The HMS Queen Elizabeth first made its presence known in the region by conducting a freedom of navigation patrol in the South China Sea, now it is off the coast of Korea promoting cooperation with the ROK Navy:
British Royal Navy Commodore Steve Moorhouse, commander of an aircraft carrier strike group on a seven-month world tour, has called for strengthening cooperation with South Korea as part of its efforts to boost his country’s involvement in the Indo-Pacific region.
Moorhouse made the remark as the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth and its fleet was in waters off the Korean Peninsula on Tuesday for a joint training with South Korea for humanitarian and disaster relief missions.
“The United Kingdom, like the Republic of Korea, is an outward-looking trading nation committed to contributing to maritime security, which underpins global prosperity,” he said in a video posted on Twitter on Monday.
“By sailing here, we make clear our determination to work with like-minded nations in support of an open and transparent system of international rules,” he said. “Our aim is to strengthen the ties between our two countries and to pave the way for closer cooperation in the future.”
During the joint training, the South Korean Navy was expected to dispatch a 14,000-ton large transport ship, an Aegis destroyer and a submarine, among other assets.
The 64,000-ton British aircraft carrier had planned a port call in the southeastern city of Busan, but the plan was called off due to the COVID-19 situation. The two sides agreed instead to conduct scaled-back exchange activities from Monday to Wednesday.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
North Korean defector Yeonmi Park has been on a roll lately with her comments lately:
Park, however, said the Olympic-qualified athlete was “so privileged” and that she does not know what oppression under a dictatorship really looks like.
“In North Korea, people who are actually oppressed don’t even know they’re oppressed,” she said. “The fact that she’s complaining about oppression and systemic racism — she does not understand that she’s so privileged.”
“There are people dying to come to America at this very moment,” Park said. “I just hope they go to North Korea, China and see how humans are being oppressed, and they will truly understand how valuable the freedom that we have is.”
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
Yeonmi Park has an interesting take on her time at Columbia University:
One of several hundred North Korean defectors settled in the United States, Park, 27, transferred to Columbia University from a South Korean university in 2016 and was deeply disturbed by what she found.
“I expected that I was paying this fortune, all this time and energy, to learn how to think. But they are forcing you to think the way they want you to think,” Park said in an interview with Fox News. “I realized, wow, this is insane. I thought America was different but I saw so many similarities to what I saw in North Korea that I started worrying.”
Those similarities include anti-Western sentiment, collective guilt and suffocating political correctness.
Yeonmi saw red flags immediately upon arriving at the school.
During orientation, she was scolded by a university staff member for admitting she enjoyed classic literature such as Jane Austen.
“I said ‘I love those books.’ I thought it was a good thing,” recalled Park.
“Then she said, ‘Did you know those writers had a colonial mindset? They were racists and bigots and are subconsciously brainwashing you.’”
It only got worse from there as Yeonmi realized that every one of her classes at the Ivy League school was infected with what she saw as anti-American propaganda, reminiscent to the sort she had grown up with. (…….)
“Even North Korea is not this nuts,” she admitted. “North Korea was pretty crazy, but not this crazy.”
Fox News via a reader tip
Here is how she wraps up the article:
“North Koreans, we don’t have Internet, we don’t have access to any of these great thinkers, we don’t know anything. But here, while having everything, people choose to be brainwashed. And they deny it.”
Having come to America with high hopes and expectations, Yeonmi expressed her disappointment.
“You guys have lost common sense to degree that I as a North Korean cannot even comprehend,” she said.
“Where are we going from here?” she wondered. “There’s no rule of law, no morality, nothing is good or bad anymore, it’s complete chaos.”
“I guess that’s what they want, to destroy every single thing and rebuild into a Communist paradise.”
A pretty interesting perspective on the direction of America from Yeonmi Park.
