N. Korean leader fails to show on key national celebration http://t.co/pF8bPfhqTs

— Yonhap News Agency (@YonhapNews) October 10, 2014

Mariah Carey arrives at Incheon International Airport on Tuesday for a concert in Seoul. /News 1

Here is another example of tit-for-tat occurring on the DMZ:

The two Koreas exchanged machine gun fire Friday, Seoul’s military said, after the North launched shots toward balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets floated by South Korean civic activists across the tense border.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said some of the North Korean shots landed south of the border, prompting the South’s military to fire back in response.

No further details were available, including whether there were any casualties on either side.

Seoul’s military officials corrected earlier reports that artillery had been used in the clash, saying that it’s wrong.

They said shots could be heard from north of the border at around 3:55 p.m., about two hours after a group of South Korean activists flew 200,000 anti-North Korean leaflets in balloons in a border village of Paju.

The officials added that shots apparently fired by anti-aircraft machine guns were discovered south of the border around 4:50 p.m. There were no reports of South Korean casualties, they said.

South Korea’s military fired back about 40 rounds from its K-6 machine gun 10 minutes after issuing an warning message at 5:30 p.m. [Yonhap]

This may have been another example of a DMZ tit-for-tat, but the threat to these balloons activists from the North Korean regime is very real.  Park Sang-hak the North Korean defector who is the leader of this activist group is the one in the most danger.  Park is the man who the Kim regime has repeatedly threatened, sent their South Korean leftist lackeys to assault him, and even tried to assassinate him a few years ago due to his balloon launch efforts.  Despite all this Park continues to send his balloons into North Korea which must be having an effect considering the reaction of the Kim regime to these launches.

It seems like every few months someone in the Korean media feels the need to make sweeping accusations against foreigners in Korea to drive page view traffic I suppose to their site.  Via the Marmot’s Hole comes this latest example from the Donga Ilbo:

Image via Popular Gusts.

The Dong-A Ilbo warns ladies to be careful of foreigners offering you drinks.

In May, a young man by the name of Kim got a urgent Kakao Talk from a female acquaintance of his who’d gone to a club in Yongsan. She was passing out and worried something might happen to her. He went to the club, found her passed out and surrounded by two foreigners, and rescued her. The next day, she told him that the foreigners gave her something to drink which had apparently been spiked.

She was rescued, but the Dong-A reports that there are women, defenseless against foreigners will ill-intent, who have been sexually assaulted. For instance, on Sept. 10, a 20-year-old woman was sitting at a Gangnam club with two foreign guys and a Korean guy. They gave her a drink which they’d spiked with sleeping pills. They brought her to a nearby motel, where they began filming parts of her anatomy with a cellphone. When she protested, they beat her. After a two week investigation, the cops arrested three guys for sexual assault, including a French guy and some model. [Marmot’s Hole via a reader tip]

You can read the rest at the link, to include a lively discussion on this topic in the comments section.  I just like how the article makes no mention about sexual assault in Korea by Koreans which has been a significant issue that has gained increased attention in recent years. By the way this is not the first time the Donga Ilbo has been spreading lies, I called them out a few years ago when they were spreading lies about GI crime in Korea.

What else I found of interest is how the Donga Ilbo has pretty much did a recycle of the reporting done on the English Spectrum incident. I guess their reporters are even too lazy now to find new xenophobic angle to report on.

I wonder how many of the 10 Koreans killed in the Philippines this year had organized crime connections?:

The Foreign Ministry said Friday that a man whose body was found in the Philippines in July has been positively identified as Korean. The latest discovery raises the number of Koreans killed in the Philippines this year alone to 10.

A ministry official said, “The Philippine police asked the Korean Embassy to identify the body discovered on the outskirts of Manila in late July. After analyzing the fingerprints, the body was determined to be that of a 45-year-old Korean surnamed Lee.”

The body was discovered in a plastic container and bore a gunshot wound to the neck. It appears Lee was murdered and his body was dumped. Philippine police were reportedly tipped off that Lee had connections to narcotics smugglers.  [Chosun Ilbo]

Via One Free Korea comes this article from the Guardian that is one of the few trying to tamp down the coup and regime collapse theories that are popular in the media currently:

But there is a less dramatic explanation. Based on the video evidence of his limp, it is widely accepted that Kim is now receiving medical treatment – possibly at one of the family’s well-appointed villas. The Seoul-based defector group, North Korea Intellectuals’ Solidarity, claims that Kim Yo-jong, his younger sister who acted as an aide to their father Kim Jong-il during his final years, is signing off on decisions in his absence.

Yet claims that Kim has been toppled are not supported by reports of internal North Korean lectures explaining the surprise visit to the Games. DailyNK, a South Korean media organisation staffed in part by defectors who have sources in the North, says civilians were gathered at workplaces and housing complexes on Saturday afternoon to hear the government’s explanation for the trip.

