Quotes of the Day:

“Personnel policies that prohibit stabilized assignments prevent active UW, FID, and PSYOP specialists from attaining required cultural expertise, including language proficiency, in respective areas of responsibility.”

- The late COL John M. Collins, aka The Warlord. April 28, 1987

“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.” 

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

​"​Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.​"​ 

​-​Joseph Stalin

​1. S. Korea in shock, grief as 153 die in Halloween crowd surge

​2.  South Korea Halloween Tragedy Claims Mostly Young Revelers

3. Yoon announces national mourning period over Itaewon stampede

​4. Chronology of major stampedes in S. Korea ​

​5. Escapes increase as North Korean workers in Russia are told to ship out to Ukraine​

6. U.S. says North Korea policy unchanged after nuclear remark raises eyebrows

7. 4 Decades of Reckoning With North Korea’s Nuclear Threat – and Counting

8. Hallyu! The Korean Wave at the V&A is an unflinching look at the country’s creative rise

9. How Itaewon turned into epicenter of tragedy

10. Is South Korea ready to go it alone on defense?

​11.​ Bracing for the North’s chemical weapons

​12. ​Could Itaewon tragedy have been prevented?

1. S. Korea in shock, grief as 153 die in Halloween crowd surge

I am sure no one has not seen this news. What a terrible tragedy. I know I have walked up and down all these alleyways hundreds of times over the last four decades when I was stationed in Korea and especially when living in Yongsan..

But now we are going to see how domestic Korean politics are going to blame the Yoon administration. There are already comparisons being made to the Sewol ferry sinking tragedy during the Park administration. The opposition will try to use this to bring down the Yoon administration and this will dominate the news for some time.

In addition, Halloween is not a Korean tradition, I am sure those who are opposed to foreign influence in Korea focus on that as well. I am not sure if the north Korean Propaganda and Agitation Department will be able to develop themes and messages from this but they could try to turn this into not only anti-Yoon sentiment, but also anti-Americanism. A major line of the regime's strategic effort is subversion - e.g., subversion of the ROK political system and subversion of the ROK/US alliance. This tragedy could be exploited for those efforts.  

​Video at the link.​

S. Korea in shock, grief as 153 die in Halloween crowd surge

https://apnews.com/article/health-seoul-covid-south-korea-95c403f1712f8dbfab96e9da88366b03?user_email=06226fcc158b1f514791c81422207cd68e256e53c176b3708427fb43baccfcf3&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Oct30_MorningWire&utm_content=B&utm_term=Morning%20Wire%20Subscribers

By KIM TONG-HYUNG and HYUNG-JIN KIM

40 minutes ago

1 of 26

A woman places a bouquet of flowers to pay tribute for victims near the scene of a deadly accident in Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, Oct. 30, 2022, following Saturday night's Halloween festivities. A mass of mostly young people among tens of thousands who gathered to celebrate Halloween in Seoul became trapped and crushed as the crowd surged into a narrow alley, killing dozens of people and injuring dozens of others in South Korea’s worst disaster in years. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Concerned relatives raced to hospitals in search of their loved ones Sunday as South Korea mourned the deaths of more than 150 people, mostly in their 20s and 30s, who got trapped and crushed after a huge Halloween party crowd surged into a narrow alley in a nightlife district in Seoul.

Witnesses said the crowd surge Saturday night in the Itaewon area caused “a hell-like” chaos as people fell on each other “like dominoes.” Some people were bleeding from their noses and mouths while being given CPR, witnesses said, while others clad in Halloween costumes continued to sing and dance nearby, possibly without knowing the severity of the situation.

“I still can’t believe what has happened. It was like a hell,” said Kim Mi Sung, an official at a nonprofit organization that promotes tourism in Itaewon.

Kim said she performed CPR on 10 people who were unconscious and nine of them were declared dead on the spot. Kim said the 10 were mostly women wearing witch outfits and other Halloween costumes.

The crowd surge is the country’s worst disaster in years. As of Sunday evening, officials put the death toll at 153 and the number of injured people at 133. The Ministry of the Interior and Safety said the death count could further rise as 37 of the injured people were in serious conditions.

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Ninety-seven of the dead were women and 56 were men. More than 80% of the dead are in their 20s and 30s, but at least four were teenagers.

At least 20 of the dead are foreigners from China, Russia, Iran and elsewhere. There is one American among the dead, the Interior Ministry said in a release.

An estimated 100,000 people had gathered in Itaewon for the country’s biggest outdoor Halloween festivities since the pandemic began. The South Korean government had eased COVID-19 restrictions in recent months.

Witnesses said the streets were so densely clogged with people and slow-moving vehicles that it was practically impossible for emergency workers and ambulances to reach the alley near Hamilton Hotel swiftly.

Authorities said thousands of people have called or visited a nearby city office, reporting missing relatives and asking officials to confirm whether they were among those injured or dead after the crush.

The bodies of the dead were being kept at 42 hospitals in Seoul and nearby Gyeonggi province, according to Seoul City, which said it will instruct crematories to burn more bodies per day as part of plans to support funeral proceedings.

Around 100 businesses in the Hamilton Hotel area have agreed to shut down their shops through Monday to reduce the number of partygoers who would come to the streets through Halloween day.

While Halloween isn’t a traditional holiday in South Korea — where children rarely go trick-or-treating — it’s still a major attraction for young adults, and costume parties at bars and clubs have become hugely popular in recent years.

Itaewon, near where the former headquarters of U.S. military forces in South Korea operated for decades before moving out of the capital in 2018, is an expat-friendly district known for its trendy bars, clubs and restaurants. It’s the city’s marquee Halloween destination.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared a one-week national mourning period on Sunday and ordered flags at government buildings and public offices to fly at half-staff. During a televised speech, Yoon said supporting the families of the victims, including their funeral preparations, and the treatment of the injured would be a top priority for his government.

He also called for officials to thoroughly investigate the cause of the accident and review the safety of other large cultural and entertainment events to ensure they proceed safely.

“This is really devastating. The tragedy and disaster that need not have happened took place in the heart of Seoul amid Halloween (celebrations),” Yoon said during the speech. “I feel heavy hearted and cannot contain my sadness as a president responsible for the people’s lives and safety.”

After the speech, Yoon visited the Itaewon alley where the disaster occurred. Local TV footage showed Yoon inspecting the alley filled with trash and being briefed by emergency officials.

It was not immediately clear what led the crowd to surge into the narrow, downhill alley. One survivor said many people fell and toppled one another “like dominoes” after they were pushed by others.

The survivor, surnamed Kim, said they were trapped for about an hour and a half before being rescued, as some people shouted “Help me!” and others were short of breath, according to the Seoul-based Hankyoreh newspaper.

Another survivor, Lee Chang-kyu, said he saw about five or six men push others before one or two began falling, according to the newspaper.

In an interview with news channel YTN, Hwang Min-hyeok, a visitor to Itaewon, said it was shocking to see rows of bodies near the hotel. He said emergency workers were initially overwhelmed, leaving pedestrians struggling to administer CPR to the injured lying on the streets. People wailed beside the bodies of their friends, he said.

