This seems like just a continuation of the long running tit-for-tat along the maritime border between the two countries and not a planned provocation by the North Koreans:

South and North Korean patrol boats briefly exchanged fire Tuesday after a North Korean naval vessel violated the western maritime border, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.

The clash came three days after a high-powered North Korean delegation made a rare visit to South Korea and agreed to hold another round of high-level dialogue in the near future, raising hopes for a thaw in inter-Korean relations.

The exchange of fire took place at around 9:50 a.m. in waters near Yeonpyeong Island in the Yellow Sea, after a North Korean patrol boat crossed the Northern Limit Line (NLL) into the South’s waters, the JCS said in a statement.

“To force the vessel to retreat, our side issued warning messages and fired five warning shots. But the North Korean vessel fired back rather than backing down, which caused us to fire again. Then the ship made a retreat,” it said, adding that the exchange of gunfire lasted some 10 minutes.

Though the South Korean military fired some 90 shots, including 10 shots with 76 millimeter guns, most of the artillery did not have a long enough range to reach the North Korean patrol boat, a JCS officer said, requesting anonymity.

North Korea shot dozens of rounds in return and not a single one fell near the South Korean vessel, he added.  [Yonhap News]

You can read more at the link.

This author makes a good point that the Pentagon has a creditability problem in regards to complaining about unscrupulous lenders praying on military servicemembers:

Would an E-6 careerist nearing retirement accept a $30,000 car loan if forced to pay back a total of $390,000 in principal and interest?
Would an E-7 accept a $30,000 loan to make a down payment on a home or to wipe out credit card debt if the lifetime cost of that decision were $386,000 in lost retired pay?
The answer to both questions, regrettably, is: You bet.
Hundreds of career servicemembers every month make a comparable choice while in their 15th year of service. That’s when, in return for an immediate cash bonus of $30,000, they make an irrevocable decision to opt out of “High-3” retirement and accept the less generous “Redux” plan.
The loan shark here is the federal government, the same Congress and Department of Defense that like to get tough with payday lenders outside of military bases who prey on young or naïve enlisted members. Meanwhile, they offer their own rotten deal, which every year gets a little worse, say economists at the defense think tank CNA. (Stars and Stripes)

You can read more at the link.

Via a reader tip comes this story about a man in Korea trying to commit insurance fraud by running at a car and bashing his head into the windshield.  Unfortunately for him the driver had a dashcam installed:

When he reaches the car, he leaps onto the hood in a superhero-esque dive and bashes his head into the windscreen.

The glass smashes and the man collapses onto the road.

It appears the opportunist was attempting to get some sort of payout for his efforts, earning him the label of an ‘insurance scammer’ in the video description.

The bizarre act was caught on a video camera mounted on the dashboard of the car.

Insurance fraud is a growing problem in South Korea. According to a recent study from the Insurance Research Centre, an average of 156 people are caught in car insurance fraud schemes in South Korea every day, with the amount of money involved totalling KRW1.18 trillion (AU$1.8 billion) over the last five years. [Daily Mail]

You can read more and see the video of this incident at the link.  According to this Insurance Research Center link on average 156 people are caught a day trying to commit insurance fraud in South Korea.  For those driving in South Korea it appears installing a dashcam is a good idea.

Apparently student who shook hands with the cop to agree on retreating…is a cop himself https://t.co/2exdRD5Mvt pic.twitter.com/rpspO26WSF

— Karson Yiu (@karsonwhy) October 5, 2014

Foreigners compete in a Hangul (Korean alphabet) writing contest organized by Yonsei University Korean Language Institute at the private university in western Seoul on Oct. 6, 2014. (Yonhap)

Long time North Korea watcher Gordon Chang is wondering whether the North Korean regime has been toppled:

Out of sight for a month, young Kim is supposedly ill. But rumors are swirling he’s been deposed—and North Korea’s second most powerful man now feels confident enough to travel South.

Hwang Pyong So must be feeling pretty good about himself right now. At the latest Supreme People’s Assembly meeting, he was made vice chairman of the National Defense Commission. This was after his promotion to director of the General Political Bureau of the Korean People’s Army, making him the top political officer in the military. In a country where there is supposed to be no No. 2 official, he is called the second-most powerful figure.

Now he has crossed the border into South Korea on a one-day, short-notice trip, triggering hopes of reconciliation between the arch-rival republics—and heightening speculation about the fate of Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s young supremo, who has not been seen in public since September 3.

