Another play straight out of the North Korean provocation playbook:
South Korea’s military on Thursday confirmed it had completed an operation to evict a North Korean merchant ship from its waters some 17 hours after the vessel crossed to the southern side of the Northern Limit Line (NLL) the previous day.
However, it took South Korean military authorities nearly six hours to realize the vessel was a North Korean merchant ship sailing on the southern side of the NLL, the de facto maritime border between the two Koreas in the Yellow Sea.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Wednesday that the 500-ton merchant ship crossed the NLL, northwest of Baengnyeong Island, at around 6:40 a.m. Wednesday.
At one point, the South Korean Navy fired warning shots after the vessel did not respond to multiple warnings it had issued to immediately leave the NLL, in accordance with protocol.
On Thursday, the JCS confirmed that the South Korean Navy guided the merchant ship out of South Korean waters and completed the operation around 11:30 p.m. that night.
Joong Ang Ilbo
You can read more at the link.
Another typical North Korean playbook play here with conducting a test firing that corresponds with a U.S. holiday:
North Korea fired two projectiles from what is presumed to be a super-large multiple rocket launcher on Thursday, South Korea’s military said, in the latest in a series of military moves amid stalled denuclearization talks with the United States.
The projectiles were fired from Yeonpo in the country’s eastern South Hamgyong Province into the waters off the east coast at around 4:59 p.m., the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said in a release.
Both flew around 380 km, reaching a maximum altitude of around 97 km, and were fired within a 30-second interval, the JCS added.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but this is all just more of the pressure campaign that the Kim regime is putting on the Trump administration to get them to give in to their demands to drop sanctions.
There is a new book out and of course to create traction in the media with it the author has to claim that President Trump is an idiot:
During that conversation, Wead wrote, Trump reiterated his belief that Obama would have gone to war with the North had he stayed in office.
“And I also think that thirty to one hundred million people could have been killed,” Wead quoted the president as saying.
South Korea has 51.2 million people and North Korea has a population of 25 million.
Trump then expressed disbelief at experts’ predictions that 100,000-200,000 people would die, a number he said was the equivalent of the population of a South Korean village.
“Well, as you know, Seoul, the capital city, is right by the so-called border,” he continued, according to Wead. “And that is a tough border by the way. An impenetrable border. And Seoul has a population of thirty million people. Kim has ten thousand guns, artillery, they call them cannons. He doesn’t even need a nuclear weapon to create one of the greatest calamities in history.”
The population of Seoul is just under 10 million.
Yonhap
When I read Trump’s comments I clearly understood that when he was talking about Seoul he was referencing the Seoul metropolitan area. The Seoul city center has 10 million, but the metro area has 25 million. Also when he is talking about upwards of 100 million casualties how do we know he wasn’t including if a nuclear weapon was dropped on Tokyo or other major cities? It is context like this that is important, but to get media attention he must be described as an idiot, so mission accomplished by this author.
The only real idiots are whoever told him a war on the Korean peninsula would only lead to 100,000 to 200,000 deaths. If they did not use nukes I could maybe understand that number, but I find it hard to believe that if North Korea went all in and used nuclear weapons, that only that many people would die.
A quote I did find interesting that may explain why President Trump is pushing so hard on the Moon administration on USFK cost sharing is the status of the THAAD battery in South Korea:
“Do you know how much we spend defending South Korea? Four and half billion dollars a year. Figure that one out?” he added.
Trump has reportedly demanded that South Korea raise its contribution to shared defense costs to US$5 billion next year, a five-fold increase from this year.
Trump also complained to Wead that the people who treated the U.S. the worst were its allies.
“And you’ve heard the story with South Korea with the missiles system, with the THAAD anti-missile system?” he was quoted as saying.
I read that to mean that he is not happy about how the Moon administration is allowing the blockade of the road to the THAAD battery to occur. ROK Heads may remember that the road is still blocked and all supplies and personnel to the battery have to be flown in by helicopter. The battery though there to protect South Koreans is frequently used by Moon’s leftist allies to promote wild conspiracy theories and anti-Americanism.
Trump we have seen has a long memory when it comes to things he does not like and maybe the THAAD issue is something he is still unhappy about and influencing the cost sharing talks?
It appears that South Korea has been conquered by all things Frozen:
Retailers are rolling out a variety of “Frozen”-themed merchandise for fans of all ages, as Korean moviegoers join the worldwide frenzy over Disney’s latest release “Frozen 2,” according to industry officials Tuesday.
Korea Times
According to the Korean Film Council (KOFIC), the latest Disney film has attracted 4.79 million viewers in Korea as of Monday, just five days after its opening here.
Along with the movie’s soaring popularity, sales of Frozen-themed products are going up.
7-Eleven rolled out “Frozen” character figures, capsule toys, snow globe DIY kits, Lego sets and sticker books.
You can read more at the link.
