MT @jeanguisnel Pas fini de rigoler !!! Who is building what in the South China Sea. http://t.co/YHfzVqVneV pic.twitter.com/tveD1wkYnv

— Marquis de Seignelay (@FauteuilColbert) March 1, 2015

An electric vehicle carries tourists at Biseul Mountain Park in Dalseong County of Daegu on Feb. 27, 2015. (Photo courtesy of Dalseong County Office) (Yonhap)

It is sad that it took a major tragedy like the sinking of the Sewol to expose just how the corruption of public officials in South Korea had become a major safety hazard:

The National Assembly of South Korea passed an anticorruption law on Tuesday that calls for up to three years in prison for journalists, teachers and public servants who accept single cash donations or gifts valued at more than a million won, or about $910.

Passage of the law signaled a milestone in the country, where bestowing and receiving envelopes of cash and other gifts have long been part of the culture — and a suspected channel of bribery.

In South Korea, businesspeople, politicians and senior government officials often host expensive dinners, send gift sets during holidays and make cash donations at weddings and funerals, making it difficult to determine what amounts to corruption and what should be accepted as part of social etiquette.

Until now, people have been punished for graft only when it was established in court that they had accepted a gift in return for doing a specific favor, like helping the gift-giver obtain a government license or school admission.

Such a stringent legal requirement has raised concerns that much of the corruption in the country has gone unpunished, especially the so-called sponsorship relationships that some businesspeople and politicians were said to maintain with prosecutors, government officials and journalists. Under that arrangement, the “sponsors” would wine and dine the recipients, as well as provide them with financial support, not necessarily for any immediate favor but for long-term collusive ties.

Under the new law, which is to take effect in October 2016, public servants, teachers and journalists will face fines or prison terms of up to three years for taking such gifts exceeding about $910, regardless of whether there is evidence of bribery or influence-peddling.

They will face similar punishment if their spouses receive such gifts from people that involve conflicts of interest. (Those who report their spouse’s gifts to the authorities will be exempt.) Those who receive gifts valued at less than the designated amount may be fined if those gifts involve a conflict of interest.  [New York Times]

You can read more at the link,but I wonder how long before the Korean politicians discover campaign contributions as a way around anti-corruption laws?

You can also read more about this topic over at the Marmot’s Hole.

Despite all the talk about the non-militarization of space over the years the facts are that space is becoming increasingly militarized:

China is developing space technologies aimed at blocking U.S. military communications and destroying its ability to win conflicts, according to a report commissioned by a congressional committee.

“China’s improving space capabilities have negative-sum consequences for U.S. military security,” the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation said in the report. Its progress requires “the U.S. to prepare to confront an adversary possessing space and counter-space technologies.”

The report, released Monday in Washington, comes as Congress debates President Barack Obama’s request for a Defense Department budget increase of 7.7 percent to $534.3 billion and ways to align defense strategy and spending. The top U.S. intelligence official and the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command both warned last week that China’s space program threatens U.S. military communications.

The program is part of President Xi Jinping’s “China Dream” strategy of strengthening national power and reshaping the Asia-Pacific political environment into one in which its interests are given greater attention.

“China’s goal is to become a space power on par with the United States and to foster a space industry that is the equal of those in the United States, Europe, and Russia,” according to the report, which was prepared for the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission.

Chinese military analysts consider that space-based information will become a deciding factor in future wars, that space will be a dominant battlefield, and that in order to achieve victory on Earth, one must first seize the initiative in space, the institute said.

“This will require China to achieve space supremacy, defined as the ability to freely use space and to deny the use of space to adversaries,” according to the report, titled “China Dream, Space Dream: China’s Progress in Space Technologies and Implications for the United States.”

The assessment that space is the dominant battlefield has led the People’s Liberation Army to conclude that war in space is inevitable, the institute said in the report led by Kevin Pollpeter, deputy director of the Study of Innovation and Technology in China at the IGCC.  [Bloomberg]

So how will China take out US space-based communications?  Well the 2007 Chinese satellite shoot down is an indication of what they can do.  The debris left in orbit after such a conflict would have the potential of making low Earth orbit likely unusable for quite some time.

How do you forget to do something as basic as hooking up a harness to somebody going on a zip line?  This is like telling someone to jump out of a plane without giving them a parachute:

A 12-year-old boy died in a 24-meter (78-foot) fall from the starting point of a zip line, an adventure sport in which people slide down a cable using a pulley, in Boeun County, North Chungcheong, on Saturday, raising concerns about Korea’s lack of safety standards for leisure activities.

The police think a worker at the zip line didn’t properly attach the victim’s harness to the pulley. The worker was a 23-year-old university student on a leave of absence. The boy, who lived in Cheongju, an adjacent city, was on a group outing.

“We believe the employee did not do his job, which is to attach the pulley to the rider’s harness before the jump,” said a police officer. “The employee stated in the investigation that he thought he connected the wire to the boy before he departed.”

The operator of the park immediately suspended operations and took the boy to a nearby hospital, but the victim died of excessive bleeding later that day. The police are planning to charge the employee for involuntary manslaughter due to professional negligence, while they investigate other kinds of negligence in the operation and maintenance of the park.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but condolences to the family of the boy.

