This sounds like someone from the ROK military invited this person to give gender awareness training that was hijacked into something that went well beyond gender awareness:

It has been belatedly confirmed that the Army conducted training criticizing U.S. President Donald Trump for recruits entering a training center last month, while joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises were in full swing. 27th of last month. Lee Hae-kyung, Director of the Gender and Human Rights Education Center and a board member of the Seoul Northeast Women’s Association, stood at the podium. The problem is that Director Lee used controversial remarks by Spanish actor Javier Bardem as lecture material during the session. Attending the Cannes Film Festival last May, Javier Bardem had criticized President Trump, Russian President Putin, and Israeli President Netanyahu, citing “toxic masculinity” as the cause of war. Director Lee filled the chapter titled “Toxic Men Are the Cause of War” in his presentation materials with articles suggesting that the “toxic masculinity” of leaders was the cause of major wars recently occurring around the world.

According to educational materials submitted by the Ministry of National Defense to People Power Party Rep. Park Sung-hoon on the 23rd, lectures titled “The Power to Lead a Strong Military! A Barracks of Trust and Social Respect” were held for 1,600 trainees at the Army Training Center in Nonsan, South Chungcheong Province, on the 20th and 27th of last month. 

Maeil Shinmun

You can read more at the link.

It appears Andrei Lankov got himself out of a Latvian jail because he is quoted in the media supporting President Lee’s idea for a freeze deal with North Korea:

Lee’s proposal reflects the reality that persuading Pyongyang to surrender its nuclear arsenal is increasingly unlikely, said Andrei Lankov, a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul who specializes in North Korean affairs. “North Koreans have always been determined to remain nuclear,” he told Stars and Stripes by phone Wednesday. “Their experience of decades of negotiations has demonstrated that no amount of pressure, no amount of compensation or reward will persuade them to surrender their nuclear weapons.”

The “least bad option,” Lankov said, is to accept that North Korea is unlikely to denuclearize and “try to freeze the situation in its current shape.” Lankov cautioned, however, that securing such an agreement would be difficult. “North Koreans are likely to demand a lot in exchange for the agreement to freeze their program,” he said. North Korea’s improving economy and support from China and Russia mean Pyongyang would probably demand significantly more in exchange for concessions than it did during negotiations with Washington seven years ago, Lankov said.

Stars and Stripes

You cna read more at the link.

Really who else could have infiltrated the DMZ and planted these mines? It was obviously North Korea which gets back to the point I made before, when were they planted? Were this old mines from years ago when relations were tense or recently emplaced mines? If they are newly emplaced then the question really becomes why now?:

 North Korean land mines were highly likely the cause of a recent mine explosion inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), South Korea’s military has said, vowing to hold Pyongyang “fully” accountable and take corresponding measures if confirmed. 

The military announced its preliminary findings from its joint investigation with the U.N. Command (UNC) on Monday, hours after revisiting the site of last Monday’s explosion inside the DMZ separating the two Koreas. 

The blast left two South Korean soldiers severely injured and another with minor injuries. 

A focal point of the probe has been determining whether the mines belonged to North Korea, amid mounting speculation that land mines illegally planted by North Korean troops across the border caused the blast.

Forensic analysis of fragments and residue recovered from the scene revealed traces of trinitrotoluene (TNT) and brown synthetic material — key features consistent with North Korean antipersonnel land mines that use plastic resin rather than traditional wooden casing — Lt. Gen. Kwon Dae-won, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said in a press briefing.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The big question is if this was a recently planted mine by North Korea or one that has been sitting there for many years. It will be interesting to see if we ever get an answer to that question:

An undetonated land mine was spotted at the site of last week’s explosion inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), according to military sources Monday, citing initial statements from soldiers involved in the blast.

The statement was obtained as the military is working to determine the exact cause of last Monday’s blast that occurred south of the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) inside the DMZ separating the two Koreas. Two South Korean soldiers were severely wounded, with a third sustaining minor injuries.

The incident, which involved two separate explosions, is suspected of having been triggered by North Korean land mines.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It looks like the water crisis on Camp Humphreys from this past weekend is nearly over:

Schools were closed and some food services were unavailable Monday at America’s largest overseas military base as crews continued repressurizing water lines following a widespread weekend outage. Water was available throughout the installation, but officials were bringing services back gradually to avoid straining the recovering system, said U.S. Army Garrison Humphreys spokesman Jeff Nagan. “There is nobody without water that we’re aware of in any of our towers or barracks, or any of our facilities,” he told Stars and Stripes by phone Monday.

“We’re just repressurizing the lines.” Officials were considering whether to reopen food services gradually or all at once, Nagan said. Restaurants and coffee shops serving on Monday included Burger King, Starbucks and Dunkin’ at the Downtown Shopping Center; Qdoba, Popeye’s and Starbucks at the Sentry Mini-Mall; and Subway at the Family Mini-Mall, according to a post that day on the base’s Facebook page “It’s a slow and deliberate process, and we want to make sure we are not putting any unnecessary strain on our water system,” he said.

Stars and Stripes

You can read more at the link.

It looks like even more chipmaking capacity may be coming to the U.S.:

SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung speaks at the groundbreaking ceremony for the company’s advanced HBM packaging facility in West Lafayette, Indiana, on Aug. 27, where SK hynix plans to begin producing “Made in USA” HBM from the second half of 2029. (SK hynix)

“I think we need to build a factory in the United States. If possible, I believe we should build it,” SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won said in July, describing the “enormous pressure” from customers and governments to supply more memory chips. SK hynix was already preparing a US production base, but only for the later stages of making its most valuable artificial intelligence memory.

Its more than $4 billion Indiana plant, which broke ground last month, will receive advanced DRAM wafers made in South Korea and package and turn them into high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, from 2029. The memory chips themselves will still be fabricated in Korea.

The question now is whether SK hynix is willing to move part of the chipmaking itself to the US. Reuters reported Sept. 16 that SK hynix was discussing a bigger step, either leasing part of Intel’s Ohio complex to produce memory chips or forming a venture with Intel and major cloud companies seeking secure supplies. Two days later, Solidigm, SK hynix’s US NAND subsidiary, was reported to be considering a separate NAND plant in the US.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.