Tag: South Korea

I never thought of this before, but yes Army units from Alaska would have a very limited amount of time to train in darkness since the best months weather wise to train have a lot of daylight:

Six hundred U.S. troops wrapped up a monthlong training rotation to South Korea Monday with something in short supply this time of year at their home station in Alaska — darkness.

Soldiers from the Fort Wainwright-based 1st Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment “Bobcats” spent May living and training at the 3,390-acre Rodriguez Live Fire Range north of Seoul.

“We’re here to build our lethality,” battalion commander Lt. Col. R. Blake Lackey said Wednesday.

That includes being able to operate day and night, the latter being difficult in the Alaskan summer, he said.

“This time of year we’ll be training at 1:30 in the morning and it’s still daylight,” said Staff Sgt. Benjamin Moore, 34, a recon team leader with the battalion.

“When it’s dark in Alaska it’s winter and it’s pretty harsh,” the West Palm Beach, Fla., native added. “So it’s really difficult to get after some of the more basic and fundamental [requirements].”

The Korea rotation has taken the unit “to a higher level of readiness we didn’t think was possible,” Lackey said.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read the rest at the link.

Constitutional Court Chief nominee Kim Yi-su (L) apologizes to bus driver Bae Yong-joo for sentencing him to death about 40 years ago prior to his confirmation hearing at the National Assembly in Seoul on June 8, 2017. Then military judge Kim handed down the capital punishment to Bae for killing four policemen when driving his bus carrying civilian militia members though a police cordon during a pro-democracy movement on May 20, 1980. (Yonhap)

Another setback for President Moon’s Sunshine 2.0:

North Korea rejected South Korean lawmakers’ call to hold a reunion of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War, saying Wednesday there can “never be any kind of humanitarian cooperation” between the two countries unless 13 North Koreans “detained” in the South are returned.

They include a group of 12 workers from a restaurant in China run by the North Korean government, whom Seoul says defected voluntarily. Pyongyang claims they were kidnapped by South Korea’s spy agency.

The North also wants a 13th citizen, Kim Ryon-hui, a vocal Kim Jung-un endorser here who wishes to go back home. She left her home in Pyongyang to seek advanced medical treatment in China for a liver illness. She asserts to have been deceived by a Chinese broker in 2011, who told her she could make a fortune in the South and then return to China or North Korea.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

This is a life-size model of a new bullet train on display in the square in front of Changwon Station in Changwon, 398 km southeast of Seoul, on June 7, 2017. Korea Railroad Corp. and Hyundai Rotem, a train-making unit of Hyundai Motor Group, have developed the electric multiple unit train for the first time in the country. (Yonhap)

Officials at the Korean National Red Cross in Seoul check a database on inter-Korean families separated during the 1950-53 Korean War on June 5, 2017, when the speaker and ruling and opposition floor leaders agreed to seek their reunion on the Aug. 15 Independence Day. (Yonhap)

Osan AB is getting a new runway:

U-2 spy planes, fighter jets and other aircraft have been deployed off the peninsula as the Air Force temporarily halts flights from Osan Air Base while it begins rebuilding a Korean War-era runway.

The disruption comes amid rising tensions over North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs, but officials stressed missions would continue to be conducted from other air bases in South Korea and Japan.

Four U-2 planes were moved to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa last week along with some 180 personnel from the 5th Reconnaissance Squadron usually stationed on Osan.

“While at Kadena the 5th RS will continue to fulfill their intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission and provide continued support to U.S. allies and partners” in the region, Pacific Air Forces said in a statement.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read the rest at the link, but other aircraft have been moved to Alaska and Kunsan AB during the June 5th – July 5th construction period.

Via a reader tip comes this example of the absurdity that sometimes occur with South Korea’s defamation laws:

Korea’s Constitutional Court has ruled that saying “You are f—ing crazy” in English may be derogatory but not defamatory.