A man in his 20s said he avoided being trampled by managing to get into a bar whose door was open in the alley, Yonhap news agency reported. A woman in her 20s surnamed Park told Yonhap that she and others were standing along the side of the alley while others caught in the middle of the alley had no escape.

Choi Seong-beom, chief of Seoul’s Yongsan fire department, said that bodies were being sent to hospitals or a gym, where bereaved family members could identify them.

World leaders offered condolences, including British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

“All our thoughts are with those currently responding and all South Koreans at this very distressing time,” he tweeted.

Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, tweeted that reports of the disaster were “heartbreaking” and said Washington “stands ready to provide the Republic of Korea with any support it needs.”

The last South Korean disaster this deadly also hit young people the hardest. In April 2014, 304 people, mostly high school students, died in a ferry sinking. The sinking exposed lax safety rules and regulatory failures. It was partially blamed on excessive and poorly fastened cargo and a crew poorly trained for emergency situations.

Saturday’s deaths will likely draw public scrutiny of what government officials have done to improve public safety standards since the ferry disaster.

This was the deadliest crushing disaster in South Korean history. In 2005, 11 people were killed and around 60 others were injured at a pop concert in the southern city of Sangju.

In 1960, 31 people died after being crushed on the stairs of a train station as large crowds rushed to board a train during the Lunar New Year holidays.

It was also Asia’s second major crushing disaster in a month. On Oct. 1, police in Indonesia fired tear gas at a soccer match, causing a crush that killed 132 people as spectators attempted to flee.

More than 1,700 response personnel from across the country were deployed to the streets to help the wounded, including about 520 firefighters, 1,100 police officers and 70 government workers. The National Fire Agency separately said in a statement that officials were still trying to determine the exact number of emergency patients.

2. South Korea Halloween Tragedy Claims Mostly Young Revelers

Who would have anticipated that alleyways and side streets needed to be "guarded?" Imagine the amount of manpower required since there are so many where this could have occurred. I am reserving judgment on blame until we learn all the facts, but as I have said the political opposition will not.

Excerpts:

That most people were walking down the sloped side street likely worsened matters, crowd-control experts said. As people up front fell or tripped, the masses in the back would have seen what appeared to have been an opening. Any push forward would have caused even more people in front to topple over one another.

Unable to breathe, most of those trapped under a growing pile of people—or even those standing up though sandwiched between others—would have up to 15 seconds before passing out. After that, a typical person would have just five or six minutes to survive without blood flowing to the brain.

“Beyond that your chances of surviving are remote,” said Stan Kephart, an expert on police and security practices, who often provides expert testimony on the topic.

Paul Wertheimer, a crowd-safety expert who heads the California-based Crowd Management Strategies, wonders if local authorities had anticipated bigger-than-expected numbers showing up in Itaewon, given how Covid-19 restrictions had created pent-up demand from partygoers and businesses alike.

Law enforcement should have been managing access to the alleyway, almost as if they were nightclub bouncers, Mr. Wertheimer said. “Why does this happen? Too many people in a small space,” he said.

South Korea Halloween Tragedy Claims Mostly Young Revelers

Night of revelry in Seoul’s Itaewon club district ends in heartbreak as at least 153 die in crowd crush

https://www.wsj.com/articles/south-korea-halloween-tragedy-claims-mostly-young-revelers-11667133329?mod=Searchresults_pos4&page=1

By Jiyoung SohnFollow

, Dasl YoonFollow

 and Timothy W. MartinFollow

Oct. 30, 2022 8:35 am ET

SEOUL—In a narrow alleyway in Seoul’s lively club district, Halloween revelers were packed together so tightly that no one could move. People shouted to move forward. Others screamed to push back.

Within moments late Saturday night, they began to fall like dominoes, as the crowd began collapsing on itself down the sloped side street. Hundreds of people got crushed, creating a human pile that stacked higher and higher.

At least 153 people were killed in the Itaewon district, as a night that started with a celebratory atmosphere for the first Halloween without most Covid-19 restrictions turned into one of the country’s worst tragedies. Most of the victims were young. Many were female, authorities said. Some 103 others suffered injuries, with at least 24 in critical condition on Sunday, authorities said.

Police said they are investigating whether the businesses and local authorities took proper safety precautions. They haven’t said what might have caused the crowd to fall.

Crowd-control experts said, based on reports of the incident, that authorities didn’t appear to have sufficient measures in place to safely manage such a large mass of people.

Photos: Deadly Halloween Crowd Crush in Seoul

At least 151 people died and dozens more were injured in the popular nightlife district of Itaewon

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Emergency responders rushed to Itaewon, a popular club district in Seoul. The victims largely were people in their teens and 20s, fire authorities said.JUNG YEON-JE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

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Emergency responders rushed to Itaewon, a popular club district in Seoul. The victims largely were people in their teens and 20s, fire authorities said.JUNG YEON-JE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

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Kim Ji-ae, a 26-year-old Pilates instructor, walked near the accident scene on Saturday night. She had been en route to take photos of herself at a hotel in Itaewon, dressed as a hotel guest with a bathrobe and her hair tied up with a white towel. Bodies stretched several blocks—probably more than 100, she estimated.

Her friend lent an emergency responder her red lipstick, which was used to mark the stomachs of those who had died so that they could focus on survivors. Before leaving the area, she removed the white towel she had worn as part of her costume and covered up one of the marked bodies.

“I can’t forget his pale face,” Ms. Kim said.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol called the deaths a truly horrific incident and a disaster that should have never happened. The government will provide financial assistance to those injured and families of the deceased. A national mourning period will run through Saturday with a special venue set up in downtown Seoul to allow people to pay tribute to the victims.

“We will thoroughly investigate the cause of the accident and take measures to ensure a similar accident does not occur again in the future,” Mr. Yoon said.

The deadly crush occurred on a narrow, sloped alleyway.

PHOTO: CHUNG SUNG-JUN/GETTY IMAGES

Among the dead, 97 were women and 56 were men, authorities said. Not all of the victims have been identified, prompting Twitter Inc. and South Korea’s two largest internet platforms to ask users to refrain from spreading video footage and unverified information.

Witnesses described a surreal scene, where some said they initially thought the first responders and bodies covered in blue sheets were Halloween-inspired theater. Itaewon—which was until a few years ago the longtime home to the U.S. military presence in South Korea—sits in the center of Seoul and ranks among the city’s most-popular destinations for locals and tourists.

The tragedy likely resulted from poor crowd control, experts said, raising questions over how South Korean authorities had regulated the mass numbers who flocked to the district to celebrate the first Halloween following the relaxation of most of the country’s Covid-19 restrictions. Officials had estimated that turnout could reach 100,000.

Local police had dispatched around 200 personnel to contend with the influx of Itaewon visitors. But much of the law-enforcement presence was tasked with investigating drug or sex-related crimes, not crowd management, according to a press release on Thursday from the Yongsan Police Station, whose jurisdiction includes Itaewon.

During a briefing early Sunday morning, Choi Eul-cheon, who heads the criminal division for the Yongsan Police Station, was asked whether the police had taken crowd-control measures before the accident, and about the details of how its forces had been stationed across the neighborhood. Mr. Choi said he wasn’t in a position to answer.

