This could be the last balloon launch for the Fighters for A Free North Korea for a while considering how the ROK government has put the clamps on their activities:

A South Korean activist group released balloons containing anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the border in the dead of night on Monday, in defiance of the South Korean government’s attempts to prevent such acts amid heightened tensions with North Korea.    
   
Park Sang-hak, head of the organization Fighters for a Free North Korea, said six members of his group launched 20 balloons containing half a million leaflets, 500 books advertising the success of South Korea’s capitalist system, 2,000 one dollar bills and 1,000 memory cards across the border towards the North from a secluded location in Paju, Gyeonggi, from 11 p.m. to midnight.    
   
One of those balloons was discovered stuck on trees on the banks of a stream in Hongcheon County, Gangwon, by police Tuesday afternoon.  
   
“In order to evade [South Korean] police surveillance, I trained members unaccustomed to dispatching leaflets to send the flyers,” Park announced, before delivering a tirade condemning the Moon Jae-in administration for attempting to silence defector groups from speaking out.   
   
The Ministry of Unification, South Korea’s top inter-Korean agency, on Tuesday expressed “deep regret” at the act, and announced it was taking “serious” measures to punish the group for violating the government’s ban on leaflet distributions.    
   
“The government once again stresses clearly that it will strongly respond to the dissemination of leaflets and items towards North Korea, which raise tensions between South and North and endanger the lives and safety of local residents,” the ministry stated in a press release.  
   
The ministry spokesman raised doubts, however, about Park’s claim that his group had released 500,000 leaflets Monday night, saying that based on investigations of the amount of leaflets the group prepared beforehand and the wind conditions that night, none of the released balloons appear to have entered North Korean territory.   
   
After police confiscated the group’s hydrogen gas supplies used to fuel balloon launches in the past, the group apparently obtained only enough helium to float a single balloon — likely the one found at Hongcheon, the ministry said. The balloon that was retrieved did not contain books, dollar bills or memory cards, it added.  

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

I remember the good old days of North Korean propaganda music on the DMZ and U.S. troops station at the JSA may get to experience it again:

North Korea is reinstalling propaganda loudspeakers in regions along the inter-Korean border after removing them under a 2018 summit agreement with South Korea, military officials said Monday.

After the summit between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on April 27, 2018, the two Koreas agreed to halt all hostile acts against each other and eliminate their means, including broadcasting through loudspeakers and distribution of leaflets.

According to the authorities, North Korea has been detected setting up loudspeakers again “in multiple places” inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) from around Sunday. It had dismantled dozens of loudspeakers in around 40 areas near the tense border in a first action to follow up on the Panmunjom Declaration.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest headline from John Bolton’s book:

U.S. President Donald Trump didn’t want South Korean President Moon Jae-in to join him during his third meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) in June 2019, according to John Bolton, the former U.S. national security adviser, in his memoir.    
   
“The Room Where It Happened,” the Bolton memoir set to be published Tuesday, details the three Kim-Trump meetings and the considerable amount of energy expended by Bolton to thwart any U.S. concessions to North Korea.  
   
In a tweet on June 28, 2019, Trump — who was on an official trip to Japan and Korea — offered to shake hands and say hello with North Korean leader Kim, which led to the impromptu meeting days later on June 30 in the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom. This marked the first time a sitting U.S. president stepped onto North Korean soil, and took place during Trump’s visit to Seoul for a summit with Moon.    
   
According to Bolton, “Trump wanted Moon nowhere around, but Moon was determined to be present, making it a trilateral meeting if he could.” Bolton had “entertained the faint hope that this dispute with Moon could tank the whole thing, because it was certain Kim didn’t want Moon around.” 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

The Blue House is obviously very unhappy with former White House National Security Advisor John Bolton’s new book:

The office of President Moon Jae-in on Monday strongly criticized former White House National Security Adviser John Bolton for his “distorted” account of what happened in brisk summit diplomacy last year involving the leaders of the United States and the two Koreas.

Chung Eui-yong, director of national security at Cheong Wa Dae, said in a statement that “A considerable portion of it is distorted.”

He played it down as based on what Bolton had seen from his “own viewpoint,” not “accurate facts,” accusing him of unilaterally disclosing details of diplomatic consultations based on trust among relevant governments.

Chung said it represents a violation of the basic principle of diplomacy, which could harm the sincerity of future negotiations “very seriously.” (……..)

On Moon’s assessment of the North’s proposed dismantlement of the Yongbyon nuclear complex as a very meaningful first step” to enter an “irreversible stage of denuclearization,” Bolton, known for his hawkish approach on Pyongyang, even reportedly wrote in the memoir that it was “schizophrenic” idea.

The Cheong Wa Dae official said Bolton may be schizophrenic himself.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The fraud accusations against left wing parliament member Yoon Mee-hyang, who used to run the Comfort Women charity, is only getting worse:

Then came the suicide of a Korean Council employee responsible for the operation of its shelter for the survivors.

The director of the shelter, known only by her surname Sohn, was found dead, pushing investigators to expand the scope of its probe.

Then came another layer of unexpected information. 

A granddaughter of Gil Won-ok, another survivor who had stayed at the shelter until recently, made a new accusation against Sohn, and Yoon, of money laundering. 

“The shelter’s director laundered money by taking an enormous amount of money from Grandma’s account and sending it to another account. I am sure people around her knew what she was doing,” the granddaughter wrote on the internet in reply to a news article on the director’s death. 

The prosecution summoned Gil’s son who stood partly by his daughter’s accusation. 

In a previous interview with a local news outlet, the son who Gil adopted demanded the shelter explain a big chunk of money withdrawn from her account three times ― in amounts of 4 million, 5 million and 20 million. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but with Sohn dead the only person that can answer what happened with the money is Yoon Mee-hyang. However, since Yoon is now a member of parliament she can ignore any summons from the prosecution for questioning. It appears she will be able to get away with all this with no outrage from the Korean left.

Just a few weeks ago few Americans knew about Juneteenth and now everyone knows:

The celebration is the brainchild of Humphreys Middle School fifth-grade teacher Domenique Marie, who was inspired by civil unrest after the May 25 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man arrested on suspicion of using a counterfeit $20 bill, suffocated while a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

“Juneteenth is important to everybody, not just Black people,” Marie told those in attendance. “Juneteenth is a tribute to strength, endurance and the faith of our ancestors, for we are our ancestors’ greatest accomplishment. We are their wildest dream.”

“For all Americans, it is a reminder that until all of us are free, that no one is really free,” she added. “Today we celebrate glory – we celebrate the breaking of chains.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.