Incoming ROK President-Elect Yoon Suk-yeol campaigned on purchasing a second THAAD battery to defend South Korea. The Chinese are making veiled threats if South Korea decides to purchase a missile defense system to defend themselves with in the face of North Korea increasingly testing new missiles. If North Korea wasn’t regularly threatening the ROK with missiles it would not need a THAAD battery in the first place:

South Korea will hazard its improving relationship with China if it deploys a second American-made missile defense battery, China’s ambassador in Seoul implied Thursday.

The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, is a sensitive topic in relations between the two countries, and South Korea “should not be treading in that step again,” Chinese Ambassador to South Korea Xing Haiming said in a speech Thursday at the Millennium Hilton Seoul hotel, according to news reports the next day. (………..)

Xing, speaking at an event hosted by the Institute for Global Strategy and Cooperation, described China-South Korea relations as “really bad” following the THAAD deployment. They had “recovered the right track because the two nations made joint efforts,” he said Thursday.

Stars & Stripes

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COVID case totals continue to drop in South Korea:

South Korea’s new COVID-19 cases fell below 100,000 for the first time in seven weeks on Monday, as the omicron wave is slowing after reaching its peak in mid-March. 

The country added 90,928 new COVID-19 infections, including 21 cases from overseas, bringing the total caseload to 15,424,598, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said. 

Monday’s tally marks the first drop to five digits since the Feb. 22 count of 99,562. It is also nearly a two-month low after the 90,438 registered on Feb. 16.

Yonhap

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A former ROK Army general that studied in the U.S. will soon be taking over the Defense Ministry:

Lee Jong-seop, a retired Army lieutenant general and former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), is an expert in military policy and strategy, with a focus on alliance issues between South Korea and the United States.

A graduate of the Korea Military Academy, Lee previously served as vice chief of staff of management at the 1st Army Command, and vice head of the defense ministry’s policy and planning division.

He later served as head of the Army’s 2nd Division in 2013 before becoming the JCS vice chairman from 2017 to 2018. Lee joined President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol’s transition committee as a member of its diplomacy and security subcommittee.

He is considered well-versed in matters related to South Korea-U.S. military relations, having experience in work related to the transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON) from Washington to Seoul. He has a doctorate degree in studies concerning the South Korea-U.S. alliance from Tennessee State University.

Korea Times

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Remember after the Delta variant the Korean government tried to a living with COVID strategy to almost immediately scrap it when the omicron wave hit. I guess this time we will se if the Korean government actually means to start living with COVID:

As COVID-19 infections are gradually showing signs of slowing down, the government is gearing up to shift to a “post-Omicron” era, in which the coronavirus might be treated as an endemic disease and COVID-19 might be managed more routinely within the general medical system. 

The country added 164,481 new infections on Saturday, raising the aggregated total to 15,333,670. The number of patients in a critical condition marked 1,114, with 329 COVID-19-related deaths.

The health authorities view that infections have entered a downward trend, with nearly 30 percent of the country’s population of 51 million having been infected.

While the government plans to announce a detailed roadmap for the post-Omicron era later this week, it has already started scaling down pandemic response measures.

Beginning Monday, screening centers installed at public health centers will no longer offer free rapid antigen tests, as local clinics are set to play a bigger role in testing and treating patients. The public testing sites will only offer PCR tests to priority groups, such as people aged 60 or over.

Korea Times

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In North Korea they have no issue with arbitrarily killing people so of course they would support Russia doing the same thing against Ukrainians:

North Korea on Saturday condemned the United States for making the crisis surrounding Ukraine a human rights issue and imposing sanctions against Russia, denouncing U.S. President Joe Biden as “an old man in his senility” and a man of a “repeated slip of tongue.”

A commentary carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said the Ukraine issue has suddenly become a human rights issue, as the U.S. and western media branded the case as a war crime, with a politically motivated plot to defame Russia and to achieve the collapse of its regime.

“The latest story is the U.S. chief executive who spoke ill of the Russian president with groundless data,” the English-language article read. “Such reckless remarks can be made only by the descendants of Yankees, master hand at aggression and plot-breeding.”

The North then called Biden “an old man in his senility” with “a problem in his intellectual faculty,” and “the president known for his repeated slip of tongue,” though it stopped short of putting Biden’s name in the article.

“A big question is if he could ever have done anything right with such IQ during his florid 50-year political career,” according to the commentary.

Yonhap

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