The first emergency call came in at 10:15 p.m. Saturday. Emergency responders arrived at the scene two minutes later. But the officials struggled to parse through the sea of people.

Emergency responders at the scene in the club district in Seoul on Sunday.

PHOTO: KIM HONG-JI/REUTERS

The police and firefighters didn’t have enough personnel to handle the hundreds of victims, witnesses said. Many at the scene assisted first responders by moving bodies to the main street and performing CPR themselves. Some began live streaming the situation on social media, as the witnesses said people shouted, “Please pull my friend out!” or, “Please save me!”

Walking out of a club near the accident site around 11:30 p.m., Lee Tae-hoon, a 23-year-old university student visiting from Canada, heard a busy firefighter ask if anyone knew how to perform CPR. A former lifeguard, he stepped forward. He tried to resuscitate a young woman. After a few minutes, the firefighter said the woman had shown no signs of life.

Throughout the evening, Mr. Lee said he hadn’t encountered much law enforcement except for the occasional police officer directing traffic. He had bounced around different Itaewon bars and clubs since around 6:30 p.m. The area had been packed, and he recalled how the crowd had lifted him forward even as he stood still.

“I could totally imagine how some people could get crushed to death,” Mr. Lee said.

Zen Ogren, a 32-year-old university student from Turkey, and her two friends were at a nightclub located in the basement of a building right by the alleyway where the deadly accident had unfolded. Around 10:30 p.m., Ms. Ogren went up to the first floor, which houses a restaurant, to get some fresh air. Outside, she saw people were stacked on top of each other—many lifeless, some with broken legs and disfigured faces.

She heard people plead for others not to push, and she believed catastrophe could have been avoided if people just stood in their places. “I really don’t understand,” said Ms. Ogren, who lives in Itaewon.

The roughly 150-feet walk down the narrow Itaewon alleyway would typically take under a minute. On Saturday night it became clogged with partygoers who inched toward the main street that runs through Itaewon and feeds to the subway station.

Rescue team and firefighters in Itaewon on Sunday.

PHOTO: KIM HONG-JI/REUTERS

That most people were walking down the sloped side street likely worsened matters, crowd-control experts said. As people up front fell or tripped, the masses in the back would have seen what appeared to have been an opening. Any push forward would have caused even more people in front to topple over one another.

Unable to breathe, most of those trapped under a growing pile of people—or even those standing up though sandwiched between others—would have up to 15 seconds before passing out. After that, a typical person would have just five or six minutes to survive without blood flowing to the brain.

“Beyond that your chances of surviving are remote,” said Stan Kephart, an expert on police and security practices, who often provides expert testimony on the topic.

Paul Wertheimer, a crowd-safety expert who heads the California-based Crowd Management Strategies, wonders if local authorities had anticipated bigger-than-expected numbers showing up in Itaewon, given how Covid-19 restrictions had created pent-up demand from partygoers and businesses alike.

Law enforcement should have been managing access to the alleyway, almost as if they were nightclub bouncers, Mr. Wertheimer said. “Why does this happen? Too many people in a small space,” he said.

On Sunday afternoon, Itaewon had largely emptied out, with the main road blocked off with yellow barricade tape and police buses lining the streets. Police guarded the funeral hall at the nearest hospital from the Itaewon subway station. At the alleyway, people had placed on the ground bouquets of yellow and white chrysanthemums—flowers traditionally used at South Korean funerals. One person left a note with their offering: “I hope you achieve your dreams in a better world,” it read, addressed to no one in particular.

Lee Sang-won closed his cafe near the accident site early, at around 2 p.m., struggling to reckon with the tragedy.

“People died in these streets just yesterday and I can’t get the image out of my head,” he said.

Write to Jiyoung Sohn at jiyoung.sohn@wsj.com, Dasl Yoon at dasl.yoon@wsj.com and Timothy W. Martin at timothy.martin@wsj.com

3. Yoon announces national mourning period over Itaewon stampede

This tragedy will stifle other news reporting at least during the mourning period. The question is how will Kim Jong Un try to exploit this?

(3rd LD) Yoon announces national mourning period over Itaewon stampede | Yonhap News Agency

en.yna.co.kr · by 이해아 · October 30, 2022

(ATTN: UPDATES with dates of mourning period, other details in paras 5-7)

By Lee Haye-ah

SEOUL, Oct. 30 (Yonhap) -- President Yoon Suk-yeol on Sunday announced a period of national mourning and ordered the lowering of flags after a deadly stampede killed at least 151 people, including 19 foreigners, during Halloween celebrations in Seoul the previous day.

Yoon addressed the nation live from the presidential office a day after a crowd surge in a narrow alley in Itaewon crushed scores of young revelers, many in their 20s.

"It's truly horrific," Yoon said, saying Saturday's "tragedy and disaster should never have happened."

"As president, who is responsible for the people's lives and safety, my heart is heavy and I struggle to cope with my grief," he said. "The government will designate the period from today until the accident is brought under control as a period of national mourning and will place top priority in administrative affairs in recovery and follow-up measures."

Prime Minister Han Duck-soo later told reporters that the mourning period would last from Sunday until Saturday at Yoon's instructions and that a mourning altar would be set up in downtown Seoul to allow people to pay tribute to the victims.

Han spoke following a government response meeting presided over by Yoon, saying those injured and families of the victims would also receive financial assistance in line with Yongsan Ward's designation as a special disaster zone.

During the mourning period, all public servants will be required to wear mourning ribbons.

Yoon expressed his condolences over the deaths and wished a speedy recovery for the injured, saying in his address that the government will support funeral preparations and fully mobilize emergency medical services to treat patients, including by assigning public servants individually to those requiring assistance.

"The most important thing is to determine the cause of the accident and prevent similar accidents," he said. "We will thoroughly investigate the cause of the accident and make fundamental improvements so that similar accidents do not happen again in the future."

Yoon also said he will instruct the interior ministry and other relevant ministries to carry out an emergency review of all Halloween celebrations and other local festivals to ensure they are conducted in an orderly and safely manner.

Immediately after the address, Yoon visited the site of the accident before heading to the government complex in central Seoul to preside over the government response meeting.

He also ordered all government offices to lower their flags to half-mast, according to his office.

hague@yna.co.kr

(END)

en.yna.co.kr · by 이해아 · October 30, 2022

4. Chronology of major stampedes in S. Korea

Chronology of major stampedes in S. Korea | Yonhap News Agency

en.yna.co.kr · by 김한주 · October 30, 2022

SEOUL, Oct. 30 (Yonhap) -- The following is a chronology of major stampede accidents in South Korea. At least 151 people have been killed and 82 others injured in a deadly stampede in Seoul's Itaewon district as huge crowds of partygoers, many in their late teens and 20s, converged in the entertainment district for late-night Halloween celebrations.

July 17, 1959 -- A total of 67 people are crushed to death at the Busan Municipal Stadium in the southern city of Busan after a sudden downpour and rapidly rising waters caused a crowd of people to enter a narrow entrance.

Jan. 26, 1960 -- A total of 31 are killed and 40 others are injured at Seoul Station after a crowd of people swarm to get on a train at Seoul Station ahead of the annual exodus for the Lunar New Year holiday.

