I wonder how many times these cops have pulled off successfully this tactic without getting caught?:

A police inspector standing trial over an alleged unlawful arrest was found to have lured a suspect who had voluntarily arrived at a police station to a nearby subway station, arrested him there and falsely claimed in official documents that he had been “found by chance.” The suspect was held in illegal detention for more than 10 days. Prosecutors on July 14 indicted the 40-year-old inspector, identified by his surname Woo, from the Seoul Yeongdeungpo Police Station without detention on charges including abuse of authority through an unlawful arrest and falsifying arrest records.

According to the indictment, a suspect in a special theft case contacted Inspector Woo at about 1:16 p.m. on May 22, saying he had arrived at the first floor of the Yeongdeungpo Police Station’s main building. The suspect had called Woo the previous day at around 5 p.m. and told him he would appear by 1 p.m. But Woo and two junior officers from his team had already been waiting near a subway station for about an hour, starting around 12:30 p.m., to carry out an emergency arrest.

After receiving the message that the suspect had arrived at the police station, Woo instructed him to walk toward a nearby subway station. The suspect followed the instruction and encountered police officers on the way. He was arrested at a nearby cafe at around 1:30 p.m., just 14 minutes after arriving at the police station. Prosecutors said Woo’s instruction was intended to create a false account of events suggesting that the suspect had been unexpectedly encountered in public.

Donga Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

I doubt anyone in the media will call out President Lee on this claim, but the only reason he is in office is because the ROK Army would not comply with former President Yoon’s martial law attempt. If the Army had sided with Yoon, Lee would probably be in jail right now. So it seems pretty disingenuous of him to attack the Army leadership now in his attempt to justify combining the military academies:

President Lee Jae Myung said Wednesday the Army academy has been behind all military coups in South Korea, while remaining largely unaccountable, calling for the swift integration of military academies to reduce the risk of another coup.

The president made the remarks while receiving policy briefings from the foreign, unification and defense ministries, as the government seeks to unify the academies of the Army, Navy and Air Force into a single institution.

Lee pointed out that graduates from the Korea Military Academy had been behind all of the country’s military coups, but that the academy had not been held to account so far.

The president, in particular, noted the risk of another coup by Army elites, saying, “Can’t they do it again in the future?”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Apparently this decision was made to prevent negligent discharges from happening:

A South Korean army unit responsible for protecting the western front along the nation’s heavily fortified border has been standing guard with unloaded machine guns, according to a media report.  The 1st Corps revised its guard-duty instructions earlier this year, directing soldiers to keep K6 heavy machine guns unloaded with live ammunition nearby, Yonhap News Agency reported Wednesday, citing unnamed military sources.  The 1st Corps oversees operations along the western section of the Demilitarized Zone, which separates North and South Korea. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, which oversees all operations along the border, was unaware of the unit’s updated policy, the report said. 

Stars and Stripes

You can read more at the link.

ROKS Daejeon named ‘Top Gun’

Navy sailors pose for a group photo aboard the ROKS Daejeon at U.S. Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii on Aug. 1, 2026, after the warship was crowned the top gunnery combat ship for its performance at the biennial Rim of the Pacific Exercise, in this photo provided by the Navy. (Yonhap)

Here is the details on what happened with Drone-gate a few days ago:

The inspection revealed that a working-level soldier with the 1st Corps had received a text message from the U.S. military notifying the unit of its drone flight plan and firing altitude the day before the exercise.

The U.S. military had also attached an image of its written advance notification, which included the expected flight altitude, suggesting the Korean soldier likely overlooked the detail and failed to report it up the chain of command, assuming the drone would fly within the altitude range governed by the Army Ground Operations Command.

In fact, the drone flew higher than expected, at an altitude that would have required prior notification to and approval from the South Korean Air Force.

Upon spotting the drone, the South Korean military had briefly activated Durumi, a military alert system issued in the event of an enemy drone incursion.

The JCS official’s remarks indicated that the customary practice of allowing an advance notice to be put through text messages may have led to such procedural shortcomings from both sides.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but I am surprised that official business like this is being conducted over text messages. It appears that is going to end due to this investigation.

The next time I am in Seoul I will need to go and check out this church:

There is a church in Seoul with no visible cross marking the exterior. Visitors looking only at the facade cannot immediately discern whether the brick structure is a church, a Buddhist temple or a school. A short walk from Dongdaemun History and Culture Park intersection toward Jangchung Gymnasium reveals a fortress-like brick building supported by roughly 10 external buttresses. The structure stands in stark contrast to conventional Korean churches signaled by ubiquitous red neon crosses.

The building is a seminal work by modern Korean architect Kim Swoo-geun (1931–1986). Architectural historians consider the church one of his greatest masterpieces, alongside the architecture firm Space’s former Jongno District headquarters — currently a commercial building. The church has long served as an under-the-radar architectural destination, though entry to the main sanctuary remained restricted to congregation members.

Starting in July, Kyungdong Presbyterian Church has opened public tours. The official tours allow visitors to explore the main sanctuary and an upper chapel originally built without a roof. Experiencing the interior is essential to appreciating the full depth of the unique architecture of this remarkable building.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

I don’t know if this is going to work because Trader Joe’s has some significant loyalty from its customers that HomePlus has likely lost a lot of:

Embattled hypermarket chain Homeplus is pinning its revival on a new type of store modeled on US grocery chain Trader Joe’s, a leap of faith that has stirred both hope for a business remade and skepticism that a company on the edge of bankruptcy has the footing to pull it off.

Homeplus laid out the plan last week, after the Seoul Bankruptcy Court extended its rehabilitation deadline to Sept. 4. Once 200 billion won ($136.8 million) in debtor-in-possession financing arrives, the retailer intends to reopen all 67 temporarily shuttered stores, converting them into single-floor locations of roughly 3,305 square meters centered on food, private-label goods and everyday essentials.

Taking cues from the US grocery chain’s smaller-format stores, which stock roughly 4,000 items compared with the 30,000 to 50,000 typical of a conventional hypermarket, Homeplus hopes a leaner assortment weighted toward its private label, Simplus, will cut procurement and inventory costs.

“Trader Joe’s is a private-label-focused supermarket selling primarily food and daily necessities in optimally sized stores, where more than 80 percent of the products sold are its own brands,” the company said in a statement.

As appealing as it sounds, Homeplus’s shot at replicating the Trader Joe’s model depends on more than store format, analysts say, with the US chain’s success owing to a combination of strong product curation, brand loyalty and consumption patterns unique to the American market.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.