It is very hard to determine what is really going on in North Korea based off of all these anonymously sourced reports; so recommend caution about drawing any definitive conclusions:

China sent a team that included health-care experts to North Korea to advise on the country’s leader Kim Jong Un, Reuters reported, citing three people familiar with the matter.

The move comes amid reports that Kim was in critical condition after undergoing cardiovascular surgery. U.S. officials said Monday they were told Kim’s condition was critical after the surgery, though they were unsure of his current health. President Donald Trump on Thursday cast doubt on the report about the North Korean leader.

Bloomberg

You can read more at the link.

Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.

So who would be excited to watch some South Korean baseball games on ESPN?:

U.S. sports media giant ESPN was seeking free rights to broadcast South Korean professional baseball games, leading to a stalemate in its negotiations with its counterpart in Seoul, informed sources told Yonhap News Agency on Thursday.

According to sources with knowledge of the talks, ESPN wanted to acquire rights to Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) games for free from Eclat, which owns international rights to KBO games.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but clearly ESPN is desperate and I don’t blame the KBO for playing hardball on them. If they want programming they should pay for it.

Another sign of normalcy returning to South Korea:

CGV, South Korea’s largest multiplex chain, said Friday that it will reopen 36 theaters next week that have been shut down for about a month due to business disruptions stemming from the novel coronavirus pandemic.

“We will restart operations in a bid to overcome the crisis by revitalizing the virus-hit film industry and our neighborhood economy,” an official from the company said.

Theaters, including those in Myeongdong and Daehangno, central Seoul, will resume operations from Wednesday, she said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It is interesting that the researchers declare their clinical study as inconclusive despite out of 205 test subjects exposed to the coronavirus not contracting it:

A clinical study on a preventive virus treatment using hydroxychloroquine, a controversial drug that has been touted as a possible cure for the novel coronavirus, was inconclusive, according to the Korean researchers.

Researchers from Samsung Medical Center in southern Seoul and Pusan National University Hospital in Busan completed post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) using hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) on 184 patients and 21 health care workers at a long-term care hospital in Busan, where they were exposed to the coronavirus after massive infections were reported there. 

Post-exposure prophylaxis refers to any preventive medical treatment started after exposure to a pathogen. HCQ is an anti-malaria drug that recently gained worldwide attention after U.S. President Donald Trump said it could be a cure for Covid-19, although medical experts are divided over the use of the drug, citing side effects.

According to the study, which was published in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, Korean researchers conducted the treatment on people who were at risk of contracting Covid-19, although their baseline polymerase chain reaction tests for the novel coronavirus were negative.

Researchers gave the subjects a daily dose of 400 milligrams of HCQ until the completion of a 14-day quarantine period. During the trial, 32 people reported one or more symptoms, including diarrhea, skin rash and gastrointestinal problems, the study showed.

At the end of 14 days of quarantine, follow-up tests on the study participants were all negative, indicating that those who received the treatment did not develop Covid-19.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.