated by state propagandists and the country may be years away from developing such technology, analysts and a top U.S. military official said on Tuesday.
North Korea, sanctioned by the United States and United Nations for its missile and nuclear tests, said on May 9 it had successfully conducted an underwater test-fire of a submarine-launched ballistic missile which, if true, would indicate progress in its pursuit of missile-equipped submarines. (….)

But North Korea is still “many years” from developing submarine-launched ballistic missiles, U.S. Admiral James Winnefeld told an audience at the Centre for Strategic & International Studies in Washington on Tuesday.

“They have not gotten as far as their clever video editors and spinmeisters would have us believe,” said Winnefeld, who is vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Analysis seen by Reuters from German aerospace engineers Markus Schiller and Robert Schmucker of Schmucker Technologie appeared to support Winnefeld’s statement.

The Munich-based pair said photos of the launch were “strongly modified”, including reflections of the missile exhaust flame in the water which did not line up with the missile itself. [Reuters]

You can read more at the link. 

I can only imagine how many intelligence agents were following him around considering the media was able found out about his trip:

A brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visited London and attended a concert by Eric Clapton, according to a Japanese news report and a source.

   Kim Jong-chol, older brother of the North’s leader and known as a big fan of Clapton, was caught on camera while attending the concert at Royal Albert Hall in London on Wednesday, Japan’s TBS television station reported.

   Dressed in a T-shirt and a leather jacket, Kim was with what appeared to be his girlfriend, it said.

   A source in London confirmed that Kim visited London and stayed at a downtown hotel. The source also said that Kim was scheduled to board a flight to Moscow on Friday.

   Rates at the hotel range from 247 British pounds (about 420,000 won) to 2,184 pounds (3.7 million) per night.  [Yonhap]<\blockquote>

It was only a matter of time before Heather Cho would be acquitted. She was publicly shamed and the media attention has long since moved along so the time was right to let her walk:

A Seoul appeals court Friday acquitted a former Korean Air Lines vice president of charges of changing the route of a flight in the so-called “nut rage” case.

The Seoul High Court sentenced Cho Hyun-ah to 10 months in prison, but suspended the prison term for two years, freeing her several months after she was put behind bars in December.

A lower court delivered a one-year sentence in December, convicting her of the flight route change to endanger flight safety as she forced the chief steward off a taxiing flight because she was served nuts in an unopened bag instead of on a plate.  [Yonhap]