The National Interest has an article that goes through the history of the US-ROK OPCON transfer which has long been chronicled here at the ROK Drop. The main point made at the end of the article is that the coronavirus has impacted the joint military exercises to validate the transfer. With Moon’s time in office running out a new President may relook the transfer if not complete:

These delays raise difficult questions about political timing, compounding present ambiguities in the ROK-U.S. security relationship. Moon’s term expires in the summer of 2022, leaving a relatively small window within which to complete the FOC and FMC—Moon is ineligible to run for reelection, and there is no firm guarantee that his successor will share the current administration’s strident vision of South Korean military independence. Nor is the situation entirely clear from Washington’s vantage point: if Donald Trump were to lose his reelection bid, it remains to be seen whether or not a Joe Biden administration would pursue a Korea policy conducive to further military disentanglement between the United States and South Korea.

The National Interest

You can read more at the link.

North Korea after giving a rare apology is now back to normal warning the ROK to stop violating the NLL. This is standard stuff for the North Koreans who have their own version of the NLL you can see below in Red:

North Korea warned the South on Sunday to stop violating the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de facto inter-Korean maritime border in the Yellow Sea, as the search continues for the body of a South Korean fisheries official shot last Tuesday.    
   
South Korea’s Navy and Coast Guard however said that they have been searching for the body of the 47-year-old official surnamed Lee — who was shot and killed by North Korean soldiers last Tuesday after he mysteriously went missing the previous day — in waters south of the NLL.    
   
Pyongyang’s warning came two days after an apology from North Korea Friday claiming that the man’s body had been lost at sea after he was shot, rather than burned, as initially reported by the South’s military.    
   
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported in an English-language dispatch Sunday, “We can never overlook any intrusion into our territorial waters and we seriously warn the south side against it.”  
   
The North urged South Korean authorities to “immediately halt the intrusion across the military demarcation line in the west sea that may lead to escalation of tensions.”    
   
The North may be referring to the West Sea military demarcation line (MDL), a line south of the NLL in the Yellow Sea that Pyongyang unilaterally declared in 1999. North Korean has long disputed the NLL, which was set by the United Nations Command (UNC) in 1953 after the three-year Korean War ended in a ceasefire. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Another idiot going down in flames for making a racist comment:

A man who was accused of telling Korean-American entrepreneur Sophia Chang, 28, to “go back to Wuhan” was fired from his job Tuesday at Prudential, a Newark-based financial advising firm, the company confirmed.

Around 6 p.m. on Sept. 12, Sophia Chang and her sister were eating dinner at Bluewater Grill in Newport Beach, California when the man “made direct eye contact” with the women and told them to “go back to Wuhan” as he headed to the bathroom, Chang wrote in an Instagram post. When the man returned from the bathroom and the women questioned him, she says he responded, “I don’t speak Chinese.” This comment is not seen in the video.

Following the incident, Chang posted the video to her Instagram where it racked up over 800,000 views. The post — which does not show the “go back to Wuhan” comment — sparked outrage, with people calling for the man to be identified and held accountable for his alleged comments. The man was identified as a financial representative for Prudential, which confirmed his firing.

NBC News

You can read more at the link.

According to the article ramen sales up this year because of the hit Korean movie “Parasite”. I think it probably has more to do with people eating out less or facing quarantine because of the coronavirus:

Exports of Korean instant ramyeon have sharply increased this year.

According to industry data and the Korea Agro-Fisheries and Food Trade Corporation, ramyeon exports in the first eight months jumped 36-point-seven percent year-on-year to 405 million dollars.

The figure has more than doubled over five years between 2014 and last year.

By country, shipments to China, the biggest importer, increased 45 percent from January to August to top 105 million dollars.

During the same period, exports to the U.S. also rose 56 percent and to Japan by 48 percent.

Ramyeon exports to Southeast Asia are also on a rapid rise thanks to the Korean Wave phenomenon known as Hallyu.

KBS World Radio

You can read more at the link.

This might be the first Chuseok in a long time without bumper to bumper traffic if this poll is to be believed:

 Three in four Seoul citizens don’t have any plans to visit their hometowns or travel long distances during the Chuseok holiday due mainly to fears of coronavirus transmission, a poll showed Saturday.

In the survey of 849 citizens aged 18 or older, 56.8 percent said they have no plans to travel long distances during Chuseok, while another 16 percent said they have canceled their holiday travel plans due to COVID-19.

Merely 12.4 percent said they have travel plans during the Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving, with 14.8 percent saying they are still undecided whether to travel.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but what I always tell people is that the best time to go to Seoul is on Chuseok. It is easy to get around with little to no lines for anything because of how many people leave the city for the holiday. Apparently that will not be the case this year.

I don’t think this is going to get much traction considering the control of most of the media the Moon administration has, but I am sure South Korean conservative politicians are enjoying this payback after what former President Park went through:

In response to the controversy over the reporting time to Moon, Kim Chong-in, interim leader of the main opposition People Power Party (PPP), said the incident is a national disaster due to the Moon administration’s lackluster security awareness.

“The Moon administration’s rosy prospects have led to the loss of a precious life of a South Korean citizen,” he said. 

“President Moon needs to explain what he did for three days from Monday.” 

He added that the government may have wanted to hide something from the public by disclosing the incident three days later.

The current situation leaves Moon in a similar situation to that faced by his predecessor in the wake of the Sewol ferry sinking in 2014. While the ferry carrying more than 300 passengers was sinking, the rescue operations were bungled, causing people to speculate on what then-President Park was doing for the first critical seven hours. Many still question the claims of presidential aides that she was receiving updates at her residence.

Rep. Joo Ho-young, the PPP floor leader, said President Moon should have attended the ministerial meeting on early Wednesday morning considering the severity of the incident.

“It is questionable about President Moon’s follow-up measures. It is not comprehensible whether President Moon was unaware of the incident or he ignored it,” Joo said.

Korea Times via a reader tip

You can read more at the link.