From the Joong Ang Ilbo:

Four bodies suspected of originating in North Korea have washed up in rivers in Gyeonggi this past month, raising questions about how and why they ended up dead in the South.  
   
The most recent body — of an adult woman — was discovered by a camper in a bush along the Imjin River, downstream from the Gunnam Dam, around 8:25 a.m. on Saturday, according to Yeoncheon Police Precinct.  
   
The source of the Imjin River is north of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that divides the two Koreas and flows through northern Gyeonggi in South Korea before emptying into the Yellow Sea at Ganghwa Island, north of Incheon. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

It seems like momentum is building to resolve the forced labor issue between the ROK and Japan:

Foreign Minister Psrk Jin said Monday he believes a summit with Japan will take place once thorny issues, like Japan’s wartime forced labor, are resolved.

“I anticipate that a summit between South Korea and Japan will likely be held when desirable resolutions for ongoing issues, like wartime forced labor, are prepared,” Foreign Minister Park Jin told a parliamentary interpellation session.

Acknowledging that bilateral ties between the two countries are unlikely to recover without such a resolution, Park said the government will aim to find a “reasonable measure” for both countries while respecting the opinions of the victims.

When asked about possible measures to mend ties, Park said the government is reviewing many options such as former National Assembly Speaker Moon Hee-sang’s proposal to launch a fund for the victims backed by both companies and people of South Korea and Japan.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This seems like a lot of hyperbole by the Interior Minister:

Interior Minister Lee Sang-min strongly criticized the chiefs of police precincts Monday for their collective action on Saturday against the envisioned launch of a supervisory bureau inside the interior ministry, calling it “an incident akin to a military coup.”

During a news briefing, Lee said Saturday’s meeting of police officials reminded him of the Dec. 12 military coup led by a group of generals that took place weeks after the assassination of President Park Chung-hee in 1979.

“A lot of time has passed since then and we now live in an era when a military coup has become an unimaginable incident. But the fact that armed officials went ahead and gathered despite a warning from their superior and discussed an action against the government is a serious matter,” he said, indicating that the ministry will investigate those involved in the collective action.

The minister’s strongly-worded criticism came days after some 190 senior police officials from across the country responded to calls by Ulsan Jungbu Police Station Senior Superintendent Ryu Sam-young to gather and discuss how to react to the interior ministry’s plan to launch a supervisory bureau to put the police under its control.  

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

It was only a matter of time before the major bilateral military exercises got restarted after the Yoon administration won the last election and now we have them:

 South Korea and the United States are resuming large-scale field military exercises suspended for four years when the two nations tried to negotiate North Korea away from its nuclear weapons, according to an official announcement Friday.

Combined exercises by battalions and larger units of the U.S. and South Korean militaries will commence in August and again in early 2023, the South Korean Ministry of Defense said in a news release. The exercises will also be rebranded as Ulchi Freedom Shield in August and Freedom Shield next year.

The exercises will be defensive in nature, according to the ministry.

Another 11 separate field exercises, such as bridge construction, explosive disposal, attack helicopter fire and special warfare are also scheduled with U.S. troops in the coming months, according to the Defense Ministry.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

This is a pretty horrible crime that happened at a university in Incheon:

Police referred a university freshman accused of raping a schoolmate and causing her to fall to her death to the prosecution Friday for potential indictment with an additional charge of filming the rape scene, officials said. 

“I am sincerely sorry,” said the 20-year-old student of Inha University in Incheon, west of Seoul, as he was transferred to the prosecution, without responding to questions from reporters, including on whether and why he did not help her immediately after the fall. 

He was detained by police last Friday hours after the victim was found dead apparently after a fall from a campus building. She was found lying naked on the ground at 3:49 a.m. reportedly with blood on her head, mouth and ears.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The details of why the U.S. government has black listed Chinese owned Huawei telecom equipment has finally leaked out and it worse than I expected it to be:

On paper, it looked like a fantastic deal. In 2017, the Chinese government was offering to spend $100 million to build an ornate Chinese garden at the National Arboretum in Washington DC. Complete with temples, pavilions and a 70-foot white pagoda, the project thrilled local officials, who hoped it would attract thousands of tourists every year.      

But when US counterintelligence officials began digging into the details, they found numerous red flags. The pagoda, they noted, would have been strategically placed on one of the highest points in Washington DC, just two miles from the US Capitol, a perfect spot for signals intelligence collection, multiple sources familiar with the episode told CNN.  

Also alarming was that Chinese officials wanted to build the pagoda with materials shipped to the US in diplomatic pouches, which US Customs officials are barred from examining, the sources said.     

Federal officials quietly killed the project before construction was underway.       

The canceled garden is part of a frenzy of counterintelligence activity by the FBI and other federal agencies focused on what career US security officials say has been a dramatic escalation of Chinese espionage on US soil over the past decade.         

Since at least 2017, federal officials have investigated Chinese land purchases near critical infrastructure, shut down a high-profile regional consulate believed by the US government to be a hotbed of Chinese spies and stonewalled what they saw as clear efforts to plant listening devices near sensitive military and government facilities.    

CNN

You can read more at the link, but the Chinese government is blatantly trying to stop the U.S. military’s ability to respond to a nuclear attack. The obvious conclusion is that the Chinese government must be considering a first strike option with nuclear weapons to put this much effort into preventing a U.S. response. According to the article the Chinese government is playing the race card and blaming all this on xenophobia.

Reading the article had me thinking of the book Ghost Fleet and wondering what other Chinese made technology is out there that could interfere with U.S. military operations during a contingency?