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

I guess we will see if the U.S. Defense Secretary can help mend defense relations between Japan and the ROK next week:

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper will travel to South Korea next week for annual defense ministers’ talks ahead of the expiry of a key military intelligence-sharing pact between Seoul and Tokyo, the Pentagon said Thursday.

Esper will depart Wednesday to travel to Seoul, Bangkok, Manila and Hanoi, Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said during a press briefing. He did not provide the exact dates, but it appears likely the secretary will travel in that order.

Esper’s trip to Seoul comes ahead of the Nov. 23 expiration of the General Security of Military Information Agreement between South Korea and Japan.

Washington has urged Seoul to reconsider its decision to end the pact in consideration of the three countries’ mutual security interests.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I guess we will see how far the ubiquitous Korean defense of “I was drunk” works for this Mongolian judge:

A high-ranking Mongolian official accused of groping a South Korean flight attendant last week appears to have backed down from his initial denial of charges during his latest questioning, police said Thursday.

Dorj Odbayar, the chairman of Mongolia’s Constitutional Court, is alleged to have touched the buttocks of a female flight attendant and intimidated a Mongolian crew member on a Korean Air flight from Ulaanbaatar to Incheon, west of Seoul, on late Oct. 31. 

During an interrogation by airport police last Friday, he flatly denied the charges, saying he was mistaken for another Mongolian man, who actually committed the crime. He left the country immediately after the probe. 

Odbayar returned to South Korea on Wednesday and was detained for a second questioning by the Incheon Metropolitan Police Agency. 

He testified that he did not remember what happened because he was drunk at the time of the incident, according to the Incheon police.

“If the victims made such claims, (I) might have done so under the influence of alcohol,” Odbayar was quoted as saying during the nine-hour interrogation. He was released at midnight. 

He had planned to depart for Mongolia in two days, but the authorities had already banned him from leaving the country for 10 days pending the probe. 

Police also requested Interpol put on its wanted list a Mongolian official accompanying him, who has been accused of molesting another stewardess, including wrapping his arms around her shoulders.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Even if North Korea could not yet fire an ICBM from a mobile launcher continued testing will ensure they achieve the capability relatively soon:

SEOUL, Nov. 6 (Yonhap) — North Korea is not believed to be capable yet of launching intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) from transporter erector launcher (TEL) vehicles, the chief of South Korea’s defense intelligence agency said Wednesday.

The issue has been a source of controversy in Seoul, after Chung Eui-yong, chief of Cheong Wa Dae’s National Security Office, has said it is “technically difficult” for the North to fire ICBMs from mobile launchers. Conservative critics accused Chung of being naive.

“The chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency (Kim Yong-hwan) said that he does not believe that North Korea has such capabilities,” Rep. Lee Hye-hoon, the chief of the intelligence panel, told reporters during a parliamentary audit into the agency.

Kim was also quoted by Rep. Lee Eun-jae of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party as saying that North Korea tried to fire an ICBM from a TEL but failed to do so due to some unidentified problems. 

Wednesday’s comment is contradictory to his earlier assessment. During an audit into the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) earlier this month, Kim said that North Korea’s ICBM technology “has been advanced to the degree where the missile can be fired from a TEL.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but for the three ICBM tests in 2017 they fired the missiles from test stands after transporting them on mobile launchers. I cannot imagine the North Korean scientists have not improved their ICBM designs to attempt a TEL launch whenever they get the green light to resume testing.

At some point I would not be surprised if the Moon administration plays the anti-US card at some point to get the American negotiators to back down on increased cost sharing demands. In the past the usual suspects would already be out there protesting like crazy about something like this, but clearly the Moon administration has them in check for now:

Alarm has started to spread in Seoul over reported demands by the United States that Korea contribute to the upkeep of U.S. military forces beyond the Korean Peninsula. 

According to Rep. Yoon Sang-hyun, chairman of the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee on Thursday, Washington’s chief negotiator in negotiations with Seoul over the Special Measures Agreement (SMA), James DeHart, told Korean lawmakers and government officials in a meeting that Korea should pay approximately $4.7 billion in alliance upkeep costs – around five times the amount it currently pays to keep U.S. forces stationed on its soil. 

Yoon told a local broadcaster that this amount includes labor and logistics costs for the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) – which Seoul is already paying – but also maintenance and deployment costs for U.S. strategic assets on Korean soil and at U.S. military bases abroad, possibly in Guam, Hawaii and around the Indian Ocean. 

Other expenses demanded from Korea include the costs of conducting combined military exercises and upkeep for civilian attaches to the USFK.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

This is the most bizarre North Korean defector story I have read. This could be dramatized into a movie plot:

South Korea deported two North Koreans back to the communist nation after learning that they killed 16 fellow crew members on their fishing boat and fled to the South, the unification ministry said Thursday.

The two in their 20s were sent back to the North at around 3:10 p.m. through the truce village of Panmunjom, five days after they were captured near the Northern Limit Line sea border in the East Sea on Saturday, according to the ministry.

It marks the South’s first deportation of North Koreans through Panmunjom.

“We decided to deport them after determining that accepting them to our society could pose a threat to the lives and safety of our people and that such criminals cannot be recognized as refugees under international law,” Lee Sang-min, the ministry’s spokesperson, said at a press briefing.

The government also plans to send back the fishing boat of the North Koreans, a ministry official said. 

Officials said that it took a couple of days for the South’s Navy to seize the North Koreans as they attempted to run away after crossing into the South.

During an investigation, the North Koreans confessed that they and another crew member first killed the captain of the fishing boat in late October out of anger over his harsh treatment before killing the other protesting crew members one by one later, according to officials. 

They were also quoted as saying that all the bodies were dumped overboard.

They initially intended to return to North Korea and seek shelter. When the boat arrived at a North Korean port on its east coast, however, one was captured by local police, causing the other two to get scared and flee, the official said.

Yonhap