This is actually what I think the Kim regime wants to happen to justify their long expected nuclear test:

President Yoon Suk Yeol ordered aides to consider suspending a 2018 inter-Korean military tension reduction agreement if North Korea violates the South’s territory again, an official said Wednesday.

Yoon’s remark came after five North Korean drones infiltrated South Korean airspace last week, raising serious questions about South Korea’s readiness posture.

On Wednesday, Yoon was briefed by the presidential National Security Office, the defense ministry, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Agency for Defense Development on the country’s anti-drone preparations.

“President Yoon Suk Yeol instructed the National Security Office to consider suspending the Sept. 19 military agreement in the event North Korea carries out another provocation violating our territory,” senior presidential secretary for press affairs Kim Eun-hye told reporters.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but cancelling the agreement would mean the guard posts, landmines, tank traps, propaganda speakers, etc. could all be reinstalled along the DMZ that prior President Moon had removed. The Kim regime can spend this as a South Korean provocation against peace on the peninsula that they respond with a nuclear test too.

This is a good scientific achievement by the ROK:

South Korea’s unmanned space vehicle Danuri has sent back photos of Earth and the moon after reaching the moon’s orbit last month, the state space research center said Tuesday.

The orbiter began performing three rounds of lunar orbit insertion (LOI) maneuvers Dec. 17 to lower its speed and commit itself to the gravity of the moon before entering the selenocentric orbit on Dec. 27.

The first photo was taken Dec. 24 some 345 kilometers above the moon, when Danuri was carrying out its second round of LOI, and the second one was taken four days later while rotating around the satellite of Earth, according to the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI).

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Not a good look for President Yoon that he is getting out in front of the U.S. on the discussion of conducting Joint nuclear exercises:

The White House statement came hours after Biden, responding to a reporter’s question as he exited Marine One, said he was not discussing joint nuclear exercises with South Korea.

The president’s short denial at the White House follows Yoon’s interview with the Seoul-based Chosun Ilbo newspaper on Sunday, in which Yoon said South Korea was holding “considerably positive” discussions with the U.S. about “joint exercise concepts” related to nuclear weapons.

“Nuclear weapons are the U.S.’s, but South Korea and the U.S. should work together in planning, information sharing, exercises and training,” Yoon said.

Biden’s response prompted a spokeswoman for Yoon, Kim Eun Hye, to clarify Tuesday that the U.S. and South Korea are discussing ways to deter North Korea from using nuclear weapons, including sharing information and joint planning with concern to U.S. nuclear assets, according to a statement from the South Korean presidential office.

The reporter’s question to Biden about talks on a joint nuclear exercise lacked important context, which led the U.S. president to respond with “no,” according to Kim’s statement.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

The attacks against the Korean First Lady continue. She was cleared of plagiarizing her Phd dissertation. Now her Master’s thesis is being investigated for plagiarism:

Sookmyung Women’s University launched an inquiry last month into plagiarism allegations involving first lady Kim Keon Hee’s master’s degree thesis on art education, sources said Tuesday. 

Kim has been under allegations that she plagiarized the dissertation, which she submitted in 1999 to the university’s graduate school of education for her master’s degree.

Sookmyung began a probe into Kim’s case in mid-December, an alumni association of the university said, citing a letter sent from the school. The final result is expected to be out by around mid-March if relevant regulations requiring an outcome within 90 days upon such a probe’s launch are observed.

Yonhap

Kim has already been mocked & shamed publicly and she apologized for her prior resume padding actions. What is going on here is that this is likely retaliation for the investigations into Lee Jae-myung’s wife for when her husband was governor of Gyeongi province. What I would like to see is an investigation into the thesis and dissertations of all major political figures in Korea. How widespread is this problem?

I recently found myself in Itaewon and decided to walk by where the Itaewon crushing disaster happened. As I walked in to Itaewon I could quickly see how this tragedy has become fully politicized with the Korean left trying to weaponize it like they did the Sewol tragedy against former President Park Geun-hye. Near Noksopyeong Station which is located at the entrance to Itaewon, there is a protest tent set up with a bunch of signs denouncing the government. I did not walk over to their tent or try to take pictures of them because I was getting the evil eye from the angry looking activists standing by the sidewalk. I just continued to walk by them to towards the Hamilton Hotel.

I could not approach the alley from the front of the Hamilton Hotel because there was a protest going on with the riot police out in force. So I walked up a nearby alley to the World Food Street that is the road that runs behind the Hamilton Hotel. This street is lined with restaurants and bars that would have been packed on Halloween night:

From the main road that runs through Itaewon there are multiple alleys, some even smaller than the one the tragedy occurred at that accesses World Food Street. Here is an example of one of these small alleys:

Seeing the area in person it is easy to conclude that what caused the crushing tragedy to happen where it did is its proximity to Itaewon Station. There are two paths along each side of the Hamilton Hotel which is the quickest way to access World Food Street from Itaewon Station. The alley where the tragedy happened was the smallest of the two and the closest to the station. It is easy to imagine how people walking up and down this alley due to its easy access to the subway station caused it to become overcrowded. Below is a picture I took from the top of the alleyway where the tragedy occurred:

The police would not allow me to walk down the alley, but I wouldn’t have tried to anyway due to the protest going on at the entrance to the alley. Seeing the alley in person it looks actually smaller than it does in photographs. From the top of the alleyway I could see how slopped it is. Witnesses the night of the tragedy reported a group of people began pushing people down the alley. It was easy for me to imagine a group of drunks trying to walk down World Food Street getting frustrated by being backed up by the crowd moving through the alleyway and deciding to aggressively push by them causing people to fall. The slope of the alleyway is enough to cause a domino effect of people falling on top of each other if people on the top lose their balance.

What amazes me the most about this tragedy is that the police received reports of overcrowding near the Hamilton Hotel four hours before the tragedy happened. There is literally a police station across the street from the Hamilton Hotel:

Why didn’t anyone from the police station walk across the street and respond to the reports? What were they doing during those four hours? Did the 119 operators even call to let them know? Did anyone walk in to the station and tell the police what was going on? If someone did what was the response of the police? These are questions that should be simple to get answers to.

Being on the ground and looking at the site only further validated to me how easily avoidable this entire tragedy was. Police responding to the alleyway and controlling pedestrian traffic to make it one way probably would have prevented the disaster. Just closing Itaewon Station and making people walk from subway stations further away from the center of Itaewon would have dispersed the crowds enough from this narrow alleyway that this tragedy would have been prevented as well. Hopefully some lessons are learned in regards to crowd control planning by local authorities, it is just unfortunate it cost the lives of 158 people to learn this lesson.