Here is the latest on the Yongsan Garrison cat crisis:
U.S. military officials plan to launch a program aimed at slowing the growth of the stray cat population on this Army installation in the heart of Seoul. The program — known as trap, neuter, release, or TNR — was deemed necessary after the number of cats spiked as the military prepares to close Yongsan. Last year, U.S. Forces Korea moved its main headquarters from Yongsan south to Camp Humphreys. “TNR is the humane and potentially effective approach for stray and feral cats by which community cats are humanely trapped … brought to a veterinarian to be spayed or neutered, vaccinated, ear tipped, and then returned to the outdoor location where they were found,” according to the new policy issued this month.
Site for world’s biggest semiconductor clusterThis aerial photo shows Wonsam Village in Yongin, some 50 km south of Seoul, which SK hynix Inc., the world’s second-largest memory chip maker, announced on Feb. 21, 2019, as a candidate site for the world’s biggest semiconductor cluster worth 120 trillion won (US$106.6 billion). (Yonhap)
Via a reader tip comes this news of two former USFK soldiers charged in a murder plot in Michigan:
Kemia Hassel, 22, appears with her co-defendant, Jeremy Cuellar, 24, (not pictured) for a preliminary exam on a charge of first-degree premeditated murder at the Berrien County Courthouse in St. Joseph, Michigan on Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2019. U.S. Army Sgt. Tyrone Hassel III, 23, was killed on Dec. 31, 2018.
A woman and her boyfriend were deployed with the U.S. Army in South Korea when they conspired via Snapchat to kill her husband so she could claim the life insurance money, police in Michigan said.
Berrian County Judge Sterling Schrock ruled Wednesday in a preliminary hearing that the murder trial of Kemia Hassel, 22, and Jeremy Cuellar, 24, will begin April 30. Both have pleaded not guilty in the Dec. 31 killing of U.S. Army Sgt. Tyrone Hassel III. Cuellar was also charged with a felony firearms count. Authorities say the 23-year-old Hassel was ambushed while visiting his family in St. Joseph Township. He died of multiple gunshot wounds, including one to the head, according to the autopsy report. All three were soldiers stationed at Fort Stewart in Georgia. Kemia Hassel told police in a signed statement that she spent months planning how to kill her husband so she could continue her romantic relationship with Cuellar, Township Police Officer Mike Lanier testified Wednesday. Kemia and Tyrone Hassel married in 2016 and had a 1-year-old son. She told police she was unhappy with her marriage, but didn’t want to go through a divorce because she then wouldn’t be able to receive any life insurance money, Lanier said. Hassel and Cuellar began plotting while they were deployed in South Korea last year, Lanier said. The pair communicated through Snapchat because they believed the social media app’s temporary messages would make it difficult for police to trace, he said.
I guess this all comes down to what is considered a “meaningful” step to remove sanctions:
U.S. President Donald Trump has urged North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to take “meaningful” steps for denuclearization to earn a lifting of sanctions on his regime, a few days before their second summit in Vietnam.
“The sanctions are on in full,” Trump told reporters at the White House, Wednesday (local time). “I have not taken sanctions off. I would love to be able to, but in order to do that, we have to do something that is meaningful on the other side.”
The U.S. leader implied that denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula will be a long process, saying he hopes to hold more summits with Kim down the road.
“I don’t think this will be the last meeting by any chance,” Trump said.
It looks like Key Resolve is going to happen this spring, just don’t call it Key Resolve:
South Korea and the United States will rename their springtime combined Key Resolve exercise and desist from using the Foal Eagle name for their annual field training, a government source in Seoul said Wednesday. The move appears to be part of efforts to prevent tensions with North Korea amid ongoing peace efforts with the communist state. Pyongyang has long denounced allied exercises as rehearsals for invasion. The Key Resolve command post exercise will be renamed the “19-1 Exercise,” and focus on bolstering defensive capabilities, the source said on condition of anonymity. This year’s edition is expected to kick off its two-week schedule on March 4.
The name of the Foal Eagle field training exercise, usually scheduled to occur between March and April, will no longer be used. But battalion-level portions of the exercise are expected to proceed as they have been in the past, according to the source.
You can read more at the link, but USFK definitely found the most boring exercise name ever to replace Key Resolve with. I would love to know if North Korea has stopped or changed the names of any of their exercises?
Anyway does anyone have any better ideas of what to rename Key Resolve as?
NKorean defector and ex-diplomat Thae Yong Ho says Pyongyang never posed real threat of war but “Trump fell into Kim Jong Un’s trap” by seeking peace before denuclearization pic.twitter.com/3LY9UuTeUU
Moon appoints new SNU headPresident Moon Jae-in (L) walks with Oh Se-jung to a meeting room after giving him a letter of appointment as the new head of Seoul National University at the presidential office on Feb. 20, 2019. (Yonhap)
Conservative journalists were thrown in jail for libel even though they reported true information, and a presidential aide is convicted of corruption and is sentenced to jail, and yet is able to walk around a free man:
Jun Byung-hun, an ex-presidential aide for political affairs and a former lawmaker, speaks to reporters at the Seoul Central District Court on Feb. 21, 2018.
A court on Thursday handed down a six-year prison term to a former senior secretary to President Moon Jae-in over a corruption case related to a gaming industry body, and one year in jail, suspended for two years, for abuse of power. Jun Byung-hun, an ex-presidential aide for political affairs and a former lawmaker, has been suspected of forcing two home shopping channels — Lotte Home Shopping and GS Home Shopping — and telecom company KT to donate 550 million won (US$514,260) between 2014 and 2017 to the Korea e-Sports Association, over which he practically held control. But he was not taken into custody after the ruling. The Seoul Central Court also slapped him with a fine of 350 million won and an overdraft fee of 25 million won. The court did not issue a warrant to arrest him as it judged that “it is appropriate for him to appeal to a higher court and solve the dispute (with the prosecution) without detention.” “His criminal responsibility is grave,” the court said in its verdict, adding that Jun damaged the fairness and integrity of parliament by accepting bribes from companies related to his parliamentary activities.