Feb. 11, 1980 -- Five are killed and 18 others are injured after falling down stairs at an elementary school in the southern city of Busan as some 1,000 students try to attend an assembly.

Feb. 17, 1992 -- A teenage girl dies and 50 others are injured during a stampede at a New Kids on the Block concert in Seoul.

Dec. 16, 1996 -- Two students are killed after a crowd of people flock to enter a concert stadium in the southeastern city of Daegu for a live show hosted by a popular radio program.

Jan. 5, 2001 -- A female student dies of a heart attack after being stampeded by some 30 people flocking to see popular singing group Click-B.

Oct. 3, 2005 -- A total of 11 people are killed and 145 others are injured in a pop concert stampede in the southern city of Sangju.

(END)

en.yna.co.kr · by 김한주 · October 30, 2022

5. Escapes increase as North Korean workers in Russia are told to ship out to Ukraine

Excerpts:

Russia’s Ambassador to North Koera Alexander Matsegora mentioned the possibility of sending North Korean workers to Ukraine in an interview with the Russian newspaper Izvestia in July.

There were 21,000 North Korean workers living in Russia as of September 2018, a December 2018 statement from the Russian foreign ministry said. Approximately 19,000 of those were employed at factories, farms and construction sites.

Following the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2397 in Dec. 2017, tens of thousands of North Korean workers in Russia were repatriated by the end of 2019.

Though sanctions prohibit North Korea from sending workers overseas and preclude countries from issuing work visas to North Koreans, Pyongyang has been known to dispatch workers to China and Russia on short-term student or visitor visas to get around sanctions.

Escapes increase as North Korean workers in Russia are told to ship out to Ukraine

americanmilitarynews.com · by Radio Free Asia · October 29, 2022

This article was originally published by Radio Free Asia and is reprinted with permission.

More and more North Korean construction workers deployed to Russia are escaping from their jobs after hearing they are to be sent to Russian-controlled areas in Ukraine, sources in Russia told RFA.

The cash-strapped North Korean government sends legions of workers to Russia to earn desperately needed foreign currency. Workers forward the lion’s share of their salaries to the government, but what they get to keep is greater than what they could earn doing similar work back home.

But now that there is demand for construction in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, increasing numbers of North Korean construction workers are abandoning their jobs and going into hiding, a Russian citizen of Korean descent told RFA’s Korean Service on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“The North Korean workers are nowhere to be seen at the construction sites these days. This is because the command ordered they stop work for an internal investigation as increasing numbers of them are trying to escape after hearing they would be deployed to Ukraine’s Donbas region.” said the source.

“The workers are shaken by the news. … Pyongyang in early September ordered the dispatching companies to gather workers and put them on standby instead of taking on new work where they are currently dispatched,” the source said.

The workers are well aware of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to the source. Though the North Korean government is able to control media within its borders, it cannot as easily control what information is available to its citizens overseas.

“After getting the news that the workers would soon be moved to a new construction site in Ukraine, and needed to settle everything by the end of September, many have escaped. It’s not only the construction workers, but also management officials escaping,” said the source.

The construction sites of Vladivostok in the Russian Far East are empty, a source there told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.

“I know that some North Korean companies are on alert as the officials in charge of worker management escaped one after another,” the second source said.

The problem of workers escaping is not new. Even in times of relative peace, many North Koreans deployed to Russia go missing, according to the second source.

“At the end of each year, results must be reported and the managers must pay the workers their share and forward the rest [to Pyongyang],” the second source said. “However, managers and officials of some companies, who did not receive payment from local companies often escape because they are afraid of punishment they might receive after the review session.”

“North Korean workers live a tired life of despair. They cannot save any money even though they work all day from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and then do additional overtime work at night,” said the second source.

“There are frequent cases where disgruntled workers escape, and others escape because they fear punishment.”

Once news came from the North Korean consulate to prepare to be shipped out to Ukraine, escape numbers rose, the second source said.

Russia’s Ambassador to North Koera Alexander Matsegora mentioned the possibility of sending North Korean workers to Ukraine in an interview with the Russian newspaper Izvestia in July.

There were 21,000 North Korean workers living in Russia as of September 2018, a December 2018 statement from the Russian foreign ministry said. Approximately 19,000 of those were employed at factories, farms and construction sites.

Following the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2397 in Dec. 2017, tens of thousands of North Korean workers in Russia were repatriated by the end of 2019.

Though sanctions prohibit North Korea from sending workers overseas and preclude countries from issuing work visas to North Koreans, Pyongyang has been known to dispatch workers to China and Russia on short-term student or visitor visas to get around sanctions.

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americanmilitarynews.com · by Radio Free Asia · October 29, 2022

6. U.S. says North Korea policy unchanged after nuclear remark raises eyebrows

The right hand not talking to the left? Ill informed comments (e.g.someone ill informed about the nature objectives, and strategy of the Kim family regime)?

I think Daniel Russel correctly describes the situation here:

Daniel Russel, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia under then-President Barack Obama and now with the Asia Society, told Reuters Jenkins had "fallen straight into Kim Jong Un's trap" with her remarks.

"Suggesting that North Korea only has to agree to have a conversation with the U.S. about arms control and risk reduction is a terrible mistake, because it moves the issue from North Korea’s right to possess nuclear weapons to the question of how many it should have and how they are used," he said.

"Kim would love nothing better than to push his risk reduction agenda — the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Korea."

U.S. says North Korea policy unchanged after nuclear remark raises eyebrows

Reuters · by David Brunnstrom

WASHINGTON, Oct 28 (Reuters) - The United States said on Friday its policy towards North Korea had not changed after a senior U.S. official responsible for nuclear policy raised some eyebrows by saying Washington would be willing to engage in arms-control talks with Pyongyang.

Some experts argue that recognizing North Korea as a nuclear-armed state, something Pyongyang seeks, is a prerequisite for such talks. But Washington has long argued that the North Korean nuclear program is illegal and subject to United Nations sanctions.

Bonnie Jenkins, State Department under secretary for arms control, was asked at a Washington nuclear conference on Thursday at which point North Korea should be treated as an arms-control problem.

"If they would have a conversation with us ... arms control can always be an option if you have two willing countries willing to sit down at the table and talk," she replied.

"And not just arms control, but risk reduction - everything that leads up to a traditional arms-control treaty and all the different aspects of arms control that we can have with them. We’ve made it very clear to the DPRK ... that we’re ready to talk to them - we have no pre-conditions," she said, referring to North Korea by the initials of its official name.

Referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, she added: "If he picked up the phone and said, 'I want to talk about arms control,' we're not going to say no. I think, if anything, we would want to explore what that means."

The United States and its allies are concerned that North Korea may be about to resume nuclear bomb testing for the first time since 2017, something that would be highly unwelcome to the Biden administration ahead of mid-term elections early next month. North Korea has rejected U.S. calls to return to talks.

Asked about Jenkins' comment, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said: "I want to be very clear about this. There has been no change to U.S. policy."

