It is good to see that the police caught the idiots responsible for putting graffiti on the Gyeongbok Palace walls. Hopefully they receive strict punishment to serve as a deterrent to anyone else thinking of doing this as well:
Police on Tuesday arrested two teenagers for drawing 44-meter-long graffiti on the walls of a historic palace in central Seoul last weekend, officials said.
Police caught a 17-year-old male at his home in Suwon, 30 kilometers south of Seoul, on Tuesday evening before arresting his 16-year-old female accomplice nearby minutes later, according to the Seoul Jongno Police Station.
On Saturday, the suspects repeatedly sprayed the phrase “free movie” in Korean with red and blue paint on both sides of the western gate to Gyeongbok Palace and palace walls near the National Palace Museum of Korea.
Also sprayed were the names of illegal video-sharing and streaming platforms, with similar graffiti also found on the walls of the nearby Seoul Metropolitan Agency.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
The complaints about this training sound like a whole lot to do about nothing. If these athletes cannot do morning physical fitness training or row a rubber boat they probably should not be Olympic athletes to begin with:
Members of South Korean women’s national handball team perform a team-building exercise with rubber boats during a training at a boot camp for the Marine Corps in Pohang, South Korea, on March 30, 2016. South Korea’s Olympic chief has defended a decision to send hundreds of athletes to a military camp next week as part of preparations for the 2024 Games in Paris, citing a need to instill mental toughness in competitors. (Choe Dong-joon/Newsis via AP)
South Korea’s Olympic chief has defended a decision to send hundreds of athletes to a military camp next week as part of preparations for the 2024 Games in Paris, citing a need to instill mental toughness in competitors.
About 400 athletes, including women, will arrive at a marine boot camp in the southeastern port city of Pohang on Monday for a three-day training aimed at building resilience and teamwork, the Korean Sport and Olympic Committee said.
The program, pushed by the committee’s president, Lee Kee-Heung, has faced criticism from politicians and media who described the training camp as outdated and showing an unhealthy obsession with medals.
Officials at the committee have played down concerns about the potential for injuries, saying the athletes will not be forced into the harsher types of military training. Morning jogs, rubber-boat riding and events aimed at building camaraderie will be on the program. Sports officials are still finalizing details of the camp with the Korea Marine Corps., committee official Yun Kyoung-ho said Thursday.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link.
Soldiers from Texas are next to deploy to South Korea this winter:
Soldiers from the 3rd Cavalry Regiment fire a 155mm M777 howitzer in support of Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq in June 2019. (Capt. Jason Welch/U.S. Army)
The Army’s 3rd Cavalry Regiment from Fort Cavazos will deploy to South Korea for a planned winter rotation, the Pentagon announced Friday.
The Texas-based unit will replace the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division from Fort Carson in Colorado.
The 3rd Cavalry Regiment is a combined-arms unit from the III Armored Corps that can act as a reconnaissance and security force or as a Stryker combat team, according to the Army’s website.
The previous two Army rotational deployments to South Korea used Stryker combat teams under a Pentagon policy moving away from tank-heavy armored brigades to mobile units with more infantry that can maneuver quickly.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link.
The fat Rocketman is ringing in the holidays the only way he knows how with missile tests:
President Yoon Suk Yeol on Monday asked his national security team for an “instant and overpowering response to any North Korean provocations” following the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile by Pyongyang earlier in the day.
The North’s fifth ICBM launch of the year was fired into the sea off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula on Monday morning, as previously predicted by a senior Seoul official last week.
In a National Security Council meeting called hours after the test-firing, the president said three-way cooperation with the US and Japan would be bolstered with the real-time North Korean missile data scheme to be activated soon.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the ICBM was fired eastward from Pyongyang at around 8:24 a.m. Monday and traveled some 1,000 kilometers before falling into the sea. The JCS said the ICBM used solid fuel. Less than half a day prior at around 10:38 p.m. Sunday, North Korea had also launched a short-range missile into the sea east of the peninsula. (…..)
Based on information from the JCS, Yang said the ICBM appeared to have reached an altitude of at least 6,000 kilometers, flying for more than an hour before landing in the sea. He noted that the last ICBM fired in July also flew as high as 6,000 km, far surpassing the maximum altitude of 3,000 km reached by the ICBM tested just before that in April.
Korea Herald
You can read more at the link, but the belief is that North Korea is once againing signaling to the U.S. that it can hit the continental United States with their ICBMs.
This is an interesting to see how both CEOs perform leading two of Korea’s biggest IT brands:
Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon, left, and Kakao CEO nominee Chung Shin-a / Courtesy of each company
Naver and Kakao, Korea’s two major internet companies, are in a female leadership contest after the latter recently nominated Chung Shin-a, chief of the group’s venture capital unit, as CEO, according to industry officials and experts.
Naver, operator of Korea’s most used internet portal service, and Kakao, which owns the most popular mobile chat app KakaoTalk, are both to be run by female CEOs.
Of note, is how these two CEOs will lead the internet giants in the AI era, they said.
The appointment of women as CEOs in a rapidly changing IT industry is explained by their expertise in the sector, they said. Also, by appointing women as new leaders, the companies can expect to refresh their image.
“What is expected from female CEOs is not only their expertise but that they can scrutinize the business more thoroughly as women,” Kim Dae-jong, a professor of business administration at Sejong University, said.
Korea Times
You can read more at the link.
Of course the DPK is going to lie and claim a soju party is what caused South Korea to lose the Expo vote, but this is not a good look for a President to be out with private business CEOs like this:
President Yoon Suk Yeol toasts with Dutch Queen Maxima during a state banquet at the Royal Palace Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Dec. 13 (local time). Joint Press Corps
President Yoon Suk Yeol is mired in controversy over his recent international trips, with reports alleging he had “a secret drinking session” with accompanying business tycoons in France, and the Korean ambassador to the Netherlands being summoned by the Dutch government over Yoon staffers’ excessive demands on presidential protocol.
The Hankyoreh newspaper reported on Friday that Yoon had a closed-door dinner and drinks at a Korean restaurant in Paris on Nov. 24. Attending was Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong, Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Chung Euisun and other business leaders who accompanied Yoon to assist Busan’s bid to host the World Expo 2030.
It was four days before the Expo’s governing body held a vote to select the host city of the 2030 event. Busan lost to Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh in a 29-119 count, despite efforts from the government, the public and major Korean businesses.
It was Yoon’s second visit to Paris this year as part of campaigning to promote the city’s bid. The presidential office described the trip as “a tireless journey that wasted not even a second,” while the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) raised suspicion that it could have been a junket.
“While spending taxpayer’s money for a foreign visit, Yoon had a soju bomb dinner with conglomerates. Since when did binge drinking become a tireless journey?” DPK spokesperson Rep. Kang Sun-woo said in a commentary.
“Is the reason for bringing business leaders on foreign trips to find someone to join in the drinking sessions? No wonder a shocking outcome of 29-119 has unfolded.”
Lee Un-ju, a former lawmaker of the ruling People Power Party, said in a radio interview with CBS that Yoon and his cohorts behavior gives a misconception to foreign investors that Korea is a corrupt country where the government and businesses collude.
Korea Times
You can read more at the link, but President Yoon definitely has a lot of unforced errors that feeds negative press coverage of him.