This just makes you wonder what else is filled with contaminants from China?

.@AndersonCooper reports that Chinese-made laminate flooring sold in Lumber Liquidator outlets across country contains toxic formaldehyde

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) March 1, 2015

Actresses perform at an event in Seoul on Feb. 25, 2015, to promote the new musical “Dream Girls.” (Yonhap)

North Korea’s war on fish continues in the East Sea:

North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea and vowed “merciless” retaliation Monday as the US and South Korea kicked off joint military drills denounced by Pyongyang as recklessly confrontational.

The annual exercises always trigger a surge in military tensions and warlike rhetoric on the divided peninsula, and analysts saw the North’s missile tests as a prelude to a concerted campaign of sabre-rattling.

“If there is a particularly sharp escalation, we could see the North orchestrating some kind of clash on the maritime border,” said Jeung Young-Tae, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.  [AFP]

You can read more at the link, but the Yellow Sea has been quiet for a while now so it would not be too shocking if they try something over there next.

This is an example of why I have always believed that when these ships are caught smuggling prohibited goods they should not be returned to North Korea because they are masters at building front companies to do their dirty business with.  If the ships were auctioned off after seizure there would at least be a steep financial cost on the regime for violating sanctions:

A North Korean shipping company that famously tried to hide fighter jets under a cargo of sugar later sought to evade U.N. sanctions by renaming most of its vessels, a new report says.

The effort by Pyongyang-headquartered Ocean Maritime Management Company, Ltd. is detailed in the report by a panel of experts that monitors sanctions on North Korea. The report, obtained by The Associated Press, makes clear the challenge of keeping banned arms and luxury goods from a nuclear-armed country with a history of using front companies to duck detection.

The U.N. Security Council holds consultations Thursday on the report, which also says North Korea’s government persists with its nuclear and missile programs in defiance of council resolutions.

North Korea’s mission to the U.N. did not respond to a request for comment.

The council last year imposed sanctions on OMM after Panama in 2013 seized a ship it operated that carried undeclared military equipment from Cuba. Panamanian authorities found two Cuban fighter jets, missiles and live munitions beneath the Chong Chon Gang’s cargo of sugar.

The council’s sanctions committee said that violated a U.N. arms embargo imposed in response to North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. At the time, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said that imposing a global asset freeze on OMM meant that the company would no longer be able to operate internationally.

But the new report says that in the months after the sanctions were imposed, 13 of the 14 ships controlled by OMM changed their owners and managers, “effectively erasing” the company from a database kept by the International Maritime Organization. Twelve of the ships “reportedly stayed, visited or were sighted near ports in foreign countries,” and none were frozen by member states as the panel of experts recommends.

The new report explores the shipping company’s global reach, using people and entities operating in at least 10 countries: Brazil, China, Egypt, Greece, Japan, Malaysia, Peru, Russia, Singapore and Thailand. The report recommends updating the sanctions list with 34 OMM entities and says all 14 vessels should be subject to sanctions.

No interdictions of the kind that Panama made in 2013 were reported in the period between Feb. 8 of last year and Feb. 5 of this year. But the new report warns that the panel of experts sees no evidence that North Korea “intends to cease prohibited activities.”  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest in the continuing smartphone wars:

South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. is gearing up to unveiled its all new flagship smartphone at this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, hoping to put the company back in the ring with arch-rival Apple Inc., corporate sources said Sunday.

The flagship, widely expected to be called the Galaxy 6, aims to lay the foundation for Samsung to recapture the No. 1 smartphone manufacturer title that it lost late last year following lackluster sales of its Galaxy S5 and strong sales of Apple’s first large-screen iPhone 6.

The launch is expected to take place at 2:30 a.m. on Monday (Korea time) at a dedicated “Unpacked” event.

Samsung is also hoping that the new smartphone may help it outpace Chinese upstarts, such as Xiaomi Tech and Huawei Technologies Co, which have made strides, particularly in the world’s second-largest economy.

The combination of Apple’s super popular iPhone and challenges by Xiaomi and Huawei caused Samsung to suffer an “earnings shock” last year.

Company sources said that the new Galaxy, which was called “Project Zero” in its development stage, emphasizes a completely new form factor with importance placed on the materials used to make the phone.

In the past, Samsung’s flagships have taken a beating for using “flimsy” plastic, but the company in more recent months has been churning out devices with metal frames, such as the Galaxy Note 4 and Galaxy Alpha, or with all aluminum uni-body designs in the cases of the A3, A5 and A7.

Besides the build quality, Samsung said through official teasers that the new phone will have better internals in the form of a more powerful processor, memory capacity, camera and streamlined software, which will enhance the overall performance and user experience.

The new Galaxy, which could well come in the conventional flat and dual-curbed screen “Edge” variants, will have a Samsung Pay system pre-installed. The system based on LooPay technology allows users to use the phone like a credit card. Unlike Apple’s payment system that requires special terminals, the LooPay arrangement allows it to work with existing credit card readers.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but it is going to be interesting to see if consumers prefer the old credit car technology that Samsung is banking on or the built in Apple Pay technology in the iPhone?