Tag: South Korea

As South Korea begins to establish a more robust space program that will include multiple defense satellites, being able to monitor and defend against threats to those assets as well as providing missile warning is important:

South Korea wants help from the United States as it tries to develop its nascent space-defense program, Defense Ministry officials said Wednesday.

The nation’s space plans aren’t targeting a particular country or threat, ministry officials told Stars and Stripes. However, North Korea’s continuing research on long-range ballistic missiles represents a threat that theoretically could be defeated using space-based technology.

Seoul will be “building up the foundation to carry out space warfare by creating and conducting a high-level U.S.-South Korea defense space development [tabletop exercise] regularly,” according to a recent Defense Ministry statement.

The Defense Ministry and the Pentagon will also share information on space development, a ministry spokesman said Wednesday.

South Korea established its first Space Operations Center in July, when it also announced plans to build a national space surveillance system by 2030. Last week, defense officials said the new space center successfully tracked a falling Russian satellite, with assistance from the U.S. Strategic Command.

The pact with South Korea follows similar actions taken between the U.S. and Japan to bolster cooperation earlier this year. In April, Tokyo and Washington revised 1997 bilateral defense guidelines to include a section on space, calling for the nations to “share information to address emerging threats against space systems.”  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read the rest at the link.

South Korean speed skater Lee Sang-hwa smiles during an interview at Incheon International Airport on Dec. 15, 2015, after returning from the fourth leg of the 2015-2016 International Skating Union Speed Skating World Cup in the Netherlands. Recovering from knee injuries, Lee, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, has won four of the eight 500 meter races and leads other female skaters in points at the World Cup. (Yonhap)

Here is another example of South Korea’s laws that can be used to restrict free speech:

Lee Ha gets two year suspended sentence over poster that satirized former President Chun Doo-hwan

The Supreme Court said on Dec. 11 that it was upholding a court ruling issuing a suspended 100,000-won (US$85) fine to an artist accused of violating the Minor Offenses Act by putting up wall posters satirizing former President Chun Doo-hwan.

The sentence suspension system allows those accused of minor infractions to avoid punishment if two years pass without a sentence.Political pop artist Lee Ha (real name Lee Byeong-ha), 47, was indicted for putting up 55 of the posters in the area around Chun’s residence in the Yeonhui neighborhood of Seoul early on the morning of May 17, 2012, the eve of the anniversary of the 1980 Gwangju Democratization Movement. The images showed Chun dressed in prison clothes and handcuffs and carrying a check for 290,000 won (US$250), which was all the money he said he had at time, despite his corruption while president from 1980-88.  [Hankyoreh]

You can read the rest at the link.

Life sentence sought for senior woman suspected of poisoning soft drink https://t.co/1ATmNzXp9p pic.twitter.com/p96vqCc6Vk

— The Korea Observer (@koreaobserver) December 11, 2015

The pool photo released on Dec. 13, 2015, shows the new headquarters of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) being built in Pyeongtaek, southeast of Seoul. USFK is moving its troops in Seoul and its vicinity to Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, and officials said the relocation will be delayed to 2017 from 2016. Some 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea to deter North Korea after the 1950-53 Korean War ended only in a truce instead of a peace treaty. (Yonhap)

It appears the language barrier is what initially led to the misunderstanding at LAX of a K-Pop group being mistakenly investigated as prostitutes.  If anything their promotion company should be happy about this arrest because of all the media attention the no name group has now received:

Newbie K-pop girl group Oh My Girl returned to Incheon International Airport on Friday morning after being held for 15 hours at Los Angeles International Airport. WM Entertainment, the eight-member girl group’s agency, said the girl group was held at the U.S. airport because they were mistaken for prostitutes.

“We have appointed a lawyer in the states because we need a valid explanation for the unfair detainment,” a person working for WM Entertainment said.   WM added that Oh My Girl left for Los Angeles on Wednesday for photo shoot.

“A person working at immigration asked about the relationship between the girl group members and staff, and one of the staff members said ‘sister,’” a person working at WM told multiple local news agencies. “And the customs office thought it was weird because the girl group and staff members are not related by blood. The customs office also paid attention to a lot of props and clothes.”

