For all you ROK Heads living in Korea a highly successful woman is available:

The eldest daughter of Samsung Electronics Co. Chairman Lee Kun-hee is going through divorce proceedings, the company said Saturday.

Ending a 15-year marriage, Lee Bu-jin, 44, filed for divorce mediation with her 46-year-old husband, Im Woo-jae, at the Seongnam branch of Suwon District Court on Wednesday, according to the company.

Mediation during divorce is a way of finding solutions to issues such as child custody and spousal support without a formal trial. When an agreement is not reached amicably, a divorce trial can take place.

The younger Lee currently heads Hotel Shilla, the group’s hotel unit, while Im serves as the vice-president of Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co.

Born in 1968, Im joined Samsung C&T in 1995 and met the younger Lee in May of that year while performing extension work. The two married in 1999 and have one son.  [Yonhap]

Green Initiative － Students turn barren Inner Mongolian desert into a lush green haven. #colorsofchina https://t.co/zXgOtH4wCh

— CCTVNEWS (@cctvnews) October 12, 2014

Kim Kyong-hui (inside the red circle), the aunt of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, is shown on state television on Oct. 12, 2014, reinforcing views that she hasn’t been removed from the country’s power elite despite the execution of her once powerful husband, Jang Song-thaek. (Yonhap)

For some of you that served in the Korean War or had family members who did maybe you can help identify some of the people in these photos:

More than 5.7 million Americans served in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. The U.S. Department of Defense chronicled America’s involvement through photographs, a collection of which found its way into the care of Air Force veteran Betty Perkins-Carpenter, a resident of Penfield, New York. Now, Perkins-Carpenter would like to pass on these original photos, which remain in excellent quality, to the men and women pictured in them or their families.

The Democrat and Chronicle, owned by the same parent company as Army Times, has teamed up with Kodak Alaris to share the photos with a wide audience. Digital files scanned by Kodak Alaris have been used to create this website.

Keep an eye open for people or places you might recognize. You can search the gallery for a name, hometown, battle or date by using the search bar below. Click a photo to view it in a larger format and access a link to email Perkins-Carpenter to inquire about a photo.  [Army Times]

You can read more at the link.

Please leave anything you want to discuss in the Open Thread.

Here are the latest posts from this week in the ROK Drop Forums:

• Why is Ft. Carson’s Unit Lockdown National News?
• On-post Restaurants May Be Forced To Shutdown Due to Wage Hikes
• More Restaurants Experimenting With Technology To Enhance Service
• The Media War To Save Kobani
• 3 US Servicemembers Die Due to High Waves On Okinawa
• Is Batman Shirt Sexist?
• Former US Soldier Joins Kurdish Group to Fight ISIS
• Former Child TV Stars Shrugs Off Labels
• Linda Chavez Advocates to Remember that North Korea is A Threat

• Pentagon Scraps Millions of Dollars Worth of Planes for $32,000

[Industry] Half of major firms’ board members come from SKY, overseas schools http://t.co/3xs99IH0pG #industry pic.twitter.com/KhJUgtcVgv

— 코리아헤럴드 Korea Herald (@TheKoreaHerald) October 10, 2014

It was reported a few weeks ago that Seoul is planning to close the Seoul Station Overpass and turn it into a park, influenced by High Line Park in New York City (itself influenced by Promenade plantée in Paris). The Wall Street Journal Blog compares it to Lee Myung-bak’s Cheonggyecheon Restoration as a possible ‘pre-run-for-the-presidency project’ by Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon. [Popular Gusts]

Considering the violence used in the past by Chinese fishermen against the Coast Guard to include murder, I wonder if this shooting was in response to violence against the Coast Guard personnel?

A Chinese fisherman was killed during the Coast Guard’s crackdown on his ship’s illegal fishing in South Korean waters Friday, officials said.

The 45-year-old skipper, only identified by his surname Song, was shot by a South Korean Coast Guard officer on the ship in waters near Wangdeung Island in Buan County, North Jeolla Province, and transferred to a hospital in the southwestern port city, where he later died, Coast Guard officials said.

“He died at Mokpo Hangook Hospital around 11:20 a.m. An autopsy is underway to determine the exact cause of his death,” an official told Yonhap News Agency.

The Coast Guard used guns during the raid as Chinese fishermen on board fought with the Coast Guard officials, the officials said.

“The cause of Song’s death is presumed to be the penetrating injuries sustained from a bullet,” said Jeong Jong-hyun, an emergency doctor at Mokpo Hangook Hospital.

“The piece of bullet about 1.6 centimeters was found inside Song’s body,” Jeong said, citing a CT image.

Expressing regret over the incident, the Seoul government said it has explained the details of the incident to China through diplomatic channels.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

This would be great news if it does in fact happen not because I expect anyone in the North Korean leadership to ever stand trial at the ICC, but because of the further international pressure it puts on the regime to improve its human rights situation:

A draft U.N. resolution on North Korea’s human rights problem calls for referring the totalitarian nation’s leader, Kim Jong-un, to the International Criminal Court (ICC), a diplomatic source said Wednesday.

The draft resolution, written by the European Union, was circulated behind closed doors at the U.N. on Wednesday, the source told Yonhap News Agency on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to speak about the proposed resolution until it is adopted.

“It marks the first time that a U.N. resolution on North Korea human rights includes a plan to bring the North Korean leadership to an international court over anti-human rights charges although this is a draft now,” the source said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but this may explain why the North Koreans recently have been trying to explain away their gulags as “reform through labor camps” instead.

Yes the headline is accurate, you can’t make this stuff up:

Japan expressed “deep regret” over the South Korean prosecution’s decision to indict a Japanese journalist for allegedly defaming President Park Geun-hye, underscoring the different stances toward press freedom and signaling that the nations’ already soured bilateral ties might hit another rough patch.

“(The indictment) is deeply regrettable in terms of the freedom of press and relationship between the two countries, as Korea ignored voices of concern repeatedly expressed by our government and by media inside and outside Japan,” Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters.

“It is in stark contrast to the common value of the international community, which is to respect the freedom of speech as much as possible and carry on with law enforcement only in a reserved manner.”

Later in the day, Tokyo’s Foreign Ministry called in diplomat Kim Won-jin from Korea’s embassy in Japan and expressed deep regrets for the indictment while adding that it was “deeply concerned about the situation.

Tatsuya Kato, head of the Seoul bureau of Japan’s Sankei Shimbun newspaper, was indicted Wednesday on defamation charges after he put out a report speculating that Park and an unidentified man might have had a secret meeting on the day of the deadly ferry disaster in April.

Citing an earlier opinion piece by Korean media, the 48-year-old said that Park’s whereabouts were unknown for seven hours, which incited rumors on the supposed secret meeting.  [Korea Herald]

You can read the rest at the link, but I think the Park administration is actually using this reporter as a preemptive strike to stop online rumors like the mad cow lies passed around online by the Korean left that deeply damaged the prior Lee Myung-bak presidency.  Notice that this Japanese reporter simply passed along rumors that the Korean media had already reported.  However, the Park administration knows that it is unlikely that anyone on the Korean left will come out and defend a Japanese journalist which is why they are indicting him and not anyone in the South Korean media.  This then will allow them to move forward with their planned Internet crackdown.