This is a horrible incident over in Daejeon:

 A female teacher in her 40s stabbed an eight-year-old student to death at an elementary school in the central city of Daejeon on Monday and inflicted stab wounds on herself, authorities said.

Earlier, police found the two with stab wounds on the second floor of an elementary school building in Daejeon, 160 kilometers south of Seoul, at around 6 p.m. after the student’s parent reported her missing from an after-school art class.

Rescuers transported the girl to a hospital in an unconscious state, but she later died. The teacher, who sustained stab wounds to the neck and arm, reportedly remained conscious. 

Police later said the teacher admitted to the crime during a subsequent investigation, with officials determining that she might have inflicted the injuries on herself afterward.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the female teacher had a history of depression before the incident and survived the suicide attempt.

Kim Jong-un was going to build his nuclear arsenal further regardless of the military cooperation between the ROK, US, and Japan:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said an elevated U.S. security partnership with South Korea and Japan poses a grave threat to his country and vowed to further bolster his nuclear weapons program, state media reported Sunday.

Kim has previously made similar warnings, but his latest statement implies again that the North Korean leader won’t likely embrace President Donald Trump’s overture to meet him and revive diplomacy anytime soon. In a speech marking the 77th founding anniversary of the Korean People’s Army on Saturday, Kim said the U.S.-Japan-South Korea trilateral security partnership established under a U.S. plot to form a NATO-like regional military bloc is inviting military imbalance on the Korean Peninsula and “raising a grave challenge to the security environment of our state,” according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

“Referring to a series of new plans for rapidly bolstering all deterrence including nuclear forces, he clarified once again the unshakable policy of more highly developing the nuclear forces,” KCNA said.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Hopefully no one is surprised by this announcement from the ROK NIS:

The Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) model DeepSeek provided different answers to sensitive questions depending on the language — for example, defining kimchi’s origin as Korea when asked in Korean, but claiming it is Chinese when asked in Chinese, Seoul’s spy agency said Sunday. 

The National Intelligence Service (NIS) said it has also found the AI service provides its advertisers with unlimited access to users’ personal data and such information is subject to submission to the Chinese government upon its request under Chinese law. 

The NIS released its assessment of the technological verification of DeepSeek amid growing controversy over security concerns surrounding the service, which has prompted South Korean authorities to block access to the site.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.

It looks like the difference between Yoon getting impeached and possibly going to jail is two similar sounding Korean words:

A former military commander involved in President Yoon Suk Yeol’s botched martial law bid confirmed Thursday that the people Yoon ordered to be removed from the National Assembly were lawmakers, not agents, a claim that Yoon again rejected.

Lt. Gen. Kwak Jong-keun, the then chief of the Army Special Warfare Command, made the remark as a witness during the sixth formal hearing of Yoon’s impeachment trial at the Constitutional Court.

Yoon was also in attendance.

“I obviously thought and understood the part about dragging people out from inside as referring to lawmakers because there were no operation agents inside the main (parliamentary) building at the time,” Kwak said, referring to a phone call he received from Yoon on the night martial law was imposed on Dec. 3.

Kwak was confirming testimony he has previously given in parliament, as former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun has disputed the claim, saying Yoon had in fact ordered the removal of agents, not lawmakers.

In Korean, the words for agent and lawmaker are similar in pronunciation.

Yoon once again denied the claim — saying he has never used the term “agent” — and accused Kwak of plotting against him.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest on the North Korean troop dispatch to Russia:

This image, captured from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s X account on Jan. 12, 2025, shows a passport he said one of the two North Korean soldiers captured by Ukrainian forces was possessing. (Yonhap)

North Korean troops deployed to support Russia’s war against Ukraine appear to have been absent from combat in the front-line Kursk region since mid-January, the spy agency said Tuesday. 

The National Intelligence Service (NIS) disclosed the intelligence, confirming a recent report from The New York Times that North Korean soldiers who fought alongside Russian troops in battle against Ukraine have been pulled from the front lines in mid-January due to heavy casualties, citing Ukrainian and U.S. officials.

“Since mid-January, there have been no signs showing North Korean troops deployed to the Russian Kursk region engaging in battle,” the NIS said. 

The spy agency echoed the news report, saying that heavy casualties appear to be one reason for the absence of North Korean troops, adding that efforts are under way to determine the exact reason.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.