There has been a VANK sighting! I have heard much from these guys since the height of the anti-US movement in South Korea over 10 years ago. Now VANK is taking on Chinese netizens; good luck with that:

The Voluntary Agency Network of Korea (VANK), a civic organization working for public diplomacy for Korea, started an online petition Friday, urging Chinese netizens to stop “cyberbullying” Korean singer Lee Hyo-ri after her Instagram account was bombarded by “malicious” complaints from them.

VANK said it posted an online petition titled “Stop China’s cyber chauvinism which lynched a Korean celebrity!” urging people to sign it.

“We oppose the chauvinistic attitude of attacking others in the name of nationalism, which includes interpreting even the smallest part of an expression in the most vicious and offensive way,” VANK wrote, adding “If we remain silent, this incident will be repeated in the future.”

The move came after Lee received hundreds of thousands “malicious” comments on her Instagram account in Korean, English and Chinese after she said in MBC’s reality show “Hangout with Yoo” that “What about a Chinese name? We can go global with it. How about ‘Mao’?” She made the remarks while brainstorming about a faux Chinese stage name. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but VANK was basically Korea’s version of the 50 Cent Army during the peak of Anti-Americanism in the ROK. They would look for any slight to Korea made by foreigners, especially Americans and U.S. military and attack them online for it. So now we basically have two 50 Cent Armies going after each other now.

This is the 10th tropical storm to hit the region this summer which is leaving Korea’s mountains and rivers extremely waterlogged:

The Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters said Haishen temporarily disrupted power supply to 75,237 houses nationwide, with around 34 percent of them still waiting for power to return.

One person was reported missing and five others were injured as of 4:30 p.m., while 124 had to flee their homes that were destroyed. More than 2,600 have been moved to shelters as a precautionary measure.

In Samcheok, Gangwon Province, a man in his 40s was reported missing at around 11:23 a.m. He was believed to have been swept away in a flooded waterway.

Five residents and a couple in their 70s were rescued by firefighters in Yangyang and Samcheok, both in Gangwon Province, respectively.

A body of a man in his 40s, whom coast guard officials said was suffering from personal issues, was found in seas at the southeastern port city of Busan. Police are looking into whether his death is related to the typhoon.

In Ulsan where Haishen made landfall earlier in the day, the typhoon temporarily knocked out power at the assembly lines of Hyundai Motors, South Korea’s biggest carmaker by sales, which produces such models as the Genesis G90 and G80. Similar power outages were also reported at a factory of Hyundai Mobis Co., the country’s biggest auto parts maker.

In Busan, the typhoon cut off power, toppled trees and snapped a traffic light in its path.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Typhoon Haishen has thankfully decreased in strength, but it is still going to be a strong storm people need to prepare for:

While no longer a super typhoon, Haishen was the first in 2020 to reach that status as it started swinging towards Japan and South Korea.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) defines a super typhoon as one that reaches maximum sustained one-minute surface winds of at least 150 mph (241.4 km/h), which is equivalent to a Category 4 or 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale in the Atlantic basin.

On Saturday morning, the JTWC said Haishen’s maximum sustained winds are 212 km/h, with gusts reaching as high as 259 km/h — equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane.

Haishen could hit or at least pass very close to Japan Sunday as the equivalent of a Category 2 storm before tracking into South Korea as a Category 1 storm by Monday morning.

You can read more at the link.

It looks like the gulags will have a few local Wonsan party officials added to it, regardless of if the flooding was really their fault or not:

North Korea has vowed to punish local officials over a typhoon that hit the eastern coast on Wednesday.

A Workers’ Party newspaper blamed authorities in the coastal city of Wonsan for failing to prepare for Typhoon Maysak, and accused them of having an “irresponsible attitude”.

The paper did not say how many were missing, injured or dead, but said there were “dozens of casualties”.

It claimed officials failed to follow orders given by the ruling party.

Local authorities in Wonsan had been instructed to “immediately organise a project to thoroughly identify properties at risk and evacuate all residents”, Saturday’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper said.

“A decision was made to impose severe party, administrative, and legal punishment to those responsible for the casualties.”

BBC

You can read more at the link.

Hopefully this doesn’t lead to a cluster infection scenario on Osan Airbase:

A South Korean contractor who works at Osan Air Base tested positive for the coronavirus on Saturday, the U.S. military said, reporting its first local transmission in nearly five months.

The contractor, who last visited the base on Thursday, “was tested after a workplace exposure at his spouse’s place of employment,” which was not on Osan, U.S. Forces Korea said in a press release.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

To all my American readers, I hope you have a great Labor Day weekend.