Hwang’s trip South on Saturday comes on the heels of a widely publicized report that Kim has been deposed. Jang Jin Sung, a former North Korean counterintelligence and propaganda official, is claiming that the Organization and Guidance Department of the Korean Workers’ Party, responsible for promotions within the regime, has taken over the country. Kim, according to Jang, is now merely a “puppet.” [The Daily Beast]

I have said this before that I do not believe that Kim Jong-un has the absolute power that many people believe him to have.  I believe that his grandfather Kim Il-sung had absolute power, but when his son Kim Jong-il took over that the absolute power was diluted between the ruling Kim inner circle, the Worker’s Party, and the North Korean military.  These three sectors competed for power with the military ultimately becoming the most powerful bureaucracy in North Korea under Kim Jong-il.  These sectors of power in North Korea though likely ruled by consensus and when consensus could not be reached Kim Jong-il was likely the deciding vote which was heavily influenced by his backing of the North Korean military.  After Kim Jong-il’s death these sectors of North Korean power likely competed for influence again after Kim Jong-un took over.  Kim Jong-un’s uncle Jang Song-taek appeared to be trying to challenge the status quo by increasing the power of the Worker’s Party.  With the power of the Worker’s Party increasing, the military may have felt like their power was decreasing too much and took action to get rid of Jang to put the status quo back to where it was.  However, the status quo likely means Kim Jong-un has less power than his father did after the execution of Jang and the following purge of Party officials loyal to him.

With that all said do I think a coup is going on in North Korea?  No I do not.  Kim Jong-un is likely out of sight because of some surgery to repair whatever was ailing his feet or legs in recent months not a coup.  Also if you read the rest of the article North Korean scholar Andrei Lankov says the visit of the regime’s #2 man Hwang Pyong-so to South Korea is likely part of the North’s charm offensive.  Remember that the North likes to do charm offensive before launching a provocation cycle.  It has been reported recently that the North Koreans completed the upgrades to their launch site which could be interpreted to mean the North Koreans are going to do another space launch in the coming months.  The North Koreans do a charm offensive before provocations because they use a predetermined reason to accuse the South of spoiling the talks and then it allows them to justify a provocation cycle in response.  The predetermined reason this time could be the balloon launch activists the North has repeatedly threatened.

The most interesting thing to me is the travel ban that has been put on North Korea to include Pyongyang.  This could mean that more purges may be going on within North Korea as the military may be trying to further cement its power in North Korea over its competitors.  Time will tell what is really going on.

Unless the Korean government wants to become like China and start banning foreign websites cracking down on Internet rumor mongers will never work:

South Korea’s president is cracking down on rumors in cyberspace in a campaign that threatens the popularity of Kakao Talk, the leading social media service in a country with ambitions to become a global technology leader.

Prosecutors announced the crackdown two weeks ago after President Park Geun-hye complained about insults directed at her and said false rumors “divided the society.”

That rattled users of Kakao Talk, a smartphone-based messaging app used by 35 million of South Korea’s 50 million people. It prompted a surge of interest in a previously little-known German competitor, Telegram.

Rankey.com, a research firm, said an estimated 610,000 South Korean smartphone users visited Telegram on Wednesday, a 40-fold increase over Sept. 14, before the crackdown was announced. The company said its estimate was based on a randomly selected group of 60,000 people it follows regularly.

On Friday, Telegram was the most downloaded free app in Apple’s App Store in South Korea. On Google Inc.’s store, Telegram was the No. 2 downloaded free communications app, behind only Kakao Talk.

South Korean users left reviews on Telegram saying they left Kakao Talk to seek “asylum.” They asked Telegram to add a Korean language service.  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link.

I agree that there is definitely something going on in North Korea to have implemented this travel ban:

The North Korean capital has been placed under lockdown, according to sources with Pyongyang, raising new questions about the stability of Kim Jong-un’s regime.

Quoting sources within North Korea, the respected New Focus International news web site has reported that a ban on new travel passes to leave or enter Pyongyang was introduced on September 27.

And while the North Korean authorities have in the past limited access to the capital, the latest restrictions even apply to permanent residents of Pyongyang, who are by definition the elite of the regime.

“This sort of action suggests there has either been an attempted coup or that the authorities there have uncovered some sort of plot against the leadership,” Toshimitsu Shigemura, a professor at Tokyo’s Waseda University and an authority on North Korean affairs, told The Telegraph. (The Telegraph)

You can read more at the link but this news if true definitely makes the visit by North Korea’s 2nd most powerful leader this week to South Korea more interesting.

If you have ever been an English teacher or student – https://t.co/snlpOuHffC

— Barry Welsh (@BarryPWelsh) October 5, 2014

Kim Han-sol, a nephew of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, walks on the Le Havre campus of the prestigious French university Paris Institute of Political Studies, Sciences Po in Le Havre on Oct. 1, 2014. He is a son of the North’s late leader Kim Jong-il’s eldest son Kim Jong-nam. Kim Jong-nam was recently witnessed in Paris. (Yonhap)