I have been saying this for years that North Korea has no intention of denuclearizing and now the so called smart people are not getting on board with this concept:

North Korea has no intention of surrendering its nuclear weapons, which leaves the United States to either neutralize a nuclear threat or develop something like a normal relationship with Pyongyang, an expert in international affairs said Friday. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has declared his communist regime a nuclear state “whether the world likes it or not,” Jenny Town, senior fellow at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington, D.C., told reporters at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo.

North Korea in 2022 also declared a right to use a pre-emptive nuclear strike to protect itself. Rather than court the U.S. and its allies to alleviate sanctions designed to force North Korea to denuclearize, Kim is pursuing economic and strategic partnerships with China and Russia, Town said. “There’s no more of this constant need to try and justify why they need nuclear weapons,” she told reporters. “Instead, really, the rhetoric has changed to simply accept the idea that they have nuclear weapons; they are a nuclear-armed state.”

Town, the director of Stimson’s Korea program and 38 North, a website focused on peace and security on the Korean Peninsula, said the U.S. is left with only two options. “I think the bottom line here is that what North Korea is doing is essentially forcing the U.S. and its allies to decide whether they want a relationship with North Korea or whether they just want to neutralize the nuclear threat that North Korea poses,” she said.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but the only option the US and the ROK has is to pursue a freeze deal that in return for sanctions relief North Korea stops ICBM development and accepts a cap on their nuclear weapons. The US needs to admit that the Kim regime has won with their nuclear brinkmanship and settle for a deal that at least puts a cap on their weapons to avoid proliferation.

Maybe policy makers should start believing what the Kim regime has been telling them for years that they will never give up their nuclear weapons:

A senior North Korean diplomat reiterated Monday that Pyongyang will never renounce its nuclear program “under any circumstances,” stressing that it has stipulated its nuclear arsenal as a “sacred” and “absolute” asset that can “never be tampered with.”

Speaking at a general debate of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Son-gyong also expressed the North’s openness to engaging with countries that “respect” and take a “friendly” approach toward his country.

It marked the first speech at the Assembly podium by a high-level North Korean official since 2018 when then Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho attended the gathering.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It did not take long for these new water buses to break:

Seoul city will suspend passenger services on its new waterborne public transportation system from Monday, just 10 days after its official launch, following a series of technical malfunctions.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced Sunday that the Hangang Bus will switch to trial runs from Monday until at least the end of October, aiming to enhance stability and safety for its passengers. Throughout the trial period, buses will run according to their timetables, but without passengers on board.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

The U.S. installing this radar on Ieodo will only further validate the ROK’s claim to the submerged islet:

The Republic of Korea Navy’s 7,600-ton Aegis destroyer Yulgok Yi I patrols the waters around Ieodo, an underwater reef and home to a Korean ocean research station south of Jeju Island, in this file photo from Dec. 3, 2013, in the wake of China’s declaration of a new air defense identification zone that includes it. Yonhap

A U.S. Special Operations Command official identified a Korean research group as a potential partner for a grant to install a powerful maritime radar in the waters southwest of Jeju Island around Ieodo, a submerged reef where Korea has maintained a science station to monitor the seas.

The suggestion came after China was found setting up structures in the West Sea, where Ieodo is located and where the two countries’ exclusive economic zones (EEZs) overlap. (…….)

The offer comes as tensions sharpen over Ieodo, a submerged reef known in China as Suyan Rock, where Korea has operated Ieodo Ocean Research Station since 2003, monitoring oceanographic and atmospheric conditions and transmitting observations in real time. The site lies in waters controlled by Seoul but within the overlapping EEZs of both Korea and China. 

For Washington, expanding surveillance would help track China’s increasingly assertive naval and coast guard patrols, and push allies to share intelligence in the region more closely.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

This working group should have been established long ago to address Korean visa concerns instead of trying to game the system which led to detainment of hundreds of Koreans earlier this month:

South Korea and the United States will launch a working group this week to improve the visa system for Korean workers after the detention and release of more than 300 South Koreans in a recent U.S. immigration raid, diplomatic sources said Sunday.

The two nations will hold the inaugural meeting of the working group in Washington on Tuesday (local time), the sources said, weeks after the Georgia raid on South Korean workers.

In early September, more than 300 South Korean workers at a factory construction site in Georgia were detained for a week over unclear violations of visa rules. They were released after diplomatic negotiations.

Seoul’s foreign ministry and the U.S. State Department will lead the working group, the sources said. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Commerce Department are also believed to be taking part in the group.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Lithium ion batteries continue to be a major fire risk:

Burned lithium-ion batteries sit in a water tank after a fire at the National Information Resources Service in Daejeon. Friday’s blaze in an uninterruptible power supply room at the government data center disrupted hundreds of public services. Yonhap

Hundreds of government and financial services across Korea remain offline after a fire at a key national data center, disrupting citizens’ daily routines and causing frustration. Officials warned it could take up to two weeks before operations return to normal, affecting everything from housing applications to moving contracts.

The blaze broke out Friday evening at the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) headquarters in Daejeon, the “nerve center” of Korea’s e-government infrastructure. Officials said 13 workers had been replacing lithium-ion batteries when sparks from one battery are believed to have ignited the fire, which spread across the fifth-floor server room. About 100 people evacuated safely, and one worker suffered minor burns. Firefighters brought the fire under control after 10 hours, but it took nearly 22 hours to completely extinguish it.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.