Price said U.S. policy remained "the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," while adding, "we continue to be open to diplomacy with the DPRK, we continue to reach out to the DPRK, we're committed to pursuing a diplomatic approach. We're prepared to meet without preconditions and we call on the DPRK to engage in serious and sustained diplomacy."

'KIM JONG UN'S TRAP'

Speaking on Friday at the same nuclear policy conference Jenkins addressed, Alexandra Bell, another senior State Department arms-control official, also stressed there was no change in U.S. policy.

Asked if it was time to accept North Korea as a nuclear state, she replied: "Wording aside, we are committed to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. We do not accept North Korea with that status. But we are interested in having a conversation with the North Koreans."

Daniel Russel, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia under then-President Barack Obama and now with the Asia Society, told Reuters Jenkins had "fallen straight into Kim Jong Un's trap" with her remarks.

"Suggesting that North Korea only has to agree to have a conversation with the U.S. about arms control and risk reduction is a terrible mistake, because it moves the issue from North Korea’s right to possess nuclear weapons to the question of how many it should have and how they are used," he said.

"Kim would love nothing better than to push his risk reduction agenda — the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Korea."

Other experts played down Jenkins' remarks.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the U.S.-based Arms Control Association, said she was not making a statement recognizing North Korea as a nuclear weapons state under the international Non-Proliferation Treaty.

"She was acknowledging, as other officials in other administrations have, that North Korea does have nuclear weapons, but in violation of its commitments under the NPT not to pursue nuclear weapons," he told Reuters.

Kimball and Toby Dalton, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which hosted the nuclear conference, said they did not see formal recognition as a nuclear-armed state as a prerequisite for arms-control talks. Dalton said Jenkins appeared essentially to be restating the U.S. position that it was willing to talk to Pyongyang without preconditions.

Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Simon Lewis; Editing by William Mallard

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by David Brunnstrom

7. 4 Decades of Reckoning With North Korea’s Nuclear Threat – and Counting

A seemingly logical path forward but one that does not seem to take into account the nature, objectives, and strategy of the Kim Family regime. Kim will judge such a path as victory for his political warfare and blackmail diplomacy and will leave him the option of employing his developing advanced military capabilities to achieve his objective of domination of the Korean peninsula under the Guerrilla Dynasty and Gulag State.

Excerpts:

For South Korea, then, a constructive first step would be for the Presidential Office to ask Biden to propose to Kim Jong Un that the United States and North Korea set up a bilateral, presidential-level hotline by developing an open-source, ultra-modern digital link such as CATALINK now under study in the United States and Europe.

From there, many incremental steps to reduce nuclear risk in Korea are plausible and have been developed in detail but now sit on a dusty shelf. South Korea’s key task is to update the roadmap of related choices that must be made by the key parties under the new global and regional strategic flux, this time, without failure. The road to denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula is now long – possibly as long as it took for North Korea to arm itself with nuclear weapons.

But with skill and fortitude, the risk that one or more of the nuclear-armed parties to the Korean conflict will lose their strategic minds and decide to use nuclear weapons can be reduced to a remote prospect until, finally, it is eliminated.

​

4 Decades of Reckoning With North Korea’s Nuclear Threat – and Counting

Going nuclear will not help South Korea deal with the threat posed by its northern neighbor.

thediplomat.com · by Peter Hayes · October 28, 2022

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What to do about North Korea’s nuclear armament is an urgent question that Seoul and its partners must answer even as global and regional strategic circumstances change rapidly due to the pandemic, the Ukraine war, and most especially, the unravelling of U.S. nuclear hegemony, which injects uncertainty into the strategic calculations of all the parties to the Korean conflict, but especially in Seoul and Pyongyang.

This question can only be answered by first defining the overarching, primary threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear force. Undeniably, that is the prospect of the nuclear annihilation of one or both of the Koreas, with profound implications for ever reunifying the Korean nation. National survival is the penultimate security goal of every state, and South Korea is no exception.

It follows that South Korea must embark on a long game that simultaneously minimizes the risk of nuclear war in the short, medium, and long term, while strengthening the political-diplomatic, economic, technological, military, cultural, and ecological foundations of national resilience on both sides of the DMZ. This is the metric against which demands that South Korea acquire its own nuclear weapons must be measured.

The essence of this challenge is that South Korea should do everything within its power to minimize the North Korean leadership’s proclivity to ever use nuclear weapons while creating enabling conditions that make it possible for North Korea to reduce and eventually abandon its nuclear weapons.

South Korean proponents of nuclear weapons advocate many different ways to achieve nuclear weapons status in order to match Pyongyang’s expanding capabilities and reduce the risk of North Korean nuclear use. For some, pursuing nuclear weapons is only a threat aimed at prompting China to coerce North Korea to become more compliant and cooperative with the international community’s demands. For others, it’s a way for South Korea’s tail to wag the U.S. super-dog to reinforce the United States’ nuclear reassurance via extended deterrence so that South Korea can evade the entanglement-abandonment dilemma that is imposed on it by its dependent, junior ally status.

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For yet others it’s a way to confront North Korea, Japan, and China with South Korea’s own, independent nuclear forces on the French or British model, perhaps coordinated with the United States, but no longer subordinated to U.S. command over the decision on when and how to project nuclear threat and/or use nuclear weapons. I guess that there may even be some nationalist outliers on the left and the right in Seoul who also want nuclear arms to keep the United States over the horizon, perhaps as a nuclear-armed neutral state projecting threat in all directions, tous azimuts as the French would have it.

Ironically, few South Korean nuclear proponents have explored the most realistic nuclear-sharing option, which is to become a nuclear-delivery state like Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, or Turkey on the NATO model. These states are NPT non-nuclear weapons states today but plan to become nuclear-armed tomorrow should a war begin – at which time the United States may transfer nuclear weapons to their delivery platforms (fighter-bombers). Such an arrangement would be similar to the facilitative role South Korean military units served when U.S. tactical nuclear weapons were deployed in Korea – for example, loading nuclear warheads onto nuclear artillery tubes was a South Korean task.

Today, even in the improbable event that the U.S. executive branch obtains congressional approval to replicate the NATO arrangement with South Korea, it’s legally and politically impossible for the United States to do so without transgressing its Article 1 NPT obligations to not transfer nuclear weapons to a NPT non-nuclear weapons state. Doing so may also lead to Japanese demands for co-equal treatment, and could mean the abandonment of the demand that North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. Of course, the United States would still decide if and when to use nuclear weapons in this arrangement.

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All of these South Korean nuclear proliferation proposals are fundamentally flawed. The first flaw is that they fail to view the world through Kim Jong Un’s strategic prism.

If the overarching goal is to deter North Korean first use of nuclear weapons, then one must ask: Who is Kim more likely to find poses a credible, countervailing retaliatory threat to his possible nuclear first use, a response that would lead to his own demise along with North Korea state – presumably an undesirable outcome – the United States or South Korea?

The United States is preparing for, as President Joe Biden put it, an “Armageddon”-like response if Russian President Vladimir Putin escalates to nuclear war. It is equipped with an invulnerable submarine retaliatory force as well as hundreds of land-based ICBMs and scores of nuclear-armed bombers and is also the only state to ever use nuclear weapons in war.

