Here is the latest unit scheduled to deploy to Korea this summer:
Fort Bliss will send about 3,700 soldiers to South Korea as part of an ongoing rotation of troops to defend the peninsula, the Army announced Thursday.
The 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Armored Division at the west Texas base will replace the Fort Stewart, Ga.-based 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division for the nine-month deployment, which supports the U.S. commitment to South Korea.
Nicknamed the “Bulldog Brigade,” the unit will send the majority of its soldiers and equipment for the nine-month rotation in the summer.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link.
The producers must have been paid quite a bit to put this Chinese ad into this drama knowing the blow back it might get from viewers:
Producers of the popular Korean TV series “Vincenzo” said Wednesday that they will remove the controversial scene featuring a Chinese product from overseas streaming services amid rising domestic anger over Chinese sponsorship.
In the eighth episode of the dark comedy that aired on March 14 on tvN, an instant Chinese bibimbap brand was exposed while the lead characters Vincenzo (Song Joong-ki) and Cha-young (Jeon Yeo-bin) have a meal.
Bibimbap is a popular Korean dish consisting of a bowl of warm white rice topped with seasoned vegetables and chili pepper paste.
Korean viewers frowned upon the fact that Chinese bibimbap appeared on a Korean drama amid the recent Chinese claims that some elements of Korean culture, including kimchi, originated from China.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
Could it be that in 1904 neither Korea or Japan cared about Dokdo because there was no exclusive economic zones back then thus making it a worthless pile of rocks unlike now?:
A Japanese elementary school textbook published about a century ago did not define the easternmost Korean islets of Dokdo as Japanese territory, a Seoul-based public foundation said Wednesday.
The state-funded Northeast Asian History Foundation disclosed the old Japanese geography textbook printed in 1904 at a seminar of history experts in Seoul, slamming Tokyo for its latest approval of school textbooks renewing territorial claims to Dokdo.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
My theory has always been that the Moon administration is making the sustainment of the THAAD base challenging in hopes that the U.S. will just remove the system itself one day:
South Korea is closely discussing with the United States ways to improve living conditions for American service members stationed on the THAAD missile defense base in the country, the defense ministry said Monday.
Ministry spokesperson Boo Seung-chan made the remarks after a recent Chosun Ilbo report that said US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin strongly protested poor conditions of the base during his recent visit to Seoul, calling the neglect “unacceptable.”
“I do not confirm details of what Secretary Austin said. But there have been talks about how to ensure conditions for training of the US Forces Korea (USFK),” ministry spokesperson Boo Seung-chan told a regular briefing.
Korea Herald
You can read more at the link.
You can see the slow building up towards a provocation cycle once again with North Korea:
The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Tuesday criticized South Korean President Moon Jae-in for his speech on the North’s recent missile launches, mocking him as a “parrot” that repeats the United States’ “gangster-like logic.”
Kim Yo-jong made the criticism in a statement after Moon said on Friday in a speech that any action that could undercut the mood for dialogue is “undesirable,” hours after Pyongyang confirmed its test-firing of short-range ballistic missiles.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
Here is North Korea trying to defend their recent ballistic missile launches:
“It constitutes a denial of sovereignty and an apparent double standard that the UNSC takes issue, on the basis of the U.N. ‘resolutions’ — direct products of the U.S. hostile policy toward (North Korea),” senior North Korean Foreign Ministry official Jo Chol Su said in a statement carried by state media.
Jo said it “doesn’t make any sense” for the U.N. council to take issue with only North Korea’s missile launches, while not doing anything on similar weapons tests by other countries. He said such a “double standard will invite more serious consequence” but didn’t elaborate.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link, but there will likely be more missile launches in the coming weeks and months.
Despite the best efforts by the Korean left to destroy Yoon Seok-youl he continues to lead presidential polling despite not even announcing himself as a candidate:
Yoon Seok-youl, a former prosecutor general who recently resigned from the post over a prosecutorial reform drive, ranked first in a survey of who is fit to become South Korea’s next president.
In the survey conducted on 1,001 eligible voters by Ipsos, an opinion research firm, Yoon came first with a public support rate of 26.8 percent.
He, however, was closely followed by Gyeonggi Province Gov. Lee Jae-myung with 25.6 percent, which was within a margin of error.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
