Airmen have a few more weeks to get their new uniforms:
The Air Force has delayed its switch to new color schemes for uniform boots, under garments and flag patches until September, citing “unnecessary stress” on its service members due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Airmen, including Space Force service members, by Sept. 1 must wear coyote brown boots and T-shirts and spice brown U.S. flag patches with their two-piece flight uniforms and utility uniforms in the operational camouflage pattern, better known as OCPs, according to a notice on the Air Force website. The original deadline was June 1.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link.
The logistics warehouse cluster infection continues to grow:
South Korea said Thursday that it will beef up quarantine measures in the Seoul metropolitan area over the next two weeks to stem further spread of the new coronavirus in the densely populated area amid eased social distancing.
Under the measure, health authorities will apply a strong social distancing scheme in the capital city and surrounding areas through June 14.
Public facilities, including museums and art galleries in the region, will be shut down, with companies urged to adopt flexible work systems and follow quarantine rules.
Entertainment establishments such as bars and clubs in the metropolitan area will be strongly advised to close down over the period, according to Health Minister Park Neung-hoo.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but according to the article the ROK Health Minister is saying if they can’t get the cluster infection under control it could undermine the school reopenings that have been happening recently.
This week if you plan to use mass transit or airplanes in South Korea you better bring a mask:
Starting Tuesday, people without a face mask will be barred from taking a bus, taxi or subway train, in a nationwide measure to prevent the spread of coronavirus through public transport.
Korea Times
The measure will be extended to airline passengers ― domestic and international lines ― from Wednesday.
Operators of these services will be entitled to ban people not wearing a mask. To make sure the system works, the government will not penalize operators based on complaints from people who are refused permission to board.
You can read more at the link.
I am actually not surprised by any of this. These elderly women have long been exploited for political purposes, so it is no surprise that they were also exploited for financial purposes as well:
Lee Yong-soo, who was forced to serve as a sex slave for Japanese soldiers during World War II, on Tuesday called on prosecutors to investigate the head of a charity that has been looking after her. The 92-year-old woman sobbed as she made her accusations. Lee came to prominence when she testified before American lawmakers about the brutal treatment she endured and played a pivotal role in getting the U.S. Congress to adopt a resolution seeking an apology from Japan. She is virtually the symbol of efforts over the past three decades to get the Japanese government to take full responsibility for forcing women into sexual slavery. But on Tuesday she told reporters, “I did somersaults while they took the money.” Lee added that the head of the charity that supported her, called the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, “shed crocodile tears” at the grave of another former sex slave who died in 2019. Lee gave other accounts of former sex slaves being used by the charity for financial gain.
The activist group is facing snowballing allegations of embezzling donations. Up to W3.7 billion in donations and state grants remains unaccounted for (US$1=W1,233). Yoon Mee-hyang, the head of the charity, took donations on 11 different occasions when a former sex slave died or traveled overseas. They were transferred directly into Yoon’s personal bank account and is now thought to amount to tens of millions of dollars. There are other accounts that the charity spent far less money than it received, collected donations without specifying a clear purpose for their use, and in some years gave not a single penny to the victims.
Chosun Ilbo
You can read more at the link, but the article doesn’t mention this, but this fraud case also has ties back to a convicted spy for North Korea. The comfort women have been long used as a wedge issue between South Korea and Japan and now we know there was a convicted North Korean spy involved in running the organization that supported them.
Unsurprisingly the Moon administration has not commented on this and the head of the ruling party said this was not a serious issue.
I expect that these cluster infections are going to keep happening and tracing to limit the spread of the virus is going to be very important over the coming months:
South Korea on Wednesday reported a continued rise in new coronavirus cases linked to a logistics center in a city west of Seoul, putting health authorities on alert over further community spread.
As of 9 a.m., at least 36 virus cases had been traced to the logistics center in Bucheon, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).
The first related case, confirmed last week, is believed to be linked to a cram school instructor in nearby Incheon, who contracted the virus after a visit to Seoul’s nightlife area of Itaewon.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
Here is the latest dustup between the Moon administration and the American led United Nations Command:
A feud between the government and the United Nations Command (UNC) seems to be intensifying as the former has complained of a series of recent decisions by the command regarding inter-Korean issues.
Korea Times
Some critics, including senior government officials, say the U.S.-led UNC, which administers the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and the Military Demarcation Line (MDL), has overstepped its authority regarding the Moon Jae-in administration’s peace initiatives on the Korean Peninsula as part of efforts to maintain its presence here.
The latest friction occurred, Tuesday, after the UNC concluded that both South and North Korea violated the Armistice Agreement when they gunfire was exchanged inside the DMZ, May 3, adding that it was unable to determine whether North Korean soldiers fired intentionally or by mistake.
The findings are in stark contrast to the Ministry of National Defense’s conclusion that the shots fired by North Korean troops across the border were accidental, a stance later echoed by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. As a result, the ministry expressed regret over the UNC’s findings immediately after its announcement, saying in a press statement that the command reached its conclusion without a practical investigation of the gunfire from the North.
If there was no evidence to support that it was an accidental firing than that is what the UNC should report. The UNC was doing its job while the Moon administration would rather they support the political position they took on shooting incident.
Of course here come the usual suspects to include North Korea’s favorite bag man Im Jong-seok to condemn the UNC:
Former presidential chief of staff Im Jong-seok said in a recent interview with a local magazine that the UNC was trying to exceed its authority.
“The command has to do only what it has to do over entry into and exits from the DMZ and passage over the MDL, but it is acting like it has special rights. This needs to be fixed as soon as possible,” he said.
Moon Chung-in, the special security adviser to President Moon, also said in a media interview, last September, that the UNC was the “biggest barrier” to improving inter-Korean relations.
“The UNC blocks North-South Korean transactions across the DMZ. According to the Armistice Agreement, it only has to administer the DMZ and the MDL. Should it continue doing so, South Korean people may have antipathy toward the command,” he said.
Im Jong-seok makes it seem that the UNC should just be gate guards that allow free passage of anything the Moon administration wants to do to include violating sanctions.
I have been saying that after the April elections that if the Moon administration did not feel like that their was momentum in their inter-Korean strategy that they would eventually play the anti-US card. This may be their first trial balloon towards playing the anti-US card.