Compare that to a proliferating South Korea, which would take years to make and test its own nuclear warheads and nuclear-capable missiles and construct a nuclear command, control, and communications system – and throughout that period would be vulnerable to North Korean nuclear attack.

In my view, the United States, even a post-hegemonic, wobbly United States, is more likely to pose an assured retaliatory strike that would stay Kim’s finger from ever pushing the button. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that South Korea could achieve a sufficiently credible retaliatory force to make Kim think more than twice before using nuclear strike orders.

Then one must ask South Korean nuclear proliferation proponents: Who would Kim Jong Un think is more likely to launch a pre-emptive strike aimed at decapitating him and his forces, in turn prompting him to use his own nuclear weapons first?

South Korea is constructing an already potent conventional offensive force intended to achieve this objective, but not yet one that is nuclear-armed. The South Korean president is cultivating an intense anti-Pyongyang narrative and already publicly committed to making a pre-emptive “decapitation” strike on Kim Jong Un himself should he decide to do so – but Seoul is not equipped with independent satellite and other intelligence capabilities able to monitor the disposition of North Korean military and nuclear forces in real time for targeting and damage assessment, let alone Kim’s current location. As a result, in a South Korean pre-emptive strike, not one or two but many sites would have to be hit with nuclear sledgehammers to “decapitate” North Korea.

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Meanwhile, the United States is historically concerned about escalation control and the risks posed by North Korea not only to South Korea and Japan but also to the United States, and is already capable of pre-emptively attacking North Korea should it choose to do so. The U.S. military is able to focus a vast array of intelligence systems on North Korea and ascertain Kim’s location in a nuclear crisis to precisely target nuclear weapons onto the North’s nuclear command posts, but like South Korea, the U.S. is still unlikely to know Kim’s exact whereabouts on any given day

From North Korea’s perspective, the risk of pre-emptive attack by the United States or South Korea is composed of two parts: capability and resolve, which can be read as intention in the immediate moment. The U.S. pre-emptive threat is a known quantity to Pyongyang over six decades since a U.S. nuclear threat was first made in the Korean War, reinforced by U.S. nuclear deployments in Korea starting in 1958. The United States has immensely more nuclear-pre-emptive capability than South Korea could ever muster, but the South presents a decision-maker more likely to, in the current lingo in Seoul, “proactively” escalate than the U.S. president. That, when combined with even a small and primitive nuclear offensive capability, constitutes a far greater – and new – risk to Kim and thereby to the entire North Korean regime.

Thus, far from stabilizing the peninsula, a nuclear-armed South Korea would increase the risk that Kim would escalate early and all-out in order to avoid decapitation by Seoul on the brink of war. South Korea’s nuclear armament will needlessly increase the risk of nuclear attack by the North and put the entire Korean nation at greater risk of nuclear annihilation. This, to put it mildly, is strategically imprudent.

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The second flaw is that these proliferation proponents fail to view the world from a U.S. perspective. The last thing Americans want – at least so long as Donald Trump is not in the Oval Office – is for South Korea to hand Kim Jong Un the perfect excuse to accelerate his nuclear armament and for China and Russia to lift all their restraints on North Korea. Kim’s basic lesson from the Ukraine war is that nuclear weapons have not enabled Russia to attack and occupy a small neighboring state. Throwing down a South Korean nuclear gauntlet would be a huge own goal in Seoul’s international competition with North Korea. Also, as sure as day follows night, if South Korea goes nuclear, so will Japan, at which point any prospect of Chinese cooperation to influence and moderate North Korea’s nuclear weapons choices goes out the window.

And it’s not only the future of Korea that is at stake. There are scores of pathways to limited and all-out nuclear war in Northeast Asia, many of which originate in Korea but would be increased dramatically by South Korean nuclear proliferation. Increasing the regional and global risk of nuclear war for Seoul’s allies, partners, and third parties will damage South Korea’s security, diplomacy, trade, and investment relations in ways that further reduce its own security. It would destroy Seoul’s aspiration to contribute to global and regional security and would trash its reputation to be a responsible middle power committed to creating global and regional public goods.

The third flaw is that proliferation proponents apparently embrace an unrealistic belief that nuclear war can be controlled, fought, and survived in Korea. This illusion of control is an intrinsic aspect of nuclear warfare. That the nuclear-armed states share this illusion is no reason for South Koreans to follow suit. In fact, given how much nuclear threat is already in the air in Korea, it is good reason for extreme caution.

Given the short delivery and even shorter decision timelines in Korea on the one hand, and the respective strategic postures and asymmetries of capabilities of the two Koreas on the other, the political imperative to dominate the inter-Korean “balance of resolve” likely will lead to early first use by one of two nuclear-armed Koreas in what John On-Fat Wong called “mutual probable destruction” in his prescient 1982 study. The idea that “strategic stability” will arise in Korea from the threat of mutual annihilation is as absurd as the notion that two scorpions put in a bottle will not fight and when they do, the bottle itself – the Korean nation – will not shatter into tiny shards strewn over smoking, radiating ruin.

The fourth flaw is that, strangely, these proponents have given up on winning the long game, that is, a final reckoning with North Korea that leads to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Their end-game appears to be either endless nuclear standoff in the peninsula underpinned by the faith that North Korea will collapse and go away, or nuclear war, which South Korea will somehow survive to rise from the ashes.

It took four decades of stop-start, slow motion proliferation for North Korea to arm itself with nuclear weapons. There were many moments when that outcome could have been avoided but were not because, like grasping a nettle, doing so entailed making painful choices.

North Korea survives not because of its nuclear weapons but because it inhabits geostrategic space created by the intersecting force fields of the four great powers of East Asia: the United States, China, Russia, and Japan. The eventual fate of the North Korean regime and its nuclear weapons program now rests on how this great power system evolves, especially the China-U.S. and China-Japan relationships. If the United States and China wrestle each other to the ground, then the space enjoyed by North Korea may expand, especially if Russia is weakened by the Ukraine war and its aftermath. Conversely, if the United States and China come to a strategic reconciliation over the coming decades, the space afforded to North Korea will contract.

This fundamental strategic location presents Kim Jong Un with massive uncertainty and a vast array of strategic challenges. No one, not even Kim himself, knows how he will make the hard choices that he cannot avoid. What is clear, however, is that minimizing the risk that he will use nuclear weapons demands that South Korea and its partners find ways to shape his perceived options as he addresses these challenges.

In turn, the first and most important task is to reduce Kim’s fear of decapitation in the various contingencies that could erupt in Korea. The simplest, cheapest, and most effective way to achieve this effect is for the U.S. president to restore a working relationship with Kim. After Trump, nothing less than presidential-level contact suffices in (to use Gregory Henderson’s memorable phrase) the vortex of Korean political culture, especially in corporatist North Korea.

For South Korea, then, a constructive first step would be for the Presidential Office to ask Biden to propose to Kim Jong Un that the United States and North Korea set up a bilateral, presidential-level hotline by developing an open-source, ultra-modern digital link such as CATALINK now under study in the United States and Europe.

