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This is horrible for the airmen in this security force at Kunsan AB:

Members of the 8th Security Forces Squadron salute at Kunsan Air Base, South Korea, in May 2022. (Jesenia Landaverde/U.S. Air Force)

An airman was discovered dead at Kunsan Air Base in South Korea on Monday, less than two weeks after the death of a fellow service member assigned to the same unit. Senior Airman Saniyya Smalls, 25, of the 8th Security Forces Squadron, was found at an unspecified location on Kunsan, roughly 115 miles south of Seoul, the 8th Fighter Wing said in a news release Tuesday. Smalls’ death is a “tragic loss” and “has deeply impacted our community,” wing commander Col. Peter Kasarskis said in the release.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but condolences to the friends and family of both airmen.

With everything going on in the world, a badminton scandal is currently the top news story in South Korea:

Responding to critical comments by a badminton gold medalist toward her national team, South Korean Olympic chief Lee Kee-heung said Tuesday he had ordered five coaches to submit reports on the situation.

The action by Lee, president of the Korean Sport & Olympic Committee (KSOC), was in reference to criticism that An Se-young, the women’s singles champion at the Paris Olympics, leveled against the national badminton team moments after she won her gold medal Monday.

An, who had suffered a torn knee ligament in October 2023 while playing in the gold medal match of the Asian Games, claimed that her national team staff didn’t take her injury as seriously as they should have. She also said she found it “difficult” to continue on with the national team, though she later clarified she wasn’t about to retire from international play, and she was only demanding some action from the Badminton Korea Association.

With An and the rest of the badminton team heading back home Tuesday evening, Lee said he didn’t have enough time to look deeper into the situation.

Speaking to reporters at South Korea’s training camp in Fontainebleau, south of Paris, Lee said, “I ordered five coaches to submit reports on how An’s injury had been handled in the months between the Asian Games and the Paris Olympics.”

On top of injury management, An accused the national team of building training programs around doubles players instead of singles players like herself, and of sticking to archaic and inefficient regimens.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but this story makes me wonder if anyone would have cared about her complaints if she didn’t win a gold medal?

With another fire, this is making me wonder if Korean building owners will start banning EVs from being parked in parking garages?:

Firefighters work to extinguish a blaze that broke out from an EV car in a parking lot in South Chungcheong. [NEWS1]

Yet another EV-related blaze broke out in Geumsan County, South Chungcheong, following a Mercedes-Benz EV explosion in an underground parking lot in Incheon a week ago. 
  
The police have identified the vehicle involved as a Kia EV6 model. 
  
Residents reported flames in a parking lot to police and fire stations around 5 a.m. on Tuesday. Fire authorities dispatched 35 firefighters and 12 apparatuses, including some fire trucks, to extinguish the blaze. It was brought under control after an hour and 37 minutes, with no reported casualties. 
  
The fire department took measures to prevent the flames from spreading to nearby vehicles and moved the EV out of the parking garage during the firefighting process to minimize additional damage. 
  
“I parked and plugged in the charger around 7 p.m. the previous day,” said the vehicle’s owner, a man in his 50s.

Joong Ang Ilbo via a reader tip

You can read more at the link, but great job by the firefighters for putting out the fire before it spread to other vehicles in the parking garage.

This may be one of the greatest screw over jobs I have seen a Soldier receive due to an administrative error, he went from early promotion of Lieutentant Colonel to retired as a Captain:

When the Army selected Ronald Schow for an early promotion to lieutenant colonel in 2011, service officials realized they made a mistake five years earlier. Schow’s previous promotion to major had never been submitted to the Senate for confirmation, as required by law. His name had been left off the list that the Army sent to Congress in October 2006. Yet, the Army still sent Schow a promotion order that he and his unit believed to be accurate, and he was pinned with a major’s golden oak leaf on the chest of his uniform. Eventually, the Army decided to revoke the rank and return Schow to a captain — the rank at which he retired in 2017 after years of trying to rectify the error.

After exhausting all administrative options to gain a major’s retirement pay, Schow filed a lawsuit last year in Federal Claims Court to get $180,000 in back pay and retirement pay that he would have received if he had retired as a major. However, he said he’s not able to sue for negligence that led to lost earnings from not being promoted to lieutenant colonel because of the limitations service members have in suing the military.

A Supreme Court decision known as the Feres Doctrine blocks troops from suing for anything that occurred to them in the military that is related to their service. “It was terrible. Everyone thought this was an administrative issue, but it turned out to be a legal issue. There’s no precedent for demoting an officer without kicking [him or her] out of the Army,” said Schow, who lives in Indiana and is representing himself in court. “Not only did we lose money during the years where I got demoted, we lost money during the years where I should have been promoted. And to be honest, it’s affected my post-retirement prospects.”

Stars & Stripes

You need to read the whole thing at the link to understand the context of what happened. Basically one guy at Human Resources Command being sick led to the paperwork error that led to for some reason no one in the Army being able to fix. You would think this would be something a Congress person would dig into to rectify.