https://x.com/SungYoonLee1/status/1898895841026572732

This is not much of a hunger strike considering the impeachment ruling from the Constitutional Court is imminent any day now:

Some lawmakers of opposition parties on Tuesday launched a hunger strike calling for a verdict by the Constitutional Court to officially remove impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol from office over his failed bid to impose martial law. 

A group of opposition lawmakers, including from the main opposition Democratic Party (DP), the Rebuilding Korea Party and the Progressive Party, went on the hunger strike urging the court swiftly dismiss Yoon, who was released from detention last Saturday.

Yoon’s release came as another court allowed him to stand trial without physical detention, citing some questions about the legality of investigations over his charges.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

My assessment is that this disclosure of a nuclear powered submarine is more for PR purposes than any actual near term military benefits. This technology is very difficult to master and they are likely many years from having a working prototype. However, like with their nuclear program if nothing is done to reign their program in over a 10-15 year period, they will likely eventually have a working nuclear powered submarine:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, third from right, smiles during his visit to a shipyard to inspect nuclear submarine construction in this photo released by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, Saturday. Yonhap

North Korea has publicly unveiled the construction of a nuclear-powered submarine, a weapons system that could pose a serious security threat to South Korea and allies if successfully developed, due to its ability to operate submerged for months.

On Saturday, Pyongyang’s state-run media, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), released photos of leader Kim Jong-un inspecting shipyards focused on constructing warships, including “a nuclear-powered strategic guided missile submarine.”

“Kim stressed the need to make overwhelmingly powerful warships to contain hostile forces’ habitual gunboat diplomacy,” the KCNA reported without disclosing the exact location of the shipyards.

It was the first time that North Korea disclosed the ship’s appearance.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

A lot of incompetence on display here by these ROK pilots that mistakenly bombed a village near Pocheon:

According to the report, pilots preparing for the mission entered the coordinates for the planned strike a day before the incident. The lead pilot of the KF-16 squadron read out the route coordinates, including the target location, while the second pilot, who would be flying the second aircraft, entered the figures into the joint mission planning system (JMPS).

However, the target coordinates were entered incorrectly. It remains unclear at this stage whether the first pilot misread them or if the second pilot entered them incorrectly, according to Air Force officials. 

Either way, by procedure, the pilots should have rechecked the coordinates, but they failed to do so, marking the first missed opportunity to correct the error.

On the day of the drill, before takeoff, the pilots transferred the operation data from the JMPS onto a storage device for the jets. Due to an equipment malfunction, the pilot of the second aircraft had to manually enter the target coordinates in the cockpit.

This led to a discrepancy: the lead aircraft carried the incorrect coordinates from the previous day, while the second jet had the correct ones. During the final pre-flight inspection, both pilots reviewed the target coordinates again, but the lead pilot failed to notice the error. This was the second missed opportunity.

The most critical mistake occurred during the actual flight. 

Although the lead pilot noticed slight differences between the flight path and the target area’s terrain compared to previous training exercises, he proceeded with dropping the bombs.

In a rush to meet the designated time on target, the pilot failed to visually confirm the target but still reported “target in sight” and dropped the bombs. The second pilot, focused on maintaining formation with the lead aircraft, failed to recognize the first pilot’s mistake and proceeded with dropping bombs at the wrong coordinates, even though he had the right figures.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

This was very predictable that North Korea would fire missiles in response to the start of the US-ROK combined exercise:

 North Korea fired multiple ballistic missiles toward the Yellow Sea on Monday, South Korea’s military said, as Seoul and Washington launched their annual military drills, marking the North’s first known ballistic missile test since U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to the White House. 

The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said it detected the launch from an area near the western county of Hwangju in North Hwanghae Province at around 1:50 p.m., noting that it may have involved close-range ballistic missiles (CRBMs).

CRBMs refer to ballistic missiles that have a relatively short range of less than 300 kilometers.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I don’t think Yoon’s release is really going to impact the upcoming impeachment decision from the Constitutional Court. I think what will influence their decisionmaking is public sentiment. If public sentiment is overwhelmingly in favor of President Yoon I think it will be less likely he is convicted for impeachment:

As President Yoon Suk Yeol was released from detention on Saturday following a court decision, all attention is now channeled into how the release will affect the impeachment trial on his Dec. 3 martial law declaration, as any influence could add further complications.

The ruling People Power Party (PPP) and Yoon’s legal defense team hailed the decision as “confirmation” that there were serious violations of procedural rules throughout the investigation process, with some calling on the Constitutional Court to “correct” its own such violations before issuing a verdict on whether to formally oust the president from office.

On the other hand, the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) played down its significance, claiming that the ruling will have “no impact” on the impeachment trial and that any procedural flaws will not reverse the fact that his martial law imposition was unconstitutional.

On Friday, the Seoul Central District Court said it approved Yoon’s request for release after determining that the prosecution’s Jan. 26 indictment of him on insurrection charges, which allowed his arrest to be extended, had come hours after the 10-day initial detention period had already expired. It did not accept the prosecution’s usual way of calculating the duration of detention.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

This clearly shows that Chinese intelligence is targeting Chinese-Americans serving in the U.S. military to help with intelligence collection:

Two Army soldiers stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington and a former soldier in Oregon have been accused in separate indictments of sharing classified military information with China, according to the Justice Department. First Lt. Li Tian, a health services administrator serving in Washington, is accused of conspiring with Ruoyu Duan, a former soldier based in Oregon, to gather information secretly about the Army’s operations, including technical manuals, from November 2021 to December 2024.

Tian was tasked with obtaining instructions and manuals for Bradley and Stryker armored vehicles used by the Army and selling them to Duan, who was paid by unknown people in China, according to the Justice Department. Duan served in the Army from 2013 to 2017 and routinely made payments to other security clearance holders and active-duty service members, according to the indictment, though only two soldiers were named in indictments released this week.

A second indictment accuses Sgt. Jian Zhao, a battery supply sergeant assigned to the 17th Field Artillery Brigade in Washington, of obtaining and selling about 20 government hard drives, some marked “SECRET” and “TOP SECRET,” to buyers in China. Zhao received at least $15,000 in payments from August to December 2024.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but it is amazing for how little money these guys are willing to sell out the United States to China. After they finish whatever jail sentence they receive maybe they should be stripiped of U.S. citizenship and deported to China if they like it so much?