From there, many incremental steps to reduce nuclear risk in Korea are plausible and have been developed in detail but now sit on a dusty shelf. South Korea’s key task is to update the roadmap of related choices that must be made by the key parties under the new global and regional strategic flux, this time, without failure. The road to denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula is now long – possibly as long as it took for North Korea to arm itself with nuclear weapons.

But with skill and fortitude, the risk that one or more of the nuclear-armed parties to the Korean conflict will lose their strategic minds and decide to use nuclear weapons can be reduced to a remote prospect until, finally, it is eliminated.

Peter Hayes

Peter Hayes is an honorary professor at the Center for International Security Studies, Sydney University, Australia and director of the Nautilus Institute in Berkeley, California.

thediplomat.com · by Peter Hayes · October 28, 2022

8. Hallyu! The Korean Wave at the V&A is an unflinching look at the country’s creative rise

Unfortunately tragedies such as the one in Itaewon yesterday obviously have a negative impact. But this will likely be overcome by the continued Korean wave over time.

Excerpts:

Hallyu! has created a space for Korea to shine in ways that the permanent Korea exhibition at the V&A – a small, rather drab display in a hallway behind the much larger Japan and China galleries – does not.

The success of the Korean Wave has gone beyond promoting global consumption of the country’s cultural products. The wave has brought with it increased tourism, a larger market for Korea’s chaebol (big businesses) in the world and greater interest in Korea as an object of study and a notable geopolitical presence in international affairs.

In other words, the consumption of K-culture has brought about developments the South Korean government didn’t anticipate. This exhibition proves that waves do not return to the sea unchanged by the surface they have covered – they bring with them a variety of unexpected flotsam.

Hallyu! The Korean Wave at the V&A is an unflinching look at the country’s creative rise

theconversation.com · by Sarah A. Son

The Hallyu! exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum offers an insight into everything the Korean Wave has offered up over the past 25 years, fulfilling its promise to showcase “Korean creativity at its finest”.

The term Hallyu (Korean Wave) was first coined by Chinese audiences of Korean television dramas in the late 1990s and describes the force with which Korean cultural content has been promoted abroad.

This exhibition is not just about Korean popular culture and how it developed, it is also a powerful testament to how extensively this cultural output is now consumed globally. It celebrates the recognition won by a country that overcame adversity during much of the 20th century by deploying a clever and massively successful cultural marketing strategy.

With government backing, leaders in the creative industries have pushed into the international market, winning Oscars and Emmys and Grammy nominations in the process. This vigorous self-promotion has been audacious, challenging English-language dominance in global popular culture.

Evolution of Korean cultural diplomacy

In the late 1990s, the South Korean economy was recovering from the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. It was also trying to overcome the failure of its state-centric economic system after several decades of remarkable growth under a succession of military dictatorships (1961-1988).

In a bid to turn its situation around, South Korea turned towards marketing popular culture to boost export income. But this objective swiftly dovetailed with a larger post-democratisation national project to improve South Korea’s international image. It was hoped this would help the country distance itself from its common association with the Korean War (1950-1953) and its poor but troublesome northern neighbour.

Yet the Hallyu! exhibition does not tell the story of the success of cultural commodities such as the martial art of taekwondo or hansik (Korean cuisine), which were targeted for international promotion in the early 2000s. Instead, the exhibition focuses on the extraordinary responsiveness of Korea’s creative industries. Companies seized on the success of the most unlikely products and deployed them to boost South Korea’s soft power in ways that couldn’t possibly have been imagined at the beginning of the national promotion project.

A traditional hanbok dress alongside more modern garments. Victoria & Albert Museum

Nowhere is this more evident than at the exhibition’s entrance – a wall of screens playing the music video that took K-pop music into the global mainstream in 2012, Psy’s Gangnam Style. It is hard to imagine the Presidential Committee for Nation Branding in charge of curating Korea’s international image choosing a middle-aged rapper who was resistant to military conscription as Korea’s cultural ambassador. Yet half a billion YouTube views later that was exactly what Psy became.

This pattern of promoting consumer-focused content has continued over the past decade. It has resulted in a seemingly incoherent, yet continually enticing image of Korea as urban and hyper-modern, while also maintaining undertones of tradition and rural simplicity. It’s an image that seems to be endlessly appealing to global audiences.

Installations presenting traditional elements of Korea’s cultural past are positioned carefully to provide context for the most contemporary of products. These include high-fashion interpretations of hanbok (Korean traditional dress) and the Joseon Dynasty-era (1392-1897) designs on the packaging of much sought-after Korean beauty products.

Beauty Adorning Herself, Attributed to Kim Hong-Do from the Joseon period in the 18th and 19th centuries. Seoul National University

Korea’s distinct traditions and culture were strongly revived by authoritarian governments after Japan’s colonial era – and its cultural assimilation policies – which ended in 1945. At the same time, there is evidence throughout the exhibition of a less stringent approach to tradition, which people and government are more comfortable to reimagine to provide easier access for overseas consumers.

This is visible in the use of English lyrics in pop songs, in the “fusion” fashion designs created by members of the Korean diaspora, and in the creation of “new” traditions – such as the pop group-branded lightsticks wielded by devoted fans at concerts.

Korea: past and present

Refreshingly, the story of the Korean Wave on display at Hallyu! is frank about the political tensions and controversies that were formative in the development of contemporary Korean creative expression.

We don’t see a sanitised, linear trajectory from the ravages of the Korean War to the heights of the pop group BTS’s fame. Instead, we see the undulations in Korea’s fortunes as it experienced economic boom and bust. It touches on the fraught journey from dictatorship to democracy. It also notes present-day challenges in terms of widening socioeconomic inequalities.

Artists and creatives have not shied away from frank representations of this chequered rise or the dark underbelly of late capitalism in Korea. This is epitomised in the recreation of the grimy basement apartment toilet from the Oscar-winning film Parasite.

These sorts of productions, which seek to show the uglier side of things, would have once brought shame on a Korean society proud of its meteoric rise as an Asian Tiger. But the exhibition shows how productions with difficult subject matter are embraced and used for the national good because they achieve the critical and popular acclaim the country seeks.

A display featuring costumes from the Netflix series Squid Game. Victoria & Albert Museum

One such show is the 2021 hit Squid Game, a brutal representation of the corrupting impact of spiralling household debt) in Korean society. International audiences devoured the show’s fictional depiction of contestants fighting to the death in a brutal gamified social experiment.

Hallyu! has created a space for Korea to shine in ways that the permanent Korea exhibition at the V&A – a small, rather drab display in a hallway behind the much larger Japan and China galleries – does not.

The success of the Korean Wave has gone beyond promoting global consumption of the country’s cultural products. The wave has brought with it increased tourism, a larger market for Korea’s chaebol (big businesses) in the world and greater interest in Korea as an object of study and a notable geopolitical presence in international affairs.

In other words, the consumption of K-culture has brought about developments the South Korean government didn’t anticipate. This exhibition proves that waves do not return to the sea unchanged by the surface they have covered – they bring with them a variety of unexpected flotsam.

theconversation.com · by Sarah A. Son

9. How Itaewon turned into epicenter of tragedy

This tragedy is dominating the Korean media. Little else is being reported right now and will probably be like this for the next few days.

