Pending Senate confirmation it looks like the current I Corps commander at Joint Base Lewis-McChord will be the next USFK commander:
U.S. President Joe Biden has nominated Lieut. Gen. Xavier Brunson, the commander of I Corps, to lead the South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC), the Pentagon said Wednesday, a nomination ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election.
If confirmed, Brunson would replace Gen. Paul LaCamera who has led CFC, United Nations Command (UNC) and U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) since July 2021.
The position for the top U.S. general in South Korea leads the three commands, including the 28,500-strong USFK.
His appointment requires Senate confirmation.
You can read more at the link.
North Korea’s war against the fish in the East Sea continues:
North Korea fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles toward the East Sea on Thursday, the South Korean military said, a week after Pyongyang warned that South Korea and the United States will have to pay a “dear price” for their joint drills.
“The North Korean missiles flew about 360 kilometers and landed in the East Sea,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said. It said it detected the missiles launched from the Pyongyang area at 7:10 a.m., but it did not provide any further details, such as the number of missiles fired.
The distance, if fired southward, is sufficient to affect major South Korean cities such as Seoul and Daejeon as well as key military facilities in Gyeryong and Gunsan.
You can read more at the link.
It looks like MCST got caught pushing out unverified reports as facts:
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) recently released a webtoon based on the “North Korea Human Rights Report” that included the claim, “30 North Korean middle school students were publicly executed for watching South Korean dramas.”
However, the Unification Ministry, which published the actual human rights report, stated that no such information is included, raising suspicions that the MCST might have fabricated the news.
According to Rep. Yoon Hu-duk of the opposition Democratic Party of Korea, who is also a member of the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee, the MCST published a webtoon titled “Talking About the Lives of North Korean Residents Through the 2024 North Korea Human Rights Report” on July 30. The webtoon appeared on the “Korea Policy Briefing,” the official government website that introduces government policies.
In the webtoon, characters claim that “North Korea publicly executed 30 middle school students for watching South Korean dramas on USBs carried by balloons,” and “Not only that, but just recently, 30 teenagers around the age of 17 were sentenced to life imprisonment and execution for similar reasons.”
However, the 2024 North Korea Human Rights Report, which the MCST cited as the basis for the webtoon, does not contain such information.
You can read more at the link.
Here is another example of a potential North Korean gray zone attack against South Korea. They have done these water releases before, sometimes with deadly results:
North Korea appears to have discharged a “considerable” amount of water from the upstream of its dam near the inter-Korean border, Seoul’s environment ministry said Wednesday.
Satellite imagery taken at 3 p.m. showed the downstream of the Imjin River had significantly broadened in width, according to the ministry.
The water level of the South Korea’s northernmost Pilseung Bridge on the Imjin River had reached 1 meter as of 5 p.m., up from 0.3 meter recorded three hours before.
You can read more at the link.
We now know likely why a fire was started by one of North Korea’s trash balloons that landed on a building in South Korea:
Timer devices on some North Korean trash-carrying balloons could cause fires, South Korea’s military said Tuesday, amid a series of fires in the country suspected to be caused by the balloons.
On Monday, firefighters put out a blaze that began on the rooftop of a warehouse in Paju, 27 kilometers northwest of Seoul, after a North Korean trash balloon landed there, renewing concerns whether the balloons or the substances they drop could be a fire hazard.
A Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesperson said some North Korean balloons have dropped bundles of trash using devices that heat up and disconnect the garbage after a certain period of time, noting they could lead to fires if they land on surfaces without properly separating.
Korea Times via a reader tip
You can read more at the link, but clearly this incident shows how the trash balloons can be weaponized to become a more provocative gray zone weapon. Similar to the Imperial Japanese using balloons to start forest fires in the Pacific Northwest during World War II, these trash balloons could easily be used to start forest fires in South Korea.
Even worse would be if these balloons were launched during conflict to complicate aviation and integrated air and missile defense targeting over South Korea. These balloons clearly have a lot more military potential than just the nuisance they appear to be today.
