This should not be surprising to anyone. I would be more surprised if they didn’t have their own prison at their Beijing embassy to hold defectors in:

North Korea allegedly runs a secret detention facility in its embassy in China to interrogate and repatriate its nationals deemed threats to the regime, a report said Tuesday.

The claim was made in a report titled “North Korea’s Transnational Repression: China” released Tuesday by the Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG), a Seoul-based human rights group.

Based on interviews with multiple sources, including a former North Korean diplomat, the report claimed North Korea operates the facility in the basement of its embassy in Beijing, where surveillance, pursuit and arrest, detention and interrogation, and forced repatriation take place.

The secret operation is overseen by a “security representative” who holds a consular post but is reportedly a North Korean intelligence agency officer on a temporary assignment. Cases are reported to Pyongyang within 12-24 hours, according to the report.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Just like all good leftists the Kim regime is good at lying and blaming their foes for the things they do themselves:

North Korea on Wednesday denied South Korea’s announcement that a North Korean mine likely caused a recent blast inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), accusing Seoul of fabricating the findings and warning of “immediate and merciless” retaliation if its troops are fired upon.

Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, issued the warning in a statement after the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) announced Monday that North Korean land mines were “highly likely” to have caused the explosion on Sept. 21 that left three South Korean soldiers injured.

“What should not be overlooked is the fact that the armed gangsters of the ROK are now cooking up the groundless results and ‘justifying their conduct’ for political and military provocation against the DPRK, openly talking about ‘reasonable and corresponding enforcement of measures,'” Kim said in a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This must be pretty surreal for these Korean War to see what South Korea has become today decades after the Korean War:

Seventy-three years after fighting in a devastated South Korea, Marine veteran Patrick Finn returned this month to a country he could hardly have imagined while exhausted, dirty and frightened on the battlefield. Finn, of Minneapolis, served as a corporal with 1st Battalion, 5th Marines during the 1950-53 Korean War. “I couldn’t put a lot of things together until later,” he told Stars and Stripes in a Sept. 18 interview at the Ambassador Seoul hotel. “We were exhausted. We were tired, dirty, and I was scared.”

Finn was among six American Korean War veterans who toured South Korea from Sept. 14 to 19, visiting U.S. military installations and taking part in events commemorating the alliance between the two countries. Three former commanders of U.S. Forces Korea — retired Army Gens. Robert Abrams, Paul LaCamera and Burwell Bell — also participated. The group visited Osan Air Base and Camp Humphreys on Sept. 16 and 17. Humphreys is headquarters for USFK, United Nations Command and Combined Forces Command.

Stars and Stripes

You can read more at the link, but I wonder if I will ever be an old veteran like this and return to Iraq and think the same thing? Afghanistan I know there is no such chance of that place getting their act together. In Iraq I still think it is possible if they can get Iran to leave them alone.

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.