A big pay cut is coming to U.S. troops stationed in Japan at the same time prices are rising on just about everything:

Cost-of-living allowance cuts have left U.S. service members stationed in Japan with hundreds of dollars less to spend each pay period, amid a weak yen and rising prices for off-base goods and services. 

Most service members in the country are no longer receiving COLA — a tax-free allowance to help offset the costs of living in expensive areas overseas — following changes announced by the State Department on Oct. 1.

COLA fell to zero this month for troops on Okinawa, home to more than a dozen U.S. bases and the lion’s share of the 55,000 service members in Japan; at Yokosuka Naval Base, homeport of the U.S. 7th Fleet about 35 miles south of Tokyo; and at Yokota Air Base, an airlift hub that serves as headquarters for U.S. Forces Japan.

An online COLA calculator provided by the Defense Department shows that a sergeant stationed at Yokota with six years’ service and two dependents would have received more than $600 in COLA last October. A captain with the same family size and length of service would have gotten more than $800.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

It will be interesting to see what increasing military cooperation with Japan will do for President Yoon’s extremely low polling numbers:

South Korea said its military will strengthen security cooperation with the U.S. and Japan, including the deployment of “U.S. strategic assets,” after Kim Jong Un’s North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles Sunday.

The provocations, in violation of United Nations Security Council’s resolutions, will strengthen sanctions against North Korea, worsen public welfare and make the regime “very unstable,” South Korea’s National Security Council said in a statement after an urgent meeting to brief President Yoon Suk Yeol. The missiles were launched from the Munchon area in Kangwon province between 1:48 a.m. and 1:58 a.m., the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in an email.

The missile tests add to 10 launched by North Korea over the past two weeks. The USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier group made a U-turn after one of those missiles flew over Japan. The group returned to waters off the Korean Peninsula and held missile defense exercises with naval forces from Japan and South Korea on Thursday.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but it appears the ROK is overselling sanctions making the regime “very unstable”. The Kim regime has shown it knows how to whether sanctions with help from China and Russia plus their criminal activities.

Hollywood has finally taken me up on my suggestion I made many years ago to make a movie on the life of Korean War hero Jesse Brown. It is amazing it took this long to make such an inspiring story into a movie after all these years of mostly trash war movies. Hopefully Hollywood sticks to telling the real life story of Jesse Brown and does not Hollywood-ize it:

Devotion, an aerial war epic based on the bestselling book of the same name, tells the harrowing true story of two elite US Navy fighter pilots during the Korean War. Their heroic sacrifices would ultimately make them the Navy’s most celebrated wingmen.

Youtube

You can read my prior posting about Jesse Brown at the below link:

Here is the latest ratcheting up of tensions on the peninsula:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has inspected an exercise of tactical nuclear operation units held in order to check and assess the “war deterrent and nuclear counterattack capability” in response to recent joint military trainings by South Korea and the United States, Pyongyang’s state media said Monday.

The drills were conducted from Sept. 25 to Oct. 9 while the South and the U.S. were staging a large-scale combined naval exercise in the waters near the peninsula involving the nuclear-powered Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The North’s military staged “ballistic missile launching drills under the simulation of loading tactical nuclear warheads,” it reported.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but once again how many times and how many different ways does the Kim regime need to tell the international community that it is not denuclearizing?

Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.

That is a lot of meth, hopefully they keep this guy in jail to do his full sentence:

A regional court meted out a 30-year prison term to a man on Thursday on charges of smuggling in 902 kilograms of methamphetamine from Mexico, the biggest amount of drug smuggling ever in South Korea, officials said. 

The 38-year-old, whose name was withheld, was accused of bringing in the drugs in December 2019 and July 2020 from Mexico in collusion with an international crime ring. 

He and his accomplice allegedly imported the drugs hidden inside helical gears and smuggled 498 kilograms back to Australia, according to court records. 

Worth about 3 trillion won (US$2.1 billion) in retail price and enough for 30 million doses, the smuggled drugs mark the biggest ever amount brought into the country in its drug smuggling history.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.