With things escalating in the Ukraine it makes me wonder if North Korea will be asked by the Russians to start a provocation cycle to split U.S. attention between two theaters?:
President Moon Jae-in said Tuesday that Ukraine’s sovereignty must be respected and South Korea will join efforts for a peaceful resolution to the crisis.
Moon made the remarks during a National Security Council meeting convened after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the deployment of troops to two breakaway regions in Ukraine after recognizing their independence.
“Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected,” he said. “Countries around the world must come together and work for a swift and peaceful resolution to the situation in Ukraine. South Korea will actively participate in these efforts as a responsible member of the international community.”
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
A joint Japanese and Russian naval fleet sailed around the main island of Honshu, Japan in response to the international community sailing ships through the Strait of Taiwan. The big difference between this exercise and the international community’s freedom of navigation patrols is that no one from Japan is shrieking about the exercise like the Chinese government routinely does after freedom of navigation patrols. This shows how secure the Japanese government is unlike the CCP which has to shriek after every international military exercise or freedom of navigation patrol to drum up internal nationalism to legitimize their rule:
A combined Russian Navy and People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) fleet concluded a sail in international waters east of Japan’s main island of Honshu and split off to their home ports on Saturday, all while being monitored by Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ships and aircraft during the voyage.
The Chinese ships were Type 055 destroyer Nanchang (101), Type 052D destroyer Kuming (172), Type 054 frigates Binzou (515) and Liuzhou (573) and the replenishment ship Dongpinghu (902). Russian ships were destroyers Admiral Tributs (564) and Admiral Panteleyev (548), corvettes Gromkiy (335) and Hero of the Russian Federation Aldar Tsydenzhapov (339) and the missile range instrumentation ship Marshal Krylov (331).
The combined fleet had entered the Tsugaru Strait on Oct. 18 and since then had been sailing off Honshu. The Joint Staff of the Japan Self-Defense Force issued a release and map on Saturday stating that the joint fleet had sailed through the Osumi Strait that day. Located between the Osumi Peninsula and Tanegashima Island, the strait connects the Sea of Japan with the Pacific Ocean. Following their sail through the Osumi Strait, the ships of the two countries separated at a location 130 kilometers, or about 81 miles, southeast of the Danjo Islands.
USNI News
You can read more at the link.
This seems like an almost impossible task for Korean families members trying to find out what happened to their relatives that were conscripted to work on Sakhalin Island during World War II:
Historians say Japan forcibly mobilized around 30,000 Koreans as workers during the late 1930s and 1940s on what was then called Karafuto, or the Japanese-occupied southern half of Sakhalin, near the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.
They endured grueling labor in coal mines and logging and construction sites as part of Imperial Japan’s wartime economy, which became heavily dependent on conscripted Korean labor when Japanese men were sent to war fronts.
Families thought their loved ones would return when Japan’s surrender in WWII cemented the Soviet Union’s full control over Sakhalin.
Soviet authorities repatriated thousands of Japanese nationals from Sakhalin. But they refused to send back the Koreans, who had become stateless after the war, apparently to meet labor shortages in the island’s coal mines and elsewhere.
Moscow’s attitude hardened further after Communist ally North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950; most of the Korean laborers in Sakhalin had come from the South.
South Korea and Russia established diplomatic relations in 1990 and about 4,000 Koreans have returned from Sakhalin since. But people like Shin who lost track of their relatives long before then have seen little progress.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link, but there are descendants from these Korean forced laborers that still live on Sakhalin Island that organizations sponsor to visit Korea.
The Russians are alleging that the human rights activists sending of balloons with vulgar pictures of Kim Jong-un’s wife is what caused the recent uproar:
A Russian diplomat on Monday suggested that North Korea likely retaliated against defector-led anti-Pyongyang leaflet campaigns in South Korea after recent leaflets contained obscenely edited photos of first lady Ri Sol-ju.
Speaking to TASS Russian News Agency, Russian Ambassador to Pyongyang Alexandre Machegora said the North Korean leadership and citizens were furious over leaflets sent on May 31 containing content that was deemed vulgar and insulting.
Days before demolishing the Gaeseong liaison office, the North’s ruling party mouthpiece Rodong Sinmun said plotting to harm the regime’s supreme dignity is more threatening than Seoul and Washington’s joint military drills.
Pyongyang’s retaliation is also believed to have been triggered by posts in the online communities of some defector groups in which individuals claimed to be buying items used by COVID-19 patients to send to North Korea to spark a pandemic that would cause Kim Jong-un’s regime to collapse.
KBS World Radio
I doubt this because the defector groups have been sending unflattering material of the Kim regime for a long time without this reaction. My theory is that the Kim regime was just looking for a convenient excuse to start a provocation cycle to pressure the Moon administration. The Kim regime behaved and did what it could to help the Korean left win April’s parliamentary elections and now wants to cash in by pressuring the Moon administration to unilaterally drop sanctions.
I think Ambassador Harris should troll the Korean leftists by growing out his mustache to look like Choi Jin-dong:
You can read the whole story about how Choi Jin-dong was identified at this link. The picture was taken in Moscow during a communist conference and the guns both are wearing were actually gifts from Lenin.
Via a reader tip comes news that the Russians are holding 80 North Koreans for illegal fishing in Russian waters:
Russia says the ships were engaged in illegal fishing off its coast, and that one of the vessels launched an “armed attack”.
Three Russian border guards were reportedly wounded in a clash.
North Korea has yet to comment on the incident, but Russia’s Foreign Ministry has expressed “serious concern” and summoned the country’s top diplomat.
A spokesperson for the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said the two schooners were accompanied by 11 motorboats and were spotted poaching near the Yamato Bank, which lies between the Korean Peninsula, Russia and Japan.
Russia says they were caught in its Exclusive Economic Zone, which extends 200 nautical miles (370km) from its coast.
MSN
I just don’t understand how someone could win a major volleyball match to qualify for the Olympics and the first thing to come to mind is to make the slant eye gesture?:
The South Korean national volleyball federation said Wednesday it will lodge a complaint against a Russian women’s team coach for his racist gesture following a recent match.
Russia defeated South Korea 3-2 (21-25, 20-25, 25-22, 25-16, 15-11) in the final Group E match of the FIVB Women’s Volleyball Intercontinental Olympic Qualification Tournament at DS Yantarny in Kaliningrad, Russia, on Sunday (local time). With that victory, Russia earned direct qualification for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. In post-match celebration, Sergio Busato, an Italian-born assistant coach for Russia, was photographed making the slant-eye, racist gesture.
Russian website Sport 24 carried a photo of Busato with his two index fingers on his eyes. The accompanying blurb simply said the coach “did not hide his positive emotions” and showed a gesture depicting narrow eyes, with no mention of the gesture’s implications.
FIFA bans this and other discriminatory gestures under its disciplinary code and once sanctioned Colombian midfielder Edwin Cardona, who resorted to the act in a friendly against South Korea in November 2017. But FIVB, the international volleyball federation, isn’t known to have specific rules against racist or discriminatory acts.The South Korean national volleyball federation said Wednesday it will lodge a complaint against a Russian women’s team coach for his racist gesture following a recent match.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
