The North Koreans are claiming that they are restarting their space launch program by launching a reconnaissance satellite:
North Korea conducted an “important test” of a “reconnaissance satellite” to verify the capabilities of its high-definition photographing and data-transmission systems, its state-run news agency said Monday.
The country’s aerospace and military science organizations conducted the test, according to the Korean Central News Agency. KCNA’s report did not include photographs of the launch but had pictures of Earth from space that it said were taken by cameras “loaded on the reconnaissance satellite.”
“The test is of great significance in developing the reconnaissance satellite,” KCNA claimed in its report.
The communist regime on Sunday launched what South Korea’s military believes was a ballistic missile off its eastern coast around 7:52 a.m. The missile, according to the South’s military, flew about 186 miles at a peak altitude of 385 miles. The Japan Coast Guard also confirmed the launch and its specifications.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link.
Here is the latest from President Moon on the full invasion the Russians have launched on Ukraine:
President Moon Jae-in said Thursday that South Korea will join international sanctions against Russia as he expressed regret over Russia’s attack on Ukraine, saying any use of armed force causing human casualties cannot be justified.
Moon also instructed the government to do everything possible to ensure the safety of South Korean nationals in Ukraine after he was briefed on the crisis in the wake of Russia’s attack, said Park Soo-hyun, senior presidential secretary for public communication.
“The use of armed forces causing human casualties cannot be justified under any circumstances. Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence must be guaranteed. Any dispute between countries should be resolved not through war but through dialogue and negotiation,” Moon was quoted as saying.
“As a responsible member of the international community, the Republic of Korea expresses support for international efforts, including economic sanctions, aimed at curbing armed invasion and resolving the situation peacefully, and will take part in them,” he said, referring to South Korea’s official name.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
The Marines in Japan continue to have rising COVID case numbers:
Another 73 people were confirmed positive for COVID-19 at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni over the four-day New Year’s holiday, according to base news releases Friday and Monday.
The base 25 miles south of Hiroshima has reported 143 cases of the coronavirus respiratory disease since Dec. 27. Its new case numbers surged suddenly but fall short of the 200-plus at Marine Corps bases on Okinawa where a viral cluster erupted in mid-November.
Another Marine Corps installation, Combined Arms Training Center Camp Fuji, reported 10 COVID-19 cases between Dec. 27 and 28, according to a base news release Wednesday.
Tokyo reported 103 new cases Monday, the first time the capital city has confirmed more than 100 infections on one day since Oct. 8, according to NHK.
The public broadcaster also reported Monday that Okinawa prefecture, where the bulk of U.S. forces in Japan are stationed, reported 130 cases Monday, breaking 100 for the first time since Sept. 25.
Okinawa public health authorities reported 235 cases within the U.S. military on Saturday, a single-day record for that population, according to The Asahi newspaper on Sunday. A spokesman for Marine Corps Installations Pacific did not return an email request for comment Monday from Stars and Stripes.
Japan overall reported 477 new cases Sunday, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link, but Japan with 477 case numbers is still incredibly low though the number has been growing the past three weeks.
The modern day comfort women crisis of sexually exploited North Korean women in China continues and hopefully this new book will help draw a focus on it:
Every year, an unspecified number of North Koreans risk their lives for the chance of a better life outside the impoverished nation. They secretly cross the border to arrive in China, hoping to go to a third country for a new life free of fear and starvation. If caught, they must pay the price: they may be executed or sent to labor camps notorious for their appalling human rights conditions.
For some, particularly women, their audacious decisions to escape to China are based on false promises. They are lured by human traffickers to cross the border for “jobs.”
Once arriving in China, their lives are no longer under their control. They may be raped by traffickers, who are Chinese or ethnic Koreans who were born and raised in China, before they are sold to poor, older Chinese farmers. Some are forced into prostitution or to perform online pornography. Scared by death threats or potential harm to their family members left behind in the North, they find it impossible to end the sexual bondage by themselves.Sylvia Yu Friedman, an award-winning filmmaker and investigative journalist who chronicled this modern-day sexual slavery in Asia in a documentary series, raised fresh worries about the ramifications of such enslavement: the traumas of victims’ lives are passed down onto their children.
