Tag: South Korea

It seems to me that if foreign players are banned in the Women’s Korean Basketball League it may give Korean women more playing time, but they will lose the benefit of playing against top foreign talent.  This could ultimately cause a reduction in competitiveness for Korean women when competing in international basketball competitions:

Coaches from the six teams of the Women’s Korean Basketball League (WKBL) want to gradually abolish the policy allowing foreign players in the league.

Each team was allowed two foreign players, but only one could play until the league opted for a new policy allowing two foreign players to play simultaneously in the third quarter for the upcoming season.

The revised policy aimed to increase the league’s average score.

But some teams were concerned that they would be at a disadvantage if a foreign player was injured or if they had only one foreign player.

Yongin Samsung Blue Minx lost to KB Stars on Nov. 18, without leading scorer Alyssa Thomas, while KB’s Damiris Dantas finished with a game high 28 points and 14 rebounds.

“At the coaches meeting, we talked about discarding the policy about foreigners,” said KEB Hanabank coach Lee Hwan-woo. “We can give Korean players more opportunity to play and use the budget used for foreign players to expand the base of women’s basketball.”

“We do not have a Korean ‘big man’ because we do not have many good Korean players,” said We Seong-woo, a coach form Woori Bank Wibee.
“I think it would be right to diminish the proportion of foreigner players slowly and then abolishing the policy.”  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

This photo, taken on Nov. 23, 2017, shows a barbed wire fence, which was inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas, relocated to Gwanghwaun Plaza in Seoul. The fence will be set up at the venue of the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics after people attach ribbons carrying their wishes for peace to it. (Yonhap)

This is officially the stupidest thing I have read all day:

China may have asked South Korea to build a wall to block a U.S. missile defense system from monitoring Chinese military movements.

The request from Beijing comes at a time when Seoul is preparing for a summit between President Moon Jae-in and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Munhwa Ilbo reported Thursday.

Multiple South Korean diplomatic sources are not sure how the request could be met, as the deployment of THAAD, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, was a joint decision with the United States.

“The Chinese side is demanding the installation of a barrier to block the THAAD radar, although this is not a decision to be made by [the South Korean] government,” the Munhwa’s sources said.

The South Korean newspaper’s sources also said the requests began as early as July, when China was engaged in unofficial sanctions against South Korean companies operating in the world’s second-largest economy.

On Wednesday Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with his South Korean counterpart Kang Kyung-hwa in Beijing.  [UPI]

You can read more at the link, but first of all this journalist does not seem to understand what the THAAD radar is.  The THAAD’s AN/TPY-2 radar is not used to monitor military movements.  It is used to detect and track ballistic missiles.  Secondly if the South Korean’s built a wall in front of the radar then it would be useless for tracking North Korean ballistic missiles which defeats the point of having the THAAD there in the first place.

I wonder if the South Korean diplomats were able to keep a straight face or did they seriously consider this stupid idea?

I was a bit surprised that the North Korean guards at the JSA did not try to go across the MDL and drag the defector back across and maybe that is what the Kim regime expected them to do as well:

North Korea suffered acute embarrassment on November 13 when a border guard fled first by jeep and then on foot across the joint security area (JSA) with South Korea.

The defector, identified only by his surname Oh, sped in a jeep towards the South before losing control and crashing into a ditch. He sprinted the final few metres as North Korea guards opened fire.

Now those border guards are believed to be taking the full force of Kim Jong-un’s fury for the incident – with all believed to have lost their positions.

Yonhap News, a Seoul-based news agency, believes all border guards have been replaced at the border in a huge security overhaul.

And they said an intelligence source had told them the guards were also in danger of cruel punishment at the hands of Kim’s security agents.

The unnamed source told the agency: “Signs were detected that North Korea has replaced all border security officials following the defection.  [UK-Express]

You can read more at the link, but imagine some very senior Kim regime officials are displeased with this defection and people will be held accountable for letting it happen.  In addition the soldier’s family will be held accountable as well for his defection and are probably already in a labor camp somewhere as punishment.

The North Korean soldier shot while defecting to South Korea across the JSA will live.  However, his poor medical condition before he was even shot is drawing increased scrutiny in South Korea:

The revelation that the man had a severe parasitic infection — Lee said he had never seen such a case except in medical textbooks — and that his stomach contained raw corn kernels prompted widespread shock in South Korea. North Korean front-line soldiers were supposed to be elite troops, yet this man had worms not seen in South Korea since the 1970s and had been eating uncooked corn?

Oh also has tuberculosis and hepatitis B, Lee said. And, at 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighing about 130 pounds, he is several inches shorter and 20 pounds lighter than the average male 18-year-old South Korean.

There is intense interest in the soldier, and military intelligence officers reportedly are eager to question him about his escape, but Lee has been fending them off. The soldier is showing signs of depression and post-traumatic stress, and it will take about a month before he is well enough to answer questions, the doctor said.  [Washington Post]

You can read the rest at the link, but just think there are 25 million people in North Korea with probably many other bad health conditions which will need to be considered in a unification scenario.

