Could you imagine what the media reaction would be to this if it was a white Republican claiming too many (enter ethnic minority) group was moving into public housing?

A Brooklyn city councilmember on Thursday made the bizarre claim that a wave of Asians has invaded public housing developments in her district.

Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo made the unusual statement at a hearing Thursday on the Housing Authority’s funding problems.

Addressing NYCHA Chairwoman Shola Olatoye, Cumbo — who represents a wide patch of Brooklyn from Fort Greene to Crown Heights — asked why “certain ethnic groups come in” to a NYCHA development “in blocks.”

NYCHA has a waiting list of 250,000 hoping for public housing, and tenants are picked strictly in chronological order, with preference given for homeless families and victims of domestic violence.

So a clearly perplexed Olatoye asked Cumbo to elaborate.

Cumbo then stated, “We have a large Asian population in our district — and we love them.”

Without identifying specifics — such as which development she meant — she claimed that this particular ethnic community “had the opportunity to move into a development in large numbers.”  [NY Daily News via reader tip]

So I guess the councilwoman loves the Asian community, just not enough to allow them to move into public housing.

Here is another example of how subversive media is continuing to spread within South Korea:

A $50 portable media player is providing many North Koreans a window to the outside world despite the government’s efforts to keep its people isolated – a symbol of change in one of the world’s most repressed societies.

By some estimates, up to half of all urban North Korean households have an easily concealed “notel”, a small portable media player used to watch DVDs or content stored on USB sticks that can be easily smuggled into the country and passed hand to hand.

People are exchanging South Korean soaps, pop music, Hollywood films and news programs, all of which are expressly prohibited by the Pyongyang regime, according to North Korean defectors, activists and recent visitors to the isolated country.

“The North Korean government takes their national ideology extremely seriously, so the spread of all this media that competes with their propaganda is a big and growing problem for them,” said Sokeel Park of Liberty in North Korea (LiNK), an organization that works with defectors.

“If Pyongyang fails to successfully adapt to these trends, they could threaten the long-term survival of the regime itself.”   [Reuters via the Marmots Hole]

You can read more at the link, but subversive media is better than any sanctions in my opinion at undermining the Kim regime.

S. Korea successfully deploys new science satellite http://t.co/bLPyH6JzeG #KARI #KOMSAT pic.twitter.com/lLfaLsUzNL

— The Korea Times (@koreatimes) March 26, 2015

President Park Geun-hye (R) meets with Sweden’s crown princess, Victoria, at Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul on March 24, 2015. (Yonhap)

Via reader tip comes news that the North Koreans have arrested two alleged South Korean spies:

 

North Korea said late on Thursday it had arrested two South Koreans based in the Chinese border city of Dandong, accusing them of spying for South Korea.

The North’s official KCNA news agency showed images of two middle-aged men it identified as Kim Kuk Gi and Choe Chun Gil speaking at a news conference in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

The two men were South Korean nationals working as spies for Seoul’s National Intelligence Service from the Chinese border city of Dandong, it said.

“They zealously took part in the anti-DPRK smear campaign of the U.S. imperialists and the puppet group of traitors to isolate and blockade the DPRK in (the) international arena,” the agency said, using North Korea’s official DPRK acronym for Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.  [Reuters]

You can read more at the link, but the real question is how were they arrested?  Did the Chinese arrest them and send them to North Korea?  Doubtful.  Were they kidnapped by the North Koreans and brought to North Korea?  The North Koreans have done this before.  If so the South Korean government should be putting pressure on China to get them back.

Secondly are these people really spies?  They are apparently Christian missionaries assisting North Korean refugees fleeing North Korea.So they may have just been kidnapped just like Reverend Kim Dong-sik was a few years ago simply to stop the underground railroad assisting North Korean refugees.

Swedish royalty is is town giving Welfare advice to President Park:

The heir to the Swedish throne kicked off her official visit to Korea with a meeting with President Park Geun-hye Tuesday, with a focus on sharing knowledge about her country’s welfare policies.

The heir apparent discussed the low birth rate and aging Korean society with the President.

“Sweden set a good example in policies in childcare and balancing between work and family,” Park said.

President Park also paid tribute to Sweden’s participation in the 1950-1953 Korean War.

“The Korean public remembers Sweden played an important role as an ally when security in Korea was at risk,” she said, citing Sweden having been a member of Neutral Nations Supervisory Nations for the past 60 years after the Korean War.  [Korea Times]

You can read the rest at the link, but I wonder if the Princess mentioned anything in regards to it being impossible to have a Welfare state and lax immigration policies which is currently straining Sweden’s social harmony.

.@cheryltan88 explains what it was like growing up in Singapore in the shadow of Lee Kuan Yew. http://t.co/XtZYSC2NsZ pic.twitter.com/UJMwE7TXQZ

— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) March 25, 2015

Shown is the Lotte World Tower being built in southeastern Seoul on March 24, 2015. The construction of the 100th floor of the building was completed on the day. It will be 123 stories when completed by the end of the year. (Yonhap)

Not only is he out of the next Olympics, but I have to imagine this will kill his endorsement deals which have to be worth a lot of money in Korea:

Former Olympic swimming champion Park Tae-hwan was suspended 18 months for doping.

In a doping hearing session in Lausanne, Switzerland, Tuesday, the world swimming governing body FINA handed down Park the ban for being tested positive for testosterone in a drug test in September.

The punishment will expire on March 2, 2016, giving the 26-year-old a chance to swim at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

However, the Korean Olympic Committee prohibits an athlete whose suspension expired less than three years before the Olympics from representing the country

FINA added that Park’s results from Sept. 3 will be annulled and prize money will be forfeited, meaning he will have to return the one silver and five bronzes he won at last year’s Asian Games.  [Korea Times]

You can read the rest at the link.

Blaine Harden writing for the Washington Post explains one of the ways that the Kim regime is able to manufacture hate of the United States to justify their rule:

Where does the hate come from?

Much of it is cooked up daily in Pyongyang. Like all dictatorial regimes, the Kim family dynasty needs an endless existential struggle against a fearsome enemy. Such a threat rationalizes massive military spending and excuses decades of privation, while keeping dissenting mouths shut and political prisons open.

The hate, though, is not all manufactured. It is rooted in a fact-based narrative, one that North Korea obsessively remembers and the United States blithely forgets.

The story dates to the early 1950s, when the U.S. Air Force, in response to the North Korean invasion that started the Korean War, bombed and napalmed cities, towns and villages across the North. It was mostly easy pickings for the Air Force, whose B-29s faced little or no opposition on many missions.

The bombing was long, leisurely and merciless, even by the assessment of America’s own leaders. “Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — 20 percent of the population,” Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, told the New Yorker in 1995. Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later secretary of state, said the United States bombed “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.” After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops.  (………..)

“It is still the 1950s in North Korea and the conflict with South Korea and the United States is still going on,” says Kathryn Weathersby, a scholar of the Korean War. “People in the North feel backed into a corner and threatened.”

There is real value in understanding this paranoid mindset. It puts the calculated belligerence of the Kim family into context. It also undermines the notion that North Korea is merely a nut-case state.  [Washington Post]

Harden concludes his article that some day the US should apologize for the bombing of North Korea.  Using that mindset should the US then apologize for Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the fire bombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities as well?  Anyway the Korean War was a United Nations action, so shouldn’t the UN be the ones apologizing?