Korea Times
You can read more at the link, but Friedman has written a book documenting the stories of the sex trafficking going on in China. I wonder if this quote in the Korea Times article will cause her to be sued and her book banned in Korea for providing a balanced history:
“It’s a wicked cycle repeating in a way, since Korean women were dragged as wianbu or comfort women to China and all over the Asia Pacific on the frontlines of war to comfort the Japanese soldiers before and during World War II,” she said. “There were Korean brokers and collaborators involved in recruiting young Korean women as comfort women and the same type of opportunists today deceive and lure vulnerable North Korean women into bride trafficking and online pornography in China.”
I don’t expect many activists to help these modern day comfort women because there is more money to be made in attacking the Imperial Japanese’s comfort women system from over 75 years ago.
The virus spread continues in South Korea:
South Korea’s new coronavirus cases topped 5,000 for the first time Wednesday and the number of critically ill patients hit a fresh high amid concerns over the global spread of the new virus variant.
The country reported 5,123 new COVID-19 cases, including 5,075 local infections, raising the total caseload to 452,350, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). The country’s previous highest daily number of cases was 4,115 last Wednesday
South Korea added 34 more deaths from COVID-19 on Wednesday, raising the death toll to 3,658. The fatality rate stood at 0.81 percent, up from 0.78 percent reported a month earlier.
Critically ill patients also reached an all-time high of 723, marking the first time the number breached the 700 mark. The previous daily record was 661 reported Tuesday.
Of the total, 610 of them are aged 60 or over, accounting for 84.4 percent, followed by 66 in their 50s and 25 in their 40s, the KDCA said.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but I think it is important to put these numbers into context. For example Sweden a country of just over 10 million people recorded a daily case number of over 6,000 cases on November 30th. The fact that South Korea has hit 5,000 cases with five times the population of Sweden shows it is not that bad and Korea can handle the increased cases numbers.
Here is the latest on the relocation of the MCAS Futenma on Okinawa that features so many similarities to the expansion of Camp Humphreys in South Korea. They only difference so far is that the Futenma relocation hasn’t had in Braveheart style battles yet:
Tamaki, not surprisingly, denied the application filed in April 2020. He wrote the Japanese government to say the seafloor at the site may be unstable and requires further investigation, along with other environmental concerns.
The seabed in Oura Bay in Henoko, where land is being reclaimed for the runway, is softer than builders anticipated. The prefecture has also raised concerns over endangered species of coral nearby.
“There are many people of Okinawa and of Japan who are anxious, furious and sad to see the government using iron fists and forcing the reclamation work without providing a sufficient explanation,” Tamaki said at a press conference Thursday. “We have repeatedly expressed to the government that relocation (of MCAS Futenma) to Henoko would not lead to an immediate removal of danger.”
This is Tamaki’s latest bid to halt a project that he campaigned on stopping. His efforts have largely been overruled by the Japanese courts and Cabinet-level authorities. (……)
The fight to relocate Marine air operations from a central urban area on Okinawa to the rural northern coast at Camp Schwab began over 25 years ago. Work finally began in 2017 but has been beset by legal and administrative challenges by successive governors. Cost overruns and delays have pushed the completion date past 2014 to 2030 and the cost from $2.2 billion to at least $8.7 billion.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link.
President Moon is doing what just about every other world leader is doing, setting a lofty emissions goal that he won’t be responsible for making happen. When it doesn’t happen he can just blame the person in power in 2030 for not making it happen when he is already long out of office:
President Moon Jae-in officially declared South Korea’s commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from the 2018 levels by 2030 as he addressed the annual U.N. climate conference.
Moon also said South Korea will try to bring carbon emissions down on the entire Korean Peninsula by pushing for tree planting campaigns in North Korea during a keynote speech at the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow.
South Korea’s reduction target represents a sharp raise from its previous goal of 26.3 percent.
“This is a bold objective that was raised by about 14 percent from the previous target,” Moon told the climate summit that brought together more than 100 heads of state, including U.S. President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but I don’t know how Korea will make this emissions target without nuclear energy that President Moon says he wants to get rid of. The few solar farms they have are already causing deforestation and devastating farming and there isn’t enough windmills to make a difference.