By the way the soldier’s trauma surgeon Lee Cook-jong is a bit of celebrity in South Korea:

This is not Lee’s first time in the spotlight. The surgeon became a national hero in 2011 when he saved the life of a ship captain who had been shot by Somali pirates.

After pirates seized a chemical freighter near the Gulf of Aden in 2011, South Korean commandos stormed the ship and the pirates shot the captain six times during the rescue attempt.

Lee was waiting at a hospital in Oman and saved the captain’s life, earning a reputation as the country’s leading trauma surgeon. There was even a popular medical drama based on this story, “Golden Time.” The title was a reference to Lee’s frequent reminder that it is the hour after a severe injury that is most important for saving someone’s life.  [Washington Post]

This will probably be an award these soldiers will remember for the rest of their lives considering the unusual circumstances leading to the award and who presented it to them:

In recognition for their efforts in rescuing a North Korean defector, Nov.13, Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, United Nations Command, Combined Forces Command and U.S. Forces Korea commander, awarded Joint Security Area Soldiers the Army Commendation medal, during a ceremony Nov. 23.

Awardees are Sgt. 1st Class Noh Yeong Soo, Sgt. 1st Class Song Seoung Hyeon, Sgt. Robert Hartfield, Maj. Jeffery Schmidt, Lt. Col. Kwon Young Hwan, and Lt. Col. Matthew Farmer  [USFK Facebook]

You can watch video of the award presentation at this link on the USFK Facebook site as well.  Basically the soldiers received an ARCOM because they were able to pull the North Korean defector to safety while at the same not escalating the situation or violating the armistice like the North Korean soldiers had already done.

Anyone want to take any guesses on what business 85 South Koreans were being flown into Atlanta to do?:

Eighty-five South Korean travelers were ordered to fly back after they were denied entry into the United States earlier this week, foreign ministry here said Tuesday.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the South Korean Consulate General in Atlanta was notified on Monday that 85 South Korean passport holders were refused U.S. entry at Atlanta International Airport in Georgia on Sunday and were ordered to leave the country.

The travelers arrived at the airport via two separate flights. All of them tried to enter the U.S. through the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA), a travel document under the South Korea-U.S. visa waiver program.

ESTA permits citizens of South Korea to travel to the U.S. for tourism or business for up to 90 days without a visa, but U.S. authorities found that they tried to enter the country for other purposes, according to the foreign ministry. The ministry, however, refused to give the details of their visiting purposes, citing privacy reasons.

“The South Korean Consulate General in Atlanta contacted the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to find out why our citizens were denied entry and were ordered to leave,” an official with the foreign ministry said. “We’ve checked whether the travelers received translation services and other amenities in the process.”  [Yonhap]

Prosecution investigator carry boxes containing confiscated items out of the headquarters of public broadcaster MBC in Seoul on Nov. 22, 2017. The investigators from the Seoul Western District Prosecutors’ Office searched the main office as part of a probe into alleged irregular labor practices conducted by its former top officials, including its now sacked chief. (Yonhap)

These finding are unsurprising based off what has already been reported about this incident:

North Korean troops violated an armistice agreement last week when they were chasing a fellow soldier defecting to South Korea through the Joint Security Area (JSA) at the truce village of Panmunjeom, the United Nations Command (UNC) announced Wednesday.

Releasing video clips lasting around seven minutes showing the incident, the UNC said the (North) Korean People’s Army (KPA) violated the Armistice Agreement twice when its border security guards fired weapons across the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) after the defector had entered the South and when one KPA soldier temporarily crossed the line for a few seconds.  [Korea Times]

Here are the details of the incident:

Closed-circuit television footage the UNC released starts with the defector approaching in a vehicle across the 72-hour Bridge, with the CCTV timeline that reads “2017-11-13 15:11.”

After the vehicle driven by the defector in a KPA uniform became stuck along a row of JSA buildings, he got out and ran south across the MDL.

While the defector was running south, four North Korean guards, armed with pistols and rifles, engaged him with direct fire, during which time some of the gunshots flew over the MDL, and one soldier briefly crossed the line before returning back to the north side of the JSA.

Separate footage from a thermal observation device showed two members of South Korea’s JSA security battalion crawling along the ground to recover the wounded defector lying against a wall, while one member covered the retreat, prior to his evacuation for medical treatment.

The UNC said its investigation team determined JSA security battalion personnel took appropriate actions during the incident, which resulted in a “de-escalation of tension and no loss of life.”

You can read more at the link and below is the video:

The biggest take away I saw from the video was that I was surprised the North Koreans had no vehicle checkpoints on the way to their side of the JSA.  This soldier came very close to being able to drive across the Military Demarcation Line within the JSA if his vehicle did not get stuck.  I would imagine vehicle checkpoints have since been put into place by the North Koreans to prevent this from happening again.