The Moon administration has kept this very quiet for two years until it has now been leaked to the media:

A North Korean diplomat has defected to South Korea while serving as the acting chief of mission at the country’s embassy in Kuwait, a source said Monday.

Ryu Hyun-woo, who had served as the embassy’s charge d’affaires since Ambassador So Chang-sik was expelled from Kuwait after a U.N. resolution was adopted in 2017, entered South Korea, along with his family, according to the source. 

Further details were not available, including the timing of the defection.

But a media report earlier said that Ryu appears to have defected to the South in September 2019, about two months after Jo Song-gil, the acting ambassador to the North’s embassy in Italy, entered the country after disappearing in late 2018.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but Ryu apparently defected to give his family a better life.

Here is the latest on the case of Olympic champion Shim Suk-hee being sexually assaulted by her coach:

South Korean double Olympic champion skater Shim Suk-hee is seeking a heavier sentence for her former coach, her lawyer said Friday, after he was jailed for more than a decade for sexually assaulting her over several years.

The development came as a former physical therapist was imprisoned for eight years in a separate case for sexually and physically abusing a female triathlete who took her own life.

Short track skater Shim — one of the country’s top female sports stars — went public in 2019 with accusations that coach Cho Jae-beom had sexually abused her for three years, starting when she was 17.

Her action confronted a culture of shame in the socially conservative nation and prompted a series of athletes to come forward with similar allegations, leading to apologies from sporting authorities.

Cho was convicted and sentenced to 10 and a half years in jail by the Suwon District Court on Thursday, but Shim’s lawyer said they will ask the court to impose a longer term.

AFP

You can read more at the link.

It is not surprising that this guy had a mental disorder that led to the subway confrontation:

A 50-something man was sentenced to 20 months in prison on Friday for getting into a “slipper fight” with subway passengers who asked him to wear a face mask due to the coronavirus.

The man was indicted on charges of assaulting two passengers on a Line 2 subway train. During the incident in August, he choked the passengers and slapped their faces with a slipper he was wearing.

“The defendant was not wearing a mask even though it was essential due to COVID-19 and talked in a loud voice on the train before assaulting the passengers,” Judge Lee Sang-hoon of the Seoul Southern District Court said.

“However, we took into consideration the fact that his mental illness appeared to have contributed to the crime,” he said.

Yonhap

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

As predicted the new U.S. Defense Secretary under President Biden, Lloyd Austin wants to get a new US-ROK cost sharing deal done quickly:

U.S. President Joe Biden’s nominee for secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, said Wednesday he would bring about an early resolution to stalled military cost-sharing negotiations with South Korea.  
   
In a written statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Austin described the U.S. military alliance with Seoul as the “linchpin of peace and security in the region” and “among the most combined, interoperable, capable and dynamic” alliances in the world.  
   
If confirmed, the retired four-star general said he would focus on modernizing the alliance along with others throughout the Indo-Pacific region and “seek the early conclusion of cost-sharing negotiations with South Korea as part of those efforts.” 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Like I have always said, Korean authorities can open the road to the THAAD site any time they want to, they just choose not to on a daily basis:

Protestors failed to block 32 vehicles carrying construction equipment and materials onto a military base Friday in South Korea where the U.S. Army operates a missile-defense system, according to local media.

More than 50 people staged a sit-in as trucks approached the former golf course that’s home to a U.S.-built and operated Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, about 190 miles south of Seoul in Seongju, The Joongang Ilbo, an English-language newspaper, reported.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but the article says the convoy brought in construction material to help with barracks renovations and remove old construction waste from the site.

Protesters have been blocking the road since the THAAD battery was put in which causes daily logistical support to the site to be conducted by helicopter. Only when materials that cannot be moved by helicopter need to be brought in does the police open the road. I have always been concerned that over an extended period of time this could increase the chances of a helicopter crash happening.