“Senior party and military cadres were dispatched all the way [to the Asian Games] for our athletes, who, without exception, honoured the Fatherland with their indomitable fighting spirit,” one lecturer explained. “With his great love and compassion, Marshal Kim Jong-un personally organised their dispatch, and provided them with a special plane,” she added.

The text for these lectures, a regular feature of life in North Korea, is produced centrally for dispatch throughout the land, and delivered without deviation. Not attending public lectures and teaching sessions is, officially at least, not an option – as mandated by the Ten Principles for the Establishment of the One-ideology System.

The result is that almost all North Koreans hear the same stories and lies, and remain on-message, however far they may be from the capital. In the absence of verifiable information on Kim’s status, they offer vital insight into what Pyongyang wants the country’s people to believe.

The suggestion that he is still at the helm, nominally at least, is supported by Choson Sinbo, an online publication run by the pro-North association of Korean residents in Japan, which reported that the visit to Incheon was “made possible by the resolve of Kim Jong-un”.  [The Guardian]

You can read more at the link.

How Effective Is China's New Anti-Stealth Radar System, Really? http://t.co/Dvr6Kn0tq7

— The Diplomat (@Diplomat_APAC) October 7, 2014

This photo released by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Oct. 8, 2014, shows an officer of the Dongmyeong Unit, a South Korean military contingent serving as U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon, teaching the Korean alphabet Hangeul to Lebanese college students. The unit will receive the prime minister’s award on Hangeul Day, which falls on Oct. 9. (Photo courtesy of JCS) (Yonhap)

It is good to see something published in the media about North Korea that doesn’t involve wild coup and regime collapse theories with little to no evidence to support it:

“It is highly unlikely that either the prolonged public absence of Kim Jong Un or this weekend’s visit to Seoul by senior North Korean officials signal any kind of regime change in the North,” Asia analyst Sue Terry, with the think tank Eurasia Group, wrote in a research note.

Kim was notably absent from the closing ceremony of the Asian Games and the annual meeting of the rubber-stamp Supreme People’s Assembly in Pyongyang, but the disappearing act itself may not be very significant. “Kim Jong Il [his father] did periodically disappear from view, as has Kim Jong Un,” Mike Chinoy, senior fellow at the University of Southern California and author of “Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis,” told Foreign Policy magazine. Kim Jong Un has been absent from the public eye for prolonged stretches in three other cases since taking over in 2011. The longest gap was in June 2012, when he was not seen for 24 days.

North Korea just sent three top officials — Hwang Pyong So, the vice marshal of the Korean People’s Army and second in command to Kim Jong Un himself; Kim Yang Gon, who is in charge of communication with South Korea; and Choe Ryong Hae, the secretary of the Workers’ Party Central Committee — to Seoul, which also argues against the possibility of a coup.

According to Terry, three such high-ranking figures would not leave North Korea in the midst of a coup or if Kim’s health were seriously deteriorating. Instead, the surprise visit in the South from the delegation is likely a product of economic desperation, she said, as relations with the North’s longtime ally and supporter, China, begin to falter.  [International Business Times]

You can read more at the link, but the North is always looking for free money to behave for a little for little to nothing in return.  So the delegation could have traveled to Seoul for this reason.  I also think it could be part of a charm offensive that they typically do before moving into a provocation cycle.  We will see what happens the next few months, but all the coup and regime collapse theories need to stop until there is actual evidence to support any of them.

Is this a microcosm of what could happen if the US military was to drop its physical standards for women in the Infantry just to appease the feminists?:

The Secret Service has been under fire for failing to stop an armed man from jumping the White House fence and running through the president’s home, and some critics have begun asking if political correctness is partly to blame for the extent of the security breach.

As the New York Times reported on Monday, the jumper, Omar Gonzalez, “overpower[ed] a female Secret Service agent inside the North Portico entrance” of the White House and then ran past the stairway to the presidential living quarters and into the East Room where he was finally tackled by an off-duty agent. Without explanation, the Times deleted the word “female” from the opening paragraph of its story (the Washington Post similarly edited the word “female” out of its story).

Few details have been reported about how precisely Gonzalez overpowered the female agent, but it’s certainly possible that the Secret Service’s disparate physical strength requirements for men and women may be endangering the life of the president.  [The Weekly Standard]

You can read more at the link, but I do find it interesting how the mainstream media has kept the fact that the overpowered agent was female quiet.  First of all we do not know how Gonzalez overpowered the agent which could mean the lower physical standards were immaterial.  If she was overpowered simply because Gonzalez was stronger then her then we would never hear about it anyway.  However, I have repeatedly advocated for women to be given the opportunity to serve in the Infantry just like they should be able to protect the President if they can meet the same current standards that men have to meet.  If the feminists were able to get lower standards for women that protect the President then how long will it be before they demand lower standards to get women into the Infantry as well?