These two actually got off light in the Korean court system by not having to go to jail. However, they are probably being chaptered out of the Army with a possible bad conduct discharge:

Two American soldiers have been given suspended prison terms for smuggling cannabis into South Korea from the United States, a court said Monday.

One of the soldiers was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison, suspended for 3 years, for hiding two cannabis cartridges in his baggage and flying to Incheon International Airport from Atlanta in April, the Suwon District Court said.

The other soldier received the same sentence for purchasing four cannabis cartridges and other cannabis products from an overseas website and attempting to smuggle them through an international flight in March.

The soldier was found to have again placed the same order for the drugs the following month after his first attempt was caught by customs authorities here.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but how much of a pothead are you that you get caught once and yet you try to order your marijuana again?

If this wasn’t in the Army Times you would think this was a Duffel Blog story:

The phrase “shell shocked” took on new meaning last week when a man in Gloucester, England, managed to lodge a 2-inch-wide World War II anti-tank shell inside his rectum.

The rectum’s owner, who (understandably) chose to remain anonymous, told medical staff at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital that the 57 mm round, part of the man’s WWII memorabilia collection, became embedded inside his anus after he “slipped and fell,” as one is known to do in England.

An explosive ordnance disposal squad was subsequently called to the hospital to ensure the munition was not in danger of detonating within the individual’s personal hurt locker. By the time EOD personnel arrived, doctors had already removed the shell.

Army Times

You can read more at the link, but I am definitely not buying the slipped and fell story.

This could get interesting if troops that received the first two vaccines shots decide to not get the booster. Will the military punish them like what has been done to unvaccinated personnel?:

The Pentagon said Friday that there are “active discussions” within the department about making the COVID-19 vaccine booster shots mandatory for service members, even as thousands refuse or seek exemptions from the initial shot requirement.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said there have been no final decisions on the matter, but added that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin “absolutely encourages people, if they can and if they qualify, to get the booster. But right now there is no requirement for it.”

The defense department in August announced that it would begin requiring all members of the military — including National Guard and Reserves — to get the COVID-19 vaccine. The military services sent out specific guidelines on the mandate, set their own deadlines and laid out the repercussions for those who refused and were not granted a medical, religious or administrative exemption.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

The modern day comfort women crisis of sexually exploited North Korean women in China continues and hopefully this new book will help draw a focus on it:

Every year, an unspecified number of North Koreans risk their lives for the chance of a better life outside the impoverished nation. They secretly cross the border to arrive in China, hoping to go to a third country for a new life free of fear and starvation. If caught, they must pay the price: they may be executed or sent to labor camps notorious for their appalling human rights conditions.

For some, particularly women, their audacious decisions to escape to China are based on false promises. They are lured by human traffickers to cross the border for “jobs.” 

Once arriving in China, their lives are no longer under their control. They may be raped by traffickers, who are Chinese or ethnic Koreans who were born and raised in China, before they are sold to poor, older Chinese farmers. Some are forced into prostitution or to perform online pornography. Scared by death threats or potential harm to their family members left behind in the North, they find it impossible to end the sexual bondage by themselves.

Sylvia Yu Friedman, an award-winning filmmaker and investigative journalist who chronicled this modern-day sexual slavery in Asia in a documentary series, raised fresh worries about the ramifications of such enslavement: the traumas of victims’ lives are passed down onto their children.  

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but Friedman has written a book documenting the stories of the sex trafficking going on in China. I wonder if this quote in the Korea Times article will cause her to be sued and her book banned in Korea for providing a balanced history:

“It’s a wicked cycle repeating in a way, since Korean women were dragged as wianbu or comfort women to China and all over the Asia Pacific on the frontlines of war to comfort the Japanese soldiers before and during World War II,” she said. “There were Korean brokers and collaborators involved in recruiting young Korean women as comfort women and the same type of opportunists today deceive and lure vulnerable North Korean women into bride trafficking and online pornography in China.”

I don’t expect many activists to help these modern day comfort women because there is more money to be made in attacking the Imperial Japanese’s comfort women system from over 75 years ago.

The COVID daily death toll is the number that really needs to be focused on more than the case numbers the media seems to like to highlight the most. It appears that the elderly are passing away due to the efficacy of the vaccine wearing off after six months:

 President Moon Jae-in called Saturday for speeding up booster shots for the elderly as the country struggles to tackle the fast spread of coronavirus infections, including cases of the new omicron variant.

The country added 6,977 new COVID-19 infections, raising the total caseload to 510,538, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). 

Daily infections soared to a record high of 7,174 cases on Wednesday and remained above 7,000 for the following two days.

The number of critically ill patients came to 856 on Saturday, up four from a day ago, while the death toll hit a daily high of 80, pushing the total up to 4,210.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

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