Via a reader tip comes this article in the Hankyoreh that discusses the changes that happened to the village outside of Camp Howze after it closed:

Fifteen years after the departure of the US military base at Camp Howze, the nearby camp town remains frozen in the past like a broken clock.Visiting on Sept. 17 with residents of Bongilcheon No. 4 village from the township of Jori in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, I saw that the vacated buildings of the base in the village’s back hills were still in good condition – but the village itself has faced a rapid decline amid delays in an urban redevelopment project. Previously a quiet farming community of some 50 families on the banks of Gongneung Stream, Bongilcheon No. 4 underwent a full-scale transformation with the sudden arrival of foreign armies when the Korean War broke out in 1950.

Hundreds of people came from all over South Korea in search of employment, including sex workers; they set up tents in front of the US base or rented rooms as they went to work selling services to US soldiers.

The village’s oldest resident at 95, Lee Jae-choon explained, “Now that the US military base is gone, everybody’s scattered, and it’s only the people with no place to go who have settled down and made it their second home.”

Hankyoreh

You can read more at the link.

I would hope these two would face bigger punishment than a trespassing charge considering the safety risk they impose on the public if something goes wrong and they land on top of someone below:

 Two Russian base jumpers are under police investigation for allegedly making unauthorized leaps off high-rise buildings in Busan, officials said Tuesday. 

The two men, one of them aged in his 30s, jumped off the roof of a 40-story office building Saturday evening before launching another expedition in the afternoon the next day, off the top of a 42-story hotel building, according to the police. 

The skydivers, who made the jumps without permission from the buildings’ management, were booked on trespassing charges.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Not a good look for ex-president Chun considering he is claiming he has dementia:

Video footage of former South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan playing golf, who has been avoiding attending a defamation trial claiming dementia, has sparked public anger.

He has been accused of defaming late Rev. Cho Bi-oh regarding the 1980 Gwangju Democratic Uprising.

Justice Party Vice Chairman Lim Han-sol on Friday released a video clip of Chun playing golf with his companions.

Civic groups, including the May 18 Memorial Foundation, immediately released a statement condemning Chun.

“This is an insult and mockery of history. We can’t really tell how outraged we are now,” read the statement.

“Chun has cited dementia as an excuse to avoid the trial. But the footage clearly reveals that’s false. The court shouldn’t be lenient.”

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

This is just the trial balloon for what I expect to be a Moon administration strategy to aid North Korea if a denuclearization deal isn’t struck with the U.S. The ROK will just call all aid “humanitarian aid” in order to avoid sanctions:

The Seoul city government has become the first local government in South Korea to win the right to independently carry out humanitarian aid projects for North Korea, a unification ministry official said Tuesday.

Last month, the government revised related regulations to allow local governments to act as independent aid providers to the North. Previously, they had to join hands with private entities to engage in humanitarian activities for the North.

Yonhap via a reader tip

You can read more at the link.

Is anyone really surprised that audience vote rigging was going on with some of these singing shows?:

Police said Tuesday that they booked 10 people, including producers of a K-pop audition TV show and officials of CJ ENM, in connection with allegations they had rigged the results of audience voting. 

Police are looking into whether high-ranking officials from music labels were involved, whether there was any vote rigging on former seasons of the Mnet audition shows and whether bribes were given in return for allegedly manipulating the votes.

“I think an investigation into alleged vote rigging should be conducted thoroughly to achieve a fair society,” Lee Yong-pyo, the commissioner of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, said at a press briefing.

The 10 people who were booked include Kim Yong-bum and Ahn Joon-young, respectively chief producer and director of Mnet’s “Produce X 101.” The “Produce 101” series is a recurring fan-voting K-pop competition through which popular bands such as Wanna One have debuted.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

The case of the repatriation of two North Koreans that supposedly murdered 16 other fishermen before defecting to the South continues to cause controversy:

In the investigation that followed, the two North Koreans asked to defect to South Korea, but the government eventually chose to repatriate the two sailors. 

They were handed off to the North’s authorities through the Koreas’ land border at Panmunjom on Thursday, while the boat they used was also given back to the North on Friday. 

Given the extraordinary circumstances of the case – unprecedented in inter-Korean history – the decision to expel the sailors continues to be subject to heavy controversy over its legality. 

Lawmakers of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party, who were the first to make the issue public before the government announced the expulsion decision, raised doubts as to just how three people were able to murder 16 others on a small boat, which measured only around 15 meters (49 feet) long and weighed 17 tons, and were able to evade North Korea’s own naval surveillance to escape to the South. 

South Korea’s lack of a judicial procedure on the alleged crime also invited protests from civic groups, which cited that the sailors had the right to a trial given that the South Korean Constitution does not recognize North Korea and considers all its residents as citizens of South Korea.

To these questions, the Unification Ministry said South Korea’s regulations governing refugees from North Korea also explicitly forbids Seoul from giving shelter to North Koreans who have committed “serious non-political crimes” which include murder, terrorism or illicit drug trafficking.  

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but it seems to me that if these two legitimately admitted to murdering 16 people, are these two really refugees that citizens in the ROK would want to harbor? The question becomes did they legitimately admit to the murders or did the ROK government simply take the word of the North Korean government before handing them over?