Basically what this ruling is telling everyone is that if you are a service member in USFK and are charged with child porn, just defect to North Korea and the charges will be dropped if you make it back:
Pvt. Travis King on Friday was sentenced to one year in prison after pleading guilty to deserting to North Korea. But he walked out of the courtroom a free man. “With time already served and credit for good behavior, Travis is now free and will return home,” said Frank Rosenblatt, an attorney for the soldier. Military Judge Lt. Col. Rick Mathew also sentenced King to reduction in rank to E-1 and a dishonorable discharge in a court-martial that lasted most of the day.
During the trial, King, 24, sat in his dress uniform between his attorneys and said it was his decision on July 18, 2023, to join a tour of the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea and then bolt into North Korea. The soldier did so because he was “dissatisfied with work,” he told the judge. King also pleaded guilty to three counts of disobeying an officer on Oct. 7, 2023, and another charge of assaulting a noncommissioned officer the following day.
He pleaded not guilty to additional charges related to child sexual abuse material and making false statements. The judge dismissed the remaining charges.
You can read more at the link, but King played the predictable race card saying everyone in the Army is racist. I have seen people in the Army get more jail time for doing far less than what King did and yet prosecutors agreed to a plea deal that let King walk free after less than a year in jail.
Is this posturing or this a sign of breaking of will within the Yoon the administration against the striking Korean doctors:
Health Minister Cho Kyoo-hong said Sunday that the government could revisit its medical school admission quota plan for 2026 if the medical community offers a rational alternative.
In an interview with KBS, Cho said, “For 2026, if the medical community presents a reasonable alternative, we can review the admissions numbers with a fresh perspective.”
“The government has proposed an increase of 2,000, but since the medical community has criticized this as unscientific and lacking evidence, we are asking what they believe would be a scientifically based and well-founded admission number,” Cho added.
You can read more at the link, but at this point President Yoon might as well stick this out and make increasing the number of doctors in Korea part of his lasting legacy even though his poll numbers are getting burned by it now.
Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.
At this point you just have to assume that any Chinese made electronic device has the ability to spy on you and that includes the Chinese made smartphone in your pocket:
South Korea’s military has been forced to remove more than 1,300 surveillance cameras from its bases after learning that they could be used to transmit signals to China, Yonhap news agency reported.
The cameras, which were supplied by a South Korean company, “were found to be designed to be able to transmit recorded footage externally by connecting to a specific Chinese server”, the outlet reported an unnamed military official as saying.Korean intelligence agencies discovered the cameras’ Chinese origins in July during an examination of military equipment, Yonhap said.
While some of the cameras were near the border with North Korea, they weren’t monitoring it and were instead focused on training bases and fences, the official said.
You can read more at the link.
A business deal that went bad led to an attempted murder:
The Seoul High Court said recently it upheld a six-year prison term for a 67-year-old North Korean defector for the attempted murder of another defector over a faulty investment opportunity.
A defendant was found guilty of attempted murder, after he stabbed the 70-year-old victim nine times and assaulted him with his fist at 11:40 p.m. on Nov. 14. The court turned down his claim of not intending to murder the victim, pointing out that he called the police after the crime and said he had “just committed murder today.”
The victim recovered after six weeks of medical treatment.
You can read more at the link.
This seems more like the Kim regime trying to keep up with the Jones instead of providing any real capability enhancements for the North Korean military. These early warning aircraft if ever completed, would quickly be shot down during any conflict on the peninsula by U.S. and ROK forces:
North Korea appears to be making progress in converting a Russian heavy transport plane into what could be the country’s first airborne early warning (AEW) platform, a report showed Wednesday, citing commercial satellite imagery.
Joseph Dempsey, a research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, made the analysis based on recent satellite imagery taken of the Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft at the Pyongyang Sunan International Airport.
In the report, Dempsey identified the aircraft as one of three Il-76s the North received from Russia in the 1990s, noting its fuselage had until recently been under a covered structure, suggesting a “possible special-mission role” for the airframe.
Satellite imagery taken on Sept. 8, however, showed the aircraft uncovered, with two vertical struts on the plane “consistent with a possible radar-dome mounting.”
You can read more at the link.