Staff members reportedly tried to explain that they were visiting Los Angeles as singers, but they could not correct the misunderstanding at immigration, and the group and staff members’ smartphones were confiscated.
In the end, the girl group could not enter the United States and returned to Korea.
Oh My Girl released their first debut single in April, but the K-pop act is still largely unknown in the music scene.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

Below is the latest on the deployment of the THAAD missile defense system to South Korea.  I have always said that it would take a major crisis for the ROK to have political cover to deploy this system on the peninsula.  From the ROK perspective this strategy make sense because it gives them leverage with China to keep North Korea in line if they don’t want THAAD in South Korea:

Placement of a U.S. mobile missile defense system in South Korea remains unlikely in the near term despite continued concern about North Korea’s nuclear program, analysts and government officials say.

Top U.S. military officials want the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, ready to deploy in the Asia-Pacific region on a permanent basis — and its bases in South Korea are ideally where they need to be to counter a possible North Korean offensive.

Last year, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work said the Pentagon had conducted site surveys for THAAD within South Korea. However, what makes sense from a military tactical standpoint doesn’t always correspond with how leaders view the strategic and diplomatic consequences.

When rumors spread in March of a deal to deploy THAAD to South Korea in an emergency, China decried the possibility as a threat to its security, with Russia voicing opposition as well.

That left South Korea uncomfortably positioned in a dispute pitting China and Russia on one side and the United States and Japan on the other, said Kim Hyun-wook, a professor at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy in Seoul.

The result was that despite discussions between President Barack Obama and South Korean President Park Geun-hye earlier this year, along with high-level ministerial talks between both nations, neither side has confirmed ever having had formal talks about THAAD.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read the rest at the link.

It seems to me this diplomatic complaint is only going to feed the perception of this guy being a martyr for bombing the Yasukuni Shrine which will only encourage other people looking for attention to do the same thing:

The Foreign Ministry said Thursday it has lodged a strong complaint with Japan over Japanese media outlets’ reports that made public the identity of a South Korean man allegedly involved in a small explosion at a restroom at a war shrine in Tokyo.

“Through a diplomatic channel, the government filed a complaint with Tokyo earlier in the day over Japanese media’s coverage of the incident, as they revealed his identity, photo and name,” ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuck told reporters.

Japanese media reported that police arrested the 27-year-old man, identified only by his surname Chon, on Wednesday in connection with the explosion in a public restroom at the Yasukuni Shrine last month that caused no major damage.

He was arrested shortly after voluntarily returning to Tokyo by plane on Wednesday.  [Yonhap]

You can read the rest at the link.

If this guy did cause the explosion at the Yasukuni Shrine, maybe he voluntarily went back to Japan to be arrested to become some sort of martyr in the eyes of the Korean public?:

Police in Tokyo have arrested a South Korean man suspected of causing an explosion last month in a public restroom at a controversial shrine in Tokyo that honors Japanese war dead.

The 27-year-old Jeon Chang-han was arrested Wednesday after he returned to Tokyo from South Korea for voluntary questioning, police officials said.

No one was injured in the Nov. 23 explosion at the Yasukuni shrine. Police earlier said the suspect was identified from close-circuit TV and had left Japan after the blast.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read the rest at the link.

Considering the deadly attacks these Chinese fishing boats have launched against the ROK Coast Guard I think the Chinese government has no legitimate argument to complain about warning shots especially when the Coast Guard thought they were North Korean ships.  If the Chinese government wants to ensure the safety of these fishing boats the best way to do that is to stay out of South Korean waters and not illegally fish:

Picture of illegal Chinese fishing boats teaming up to do battle with the ROK Coast Guard back in 2011.

China said on Wednesday it had asked South Korea to ensure the safety of Chinese ships after South Korea’s navy fired warning shots at a Chinese vessel which crossed into waters disputed by North and South Korea.

The South Korean navy told Yonhap news agency it had fired 10 warning shots at a Chinese boat which it said crossed the Northern Limit Line – a disputed inter-Korean maritime border on the west coast.

The ship was initially thought to be North Korean, but was later identified as Chinese, according to Yonhap.

“We are concerned about the relevant situation,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a daily news briefing.  [Reuters via reader tip]

You can read the rest at the link.