The Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise is coming up later this month so the Kim regime now the Kim regime is using activist balloons as the excuse they need to launch a provocation:

South Korea’s unification ministry on Thursday voiced strong regret over North Korea’s claim that its COVID-19 outbreak had originated from the South and its threats of an unspecified retaliatory step.

Earlier in the day, Pyongyang’s state media reported that leader Kim Jong-un held a national meeting the previous day and declared victory in the campaign against COVID-19.

During the session, his younger sister, Kim Yo-jong, who serves as vice department director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, reiterated Pyongyang’s assertion that leaflets from the South carried the virus into the North and raised the need to take “deadly retaliatory” countermeasures.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Not only will he speak at the National Assembly, but he is expected to meet with top Korean business leaders as well:

Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft and co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has been invited to speak at the National Assembly during his stay in Korea on Aug. 15-17, but all eyes are on whether he will meet with key business leaders during his visit, according to industry officials, Wednesday. 

Gates will visit the Assembly at 10 a.m. on Aug. 16 and meet with Speaker Kim Jin-pyo. At 10:40 a.m., he will give a speech on the topic of “The importance of international cooperation and Korea’s leadership for coping with and preparing for COVID-19 and future infectious diseases” at the plenary session of the Special Committee on Budget and Settlement of the National Assembly.

This is Gates’s first visit to the National Assembly since 2013. Back then, he gave a lecture on the topic of “Smart Aid: Innovation for a Better World and a Stronger Korea” at the National Assembly at the invitation of then-Saenuri Party (currently known as the People Power Party) member Chung Mong-joon.

Afterward, Gates met up with key businesspeople during his past visits to Korea and all eyes are on whom he will meet this time around.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

I think this makes clear that something I said before wasn’t going to happen, is in fact not going to happen; South Korea is not getting a second THAAD battery:

The top diplomats of South Korea and China agreed during their talks Tuesday that disputes over the issue of an advanced U.S. missile defense system should no longer hamper Seoul-Beijing relations, a South Korean official said.

In his first trip to China since taking office in May, Foreign Minister Park Jin held the meeting with his counterpart, Wang Yi, in the eastern port city of Qingdao.

It was widely viewed as crucial in setting the tone for Seoul-Beijing relations under the conservative Yoon Suk-yeol administration.

During the talks, both Park and Wang “clearly expressed their positions on THAAD, and at the same time, they shared the same view that the matter should not be an obstacle to the development of South Korea-China relations, going forward,” the official told reporters on the customary condition of anonymity.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Here is video of what the record rainfall in South Korea looked like this week:

Record rainfall pounded most of the Seoul metropolitan region on Monday and Tuesday leaving nine people dead and seven others missing. The downpour flooded and destroyed roads and subway stations, triggered landslides, clogged underground water drainage systems, and forced the evacuations of people living in low-lying areas.

It was the highest amount of rainfall per hour witnessed in the capital region in 80 years, according to the Korea Meteorological Administration, the country’s central weather monitoring organization. Seoul’s Dongjak District was bombarded with the heaviest downpour in the city with 422 millimeters falling on Monday alone.

Korea Times

If anyone was wondering why President Yoon snubbed Nancy Pelosi during her visit to South Korea, here is the reason:

The top South Korean and Chinese diplomats pledged Thursday to develop closer relations and maintain stable industrial supply chains at a time of deepening rivalry between Beijing and Washington.

South Korea, a longtime U.S. ally, is struggling to strike a balance between Washington and the increasingly assertive foreign policy of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s government. U.S.-Chinese conflict over Taiwan has added to complications for governments that want amicable ties with both sides.

Foreign Ministers Park Jin and Wang Yi, in separate statements, called for the development of relations based on successful three-decade-old commercial ties. They were meeting in the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

At this point anyone living along the Imjim River should avoid it during heavy rain periods because the North Koreans are likely going to flood the river with no notification:

 North Korea appears to be releasing water from a dam near the inter-Korean border without giving prior notice to the South, a South Korean government official said Monday, as the North is drenched by heavy downpours.

“As rain has fallen heavily in North Korea, the North is repeatedly opening and closing the floodgates of Hwanggang Dam,” the unification ministry official said. “It seems (the North) is adjusting the Hwanggang Dam’s water level based on the rainfall situation.”

The official said there was no prior notification from the North on the move.

Under an inter-Korean agreement signed in October 2009, the North is supposed to notify the South in advance of its plans to release dam water.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.