The ruling came after two men from an apartment building in Gyeonggi Province argued in May last year over the watering of flowers at a nearby garden. Lee, 62, and his neighbor, 43, sued each other for physical violence and false accusation.

The pair clashed again days later, after the neighbor failed to address Lee respectfully ― a social norm in Korea when there is a large age difference.

But when an apartment warden approached, the neighbor changed his tone and used honorifics to address Lee. The neighbor’s sudden change frustrated Lee and he said to himself: “You are f—ing crazy.”

The neighbor heard it and sued Lee for defamation. But prosecutors rejected the filing because, while admitting Lee’s criminality, it was hard to indict him based on the circumstances.

The issue was then referred to the Constitutional Court.

The court ruled unanimously, saying:

“‘F–ing’ elaborates ‘crazy,’ like ‘very,’ while ‘crazy’ has many meanings like ‘unnatural,’ ‘absurd’ or ‘passionate.’  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but it is amazing that this went all the way to the Constitutional Court for a final ruling.

It's Memorial Day in Korea. The day is to commemorate the men and women who died while in military service during the Korean War. pic.twitter.com/yyEP4DCon2

— VisitKorea London (@CoolstuffKorea) June 6, 2017

An employee at KEB-Hana Bank in Seoul checks the U.S. greenback supply on June 15, 2016, when the Bank of Korea announced that the country’s foreign exchange reserves hit a record high of $378.46 billion in May, up $1.89 billion from the previous month. (Yonhap)

This was actually clever what the Korean Defense Ministry did to comply with ROK environmental laws that would have delayed the deployment of the THAAD missile defense system for up to year:

A fact-finding mission into the deployment of a U.S. antimissile system in Korea in April raised a new suspicion that the Ministry of National Defense tried to sidestep an environmental study required by the law, the Blue House said Monday.

Following the discovery, President Moon Jae-in ordered a proper environmental study, effectively stalling the deployment schedule to be completed by the end of this year.

The probe also found that Lt. Gen. Wee Seung-ho, deputy defense minister of policy, has ordered his team to delete crucial pieces of information from a report to Moon’s security team, Yoon Young-chan, senior secretary for public relations, said in a press briefing.

Moon ordered last week an investigation into the ministry’s failure to fully brief his team about the U.S. military’s delivery of four additional launchers for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) antimissile system.

The probe identified Wee as responsible for the omission and revealed that the ministry tried to avoid the environmental impact study. The conclusion was reported to Moon at the senior secretariat meeting on Monday.

Despite protests by Beijing and Moscow, Seoul and Washington agreed on the deployment of a Thaad battery in July 2016.

Key components of a Thaad battery, including a radar system and two missile launchers, were installed on a former golf course in Seongju, North Gyeongsang, on April 26 – less than two weeks before the May 9 election that brought Moon to power.

A Thaad battery typically consists of six launchers, 48 interceptors, a fire control and communication unit and radar. The military authorities of Korea and the United States planned to complete the deployment before the end of this year.

According to Yoon, the ministry created a plan on Nov. 25, 2016 that it will offer the Seongju site to the U.S. military in two separate transfers. Of the 700,000 square-meter (173-acre) site, a 328,779 square-meter piece was transferred in the first phase and another piece, about 370,000 square meters, was planned to be offered later in the second phase.

“By designating the first phase site to be smaller than 330,000 square meters, the ministry planned that only a summary environmental impact study was needed,” Yoon said. The law requires a full-scale environmental study when the site is larger than 330,000 square meters.

Yoon then said the first phase site is an odd-looking inverse U-shaped piece of land. “The shape was abnormally designed in order to exclude the land that is supposed to be inside the U shape,” he said.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but General Wee claims that he ordered the deletion in the report about the four launchers because the US military asked him to.  My guess would be that the US military wanted to keep the location of the launchers secret for operational security reasons.  We will see how this plays out, but my assessment is that the Moon administration will use this to maximum political advantage to appease his base without actually changing the deployment decision.