The guided missile cruiser Varyag of the Russian Pacific Fleet enters South Korea’s southeastern port of Busan on April 11, 2017, as part of a regular exchange program with the South Korean Navy Fleet Command. (Yonhap)
After reading this article about the slave labor conditions these North Korean workers in Russia are facing; I couldn’t help, but think that this sounded like the conditions many juicy girls used to face not too long ago in South Korea:
A North Korean slave laborer died building a soccer stadium in Saint Petersburg, Russia, for the 2018 World Cup, Norwegian football magazine Josimar reported Thursday. He was one of at least 110 North Korean slave laborers that toil at the building site.
Josimar and Western human rights groups are demanding that FIFA, the international football governing body, delve into abuses of the North Korean workers there.
Josimar found out about them when it was covering the construction of the Krestovsky Stadium, which was completed last month in time for the FIFA Confederations Cup in June.
The North Koreans lived in containers set up in a waste ground 200-300 m from the stadium. They worked at the site from 7 a.m. till midnight every day without a day off, Josimar said.
Their passports had been confiscated and they were under surveillance around the clock, banned from contacting workers from other countries. The site was surrounded by iron fence and barbed wire. A Russian supervisor at the site said the workers were “like robots” and looked deeply unhappy. [Chosun Ilbo]
I am glad the Korean authorities caught these two because I can’t stand people who steal or leave graffiti everywhere:
Police have arrested two Russians for allegedly vandalizing subway cars in Daegu and stealing clothes from department stores in Seoul and Busan.
Daegu Dongbu Police Station said on Monday that the two men, 22 and 20, allegedly painted the word “ONAS” — meaning “we” in Russian — on two subway cars at a depot in the city’s Dong-gu district around 1:40 a.m. on Oct. 16.
A Daegu department store employee reported the men to police.
After analyzing CCTV footage, police discovered that the graffiti suspects were wanted by Busan Jungbu Police Station on a charge of stealing clothes worth 7.5 million won ($6,620) from department stores in Seoul and Busan on Oct. 11 and 12, respectively.
According to Daegu police, the Russians stole the clothes and vandalized the subway cars “for fun.” [Korea Times]
You just have to love the hypocrites in the Russian and Chinese military who come out against THAAD deployment to South Korea with comments like this:
Washington was using the North’s actions as a pretext to gain military superiority over China, Chinese general Cai Jun told defence officials at a briefing on the forum’s sidelines.
Deploying the system in South Korea, he said, was “not conducive to the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula”, he said, adding “it has increased the risk of military conflict in the region”. [AFP]
You know what is not conducive to “peace and stability” North Korea continuous provocations, missile firings and nuclear tests.
Beijing fears that THAAD could be used against its own missiles, effectively undermining its nuclear deterrence capabilities against the US.
From a global perspective, Cai said, the US’s insistence on developing its missile defence programme could trigger “an arms race at a high level, even to outer space.”
It is pretty ironic that the Chinese are worried about an arms race when their unilateral territorial grabs in the South China Sea and the East China Sea is causing an arms race with neighboring countries in the reasons.
Speaking on a panel during the forum, Russian deputy defence minister Anatoly Antonov also slammed the agreement.
“We are concerned about the attempts of certain nations to exploit the complex situation in the Korean peninsula,” he said, “pumping this sub-region with clearly excessive defence capabilities.”
The decision has “aggravated regional tension” and “adds problems to solving the situation.”
You can read more at the link, but if the Russians are so concerned about aggravating regional tensions and adding problems then why don’t they do something to stop North Korea nuclear and missile programs that are the main cause of all the regional tensions and problems?
A group of grandchildren of Koreans who were forcibly taken to work on Russia’s far east island of Sakhalin during the Japanese colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula (1910-45), arrives at Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, on Aug. 2, 2016. A civic organization in Busan invited the group to a five-day history tour program. Some 43,000 Koreans were sent to the icy island that was a part of the Japanese empire at the time. (Yonhap)
Yonhap is reporting that the deployment of THAAD to South Korea was not a major issue discussed during recent diplomatic meetings with Russia:
South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se (L) and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov sign an agreement in Moscow on June 13, 2016, on the exchanges between their agencies for 2016-2017. In their bilateral talks, the two diplomats agreed to cooperate for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, Seoul officials said. (Yonhap)
The top diplomats of South Korea and Russia barely discussed the controversial issue of deploying an advanced U.S. missile defense system on Korean soil during their talks earlier this week, a Seoul official said.
The senior official told South Korean reporters during a luncheon in St. Petersburg on Tuesday that the topic of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system was raised in the meeting between South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, but only in passing.
“(The Russian side) mentioned a confrontational structure in Asia but barely talked about it,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “This showed (Moscow’s) will to focus more on bilateral relations and the North Korean nuclear issue.”
Russia and China have strongly opposed the possible deployment of a THAAD battery to South Korea, claiming it would undermine the strategic balance in the region. Seoul and Washington insist the missile defense system, if placed in the South, would be purely defensive in the face of North Korea’s evolving nuclear and missile threats. [Yonhap]
You can read the rest at the link, but in the past the Russian ambassador to North Korea complained that THAAD could potentially be used to shoot down Russian missiles fired at South Korea.
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