To be fair President Moon’s job approval rating is still pretty high considering all the scandals and poor economy:

Public sentiment toward President Moon Jae-in is becoming noticeably negative in light of various setbacks at home and abroad, with negative assessments of his job performance exceeding 50 percent, for the first time since he took office in May 2017, in a weekly Realmeter survey.

The survey published Monday showed that 50.4 percent of respondents thought Moon was doing a bad job in the third week of August, marking a 4.1 percent increase from the previous week. The pollster said the biggest reason for this was the escalating political row over one of his most trusted aides, Cho Kuk. The rival parties agreed to hold a two-day confirmation hearing from Sept. 2 for the justice minister nominee who is at the center of a widening scandal over allegations of corruption and unethical behavior involving himself and his family members.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Top countries by military spending. Evolution from 1914 – 2018. pic.twitter.com/OlOliJaBtn

— Bobbie☀️ (@bo66ie29) August 24, 2019

It looks like President Moon is committed to ramming through his Justice Minister nomination despite the corruption allegations against him:

A parliamentary panel decided Monday to hold a confirmation hearing next week for justice minister nominee Cho Kuk, who faces snowballing corruption allegations involving his family.

Political parties agreed to hold the two-day hearing on Sept. 2-3, according to lawmakers sitting on the legislation and judiciary committee.

The last-minute deal was reached after the ruling party threatened to hold a “people’s hearing” Tuesday where Cho could clarify allegations to the public.

Public uproar mounted over his qualifications amid a series of scandals ranging from illicit college admission allegations about Cho’s daughter and his family’s dubious investment in a private equity fund (PEF) and other corruption allegations.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the ramming through of yet another government official with corruption allegations against them continues to show the hypocrisy of the Moon administration that came to power vowing to fight for a “fair and just society”:

President Moon Jae-in said “there is a saying that corruption turns everything into naught. we must fight corruption in order to realize a fair and just society.” And he also added that “over the past several years, the power squeezed the livelihood of the people through unjust and corruptive ways and wasted the people’s tax money as if their own while executing state powers, thereby routinizing cheating and special privileges in our society. 

Cheongwadae, Sept. 2017

It seems the Moon administration is just more Korean governmental business as usual.

It seems that President Trump does not have a high opinion of the recently concluded joint US-ROK military exercise:

U.S. President Donald Trump has called the recently concluded South Korea-U.S. combined military exercise “unnecessary” and a “total waste of money” despite heightened tensions caused by Pyongyang’s recent launches of short-range projectiles.

During the Group of Seven summit in France on Sunday, Trump also told reporters that Pyongyang’s projectile launches do not represent a breach of his agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un that involves nuclear and longer-range ballistic missile tests.

Pyongyang tested what it claims to be a “new” super-large multiple rocket launch system Saturday — the first such projectile launch since the allied exercise ended Tuesday, and the seventh since July 25 when the North started firing missiles and projectiles in protest in the runup to the exercise.

“I’m not happy about it. But again, he’s not in violation of an agreement,” Trump said before his bilateral talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the sidelines of the G-7 summit in Biarritz, according to a transcript released by the White House. (………..)

“I said that to all of my people. I said, ‘I don’t want to interfere because I think if you want to do them, you can do them, if you think it’s necessary. But I think it’s a total waste of money,'” he said.

Trump went on to say, “I think it was unnecessary to do, frankly.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Here is a warning from 8th Army that USFK servicemembers may be victims of credit card fraud:

American troops may have been among the victims of hackers who stole information from more than 1 million U.S. and South Korean credit cards and listed it for sale on the dark web over the past three months, the military said.

The thefts targeted unspecified business and financial entities in South Korea and included information on at least 38,000 U.S.-issued payment cards, according to an alert distributed by the Eighth Army via its Facebook page on Monday.

An unnamed credit union that provides services at U.S. Air Force bases in South Korea was among the potentially compromised organizations, it said.

Citing the large number of U.S.-issued payment cards involved and the significant presence of American troops in South Korea, the Major Cybercrime Unit-Korea said it could “assess with medium confidence that the purchase cards of U.S. service members may have been included in this compromise.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Really. The Japanese right is like the rapist who keeps finding ways to torment his victim years after, because it makes him feel powerful just knowing he can. JPN’s nonsensical and constantly evolving Dokdo claims are an attempt to “bitch slap” Korea for jollies.

— the oranckay (@oranckay) August 25, 2019

I would love just once to have someone in the media ask who the foreign infiltrators are that are threatening to invade Dokdo:

The South Korean armed forces launched a two-day military exercise to defend the easternmost islets of Dokdo on Sunday amid growing tensions over trade and their shared history, in a show of its staunch defense stance against Japan’s repeated claims to sovereignty over the cluster of rocks in the East Sea.

The Navy announced that the drill involves Navy, Air Force and Army forces, such as naval warships and aircraft, as well as Army and Marine Corp troops.

“Indeed, it’s an exercise to guard our sovereignty and territory,” Cheong Wa Dae spokesperson Ko Min-jung said at a press briefing.

She added that it’s a regular training and asked media not to attach excessive “political” meaning to it.

The drills have been held twice a year, usually in June and December, to better fend off possible foreign infiltrations to the rocky outcroppings and the surrounding waters.

Yonhap

The closest thing to a “foreign infiltration” that has happened on Dokdo was back in 2006 the Japanese said they were going to have a ship full of scientists conduct an underwater survey of the ocean in the vicinity of Dokdo which they never ended up doing.

Meanwhile in recent months you have China claiming Korean territory and flying bombers over it and the Russians have actively violated Korean airspace over Dokdo with their war planes and there was never a rush to conduct a military exercise in response.

The North Koreans are unhappy about comments Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently made:

 North Korea’s foreign minister on Friday called U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a “poisonous plant of American diplomacy” and vowed to “shutter the absurd dream” that sanctions will force a change in Pyongyang.

The North’s blistering rhetoric may dim the prospect for an early resumption of nuclear negotiations between the countries. A senior U.S. diplomat said earlier this week that Washington was ready to restart the talks, a day after U.S. and South Korean militaries ended their regular drills that Pyongyang called an invasion rehearsal.

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho made the comments to protest Pompeo’s remarks in an interview in which he said that Washington will maintain crippling sanctions on North Korea unless it denuclearizes.

Ri said he couldn’t just let the “reckless remarks” by Pompeo pass by him because they came amid a possible restart of the nuclear talks. Ri said Pompeo is a “brazen” man because he “had begged for” North Korean denuclearization and improved bilateral ties when he visited Pyongyang and met leader Kim Jong Un several times.

Associated Press

You can read more at the link, but I don’t put too much stock into this tit-for-tat exchange; they have wanted Pompeo gone since this past April. This is all posturing for negotiations on a denuclearization deal. Once the North Koreans start going after President Trump that is when you know the negotiations are officially over because Trump will respond in kind. I don’t see this happening until next year which is the timeframe Kim Jong-un has given to try and work out a deal.

This all comes down to if the Trump administration wants to sign a “pretend denuclearization” deal to make the North Korea problem go away for the next election cycle or have it dominate headlines next year when Kim Jong-un restarts long range missile testing because a deal isn’t reached.