How Itaewon turned into epicenter of tragedy

The Korea Times · October 30, 2022

Bodies are laid in the street and covered in sheets after people celebrating Halloween in central Seoul's Itaewon were caught in a deadly crowd crush in a narrow, sloped alley, Saturday. Yonhap

Collapsed victims 'stuck together like rock' as rescuers tried to pull them free

By Ko Dong-hwan

The hip alleys of Itaewon were once considered one of the main destinations in Korea to celebrate Halloween, as people gathered there to enjoy the annual event before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the nation three years ago. With nightclubs, bars and restaurants packed tightly together, Itaewon was a popular place for culturally curious Koreans to easily mingle with people from different cultures and ethnic backgrounds.

The emergency calls started coming in at 10:24 p.m. on Saturday, reporting the tragedy which happened in a narrow, sloped alley immediately west of the Hamilton Hotel. The alley, 41 meters long and only four meters wide, barely enough room for six adults to stand side by side, runs between Itaewon's main thoroughfare and another busy alley called Itaewon World Food Street running behind the hotel.

A popular nightlife area for foreigners and Koreans in Seoul's central Yongsan District, Itaewon has often seen huge crowds, especially around every Halloween when costume-wearing revelers fill the alleys throughout the area. But this latest Halloween saw even larger crowds than ever before.

According to one witness at the scene who survived, the crowd density reached the point where people were completely stuck in place.

According to one rumor, people were rushing to see a celebrity at one of the establishments in the area. Shortly before the incident, one survivor reported hearing people screaming.

The situation turned fatal when some people in the middle of the crowd tripped and fell, pushing over others next to them and triggering a domino effect.

 Witnesses said the collapse seemed to have happened "abruptly at once."

One of the survivors said he felt a sudden weight on his back as the crowd surged forward. "The push knocked some people down, which initiated the fiasco," he said. "I saw one male seriously injured and bleeding all over."

Due to the incline of the road, the crowd pressed more heavily on those downhill, and people piled on top of others, as many as five to six people deep. The pressure caused many lower down to have difficulty breathing and lose consciousness.

A TV news reporter stands in front of the entrance to an alley in Seoul's Itaewon, Sunday morning, where hundreds of people celebrating Halloween were crushed together the night before. The personal belongings of victims are seen lining the edges of the alley. Korea Times photo by Ko Dong-hwan

Witnesses said that onlookers shouted at those on top to "pull back!" to save the people underneath. But some in the crowd misunderstood it as "push" and did what they heard, prolonging the predicament.

Early reports claimed that a crowd had trampled one person. Emergency workers and ambulances from Yongsan Fire Station and other nearby fire stations arrived at the scene much later than usual because of all the vehicular and foot traffic in the area.

Rescuers and police officers attempted to free people trapped in the pile but the accumulated weight of bodies made their attempts futile for a while. A video shot by an eyewitness from higher up in a nearby building shows a policeman struggling unsuccessfully with the arms of one of the trapped victims. The woman recording the video can be heard sobbing and saying, "Oh my god, (the bodies) not moving at all."

"All the employees from the shops nearby came out and helped rescue people," another witness said. "It was truly chaos."

Almost 300 people ended up suffering breathing problems after the victims were finally freed. The streets and alleys around Hamilton Hotel and in the vicinity of the scene were packed with rescue workers performing CPR on dozens of unconscious victims. But the victims outnumbered the emergency workers available at the scene. Workers and bystanders who decided to help out carried the bodies of those they couldn't resuscitate to ambulances. "Firefighters ran around the area giving CPR to people," one of the survivors said. "It was like a war zone."

Police attempt to control the crowd early Sunday morning, as victims are rushed to hospital while pedestrians continue to pack the sides of the road. Yonhap

Most of the victims were women in their 20s. The youngest has been identified as 16 years old. Many foreigners were also in the crowd. Those who needed immediate treatment were transported to Soon Chun Hyang University Hospital, the nearest large-scale hospital, and 14 other medical centers across Seoul and Gyeonggi Province.

Because the scene following the accident was so crowded with victims, rescuers and onlookers, phone and internet reception were temporarily out of service in the area. All emergency workers available in Seoul at that time were called to the scene, with about 1,700 workers and over 140 ambulances responding. Family members of the victims arrived at the scene, where many received the tragic news.

The Korea Times · October 30, 2022

10. Is South Korea ready to go it alone on defense?

Uncertainty of the US commitment in the future is problematic:

The United States is currently committed to the extension of its nuclear deterrent to its East Asian allies, but if we were to decide to develop our own nuclear deterrent, it could jeopardize the U.S. pledge to protect South Korea," he said.

Kim also highlighted the fact that the U.S. nuclear umbrella is contingent on a continuing commitment by Washington.

"If there were to be another president like Donald Trump — that is, another president or change in the U.S. administration that were to pursue isolationism — that would definitely give cause to reconsider our current nonproliferation stance, especially if it brought the credibility of the U.S. commitment to South Korea's defense in doubt," he acknowledged.

Yang points out "the economic and security consequences of withdrawing from the international nonproliferation regime could be very severe," and that South Korea "ought to consider other options, like participating in planning for the use of U.S. nuclear weapons in the way NATO does nuclear sharing, before going down the road of nuclear weapons development."

Kwon highlighted the diplomatic ramifications of Seoul pursuing nuclear weapons.

"If we were to develop our own nuclear deterrent, we would not only be endangering the global nuclear nonproliferation regime, but also undermining the legal basis for sanctions against North Korea," he said. "If we want to change the current status quo, we must not only strengthen our alliance with the United States, but also work to foster trust with China. Any changes will need to rely on diplomatic goodwill and be phased in a way that is appropriate at the moment."

Panda, who described himself as "not fatalistic" about South Korean proliferation, said, "In practice, going nuclear will require South Korea to make many compromises that will affect its prosperity and security. It's not at all obvious that nuclear weapons will solve South Korea's security problems too — many problems Seoul faces now could even grow worse if it chose to develop nuclear weapons."

Bondaz cautioned that while South Korea could theoretically withdraw from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in a legal manner, it would have to ponder several important questions.

"One question Seoul should ask itself before it decides to pursue nuclear weapons is whether the West is sufficiently dependent on South Korea to not sanction it, even if it withdraws from the treaty," Bondaz says. 

"We can imagine that some in South Korea believe that the global economy is so dependent on the country it would never be sanctioned by the United States — but I would say the principal problem of South Korea going nuclear is not the United States, but China," he added.

"What would be the reaction of China if South Korea goes nuclear?" he asked.

Sunday

October 30, 2022

 dictionary + A - A 

Is South Korea ready to go it alone on defense?

https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2022/10/30/national/defense/Korea-South-Korea-Taiwan/20221030185018530.html

The Korea JoongAng Daily examines the economic, political and military challenges facing Korea as the United States makes big moves to protect its economic interests. Caught between the United States and China, the country is seeking to maintain a balance without being locked out of either economy. This involves intense lobbying and some tough decisions for Korean companies, some of which are dependent on China for the manufacturing of key products. This is the first in a three-part series. -Ed.

Forged in the crucible of the 1950-53 Korean War, the military alliance between Seoul and Washington has held on through numerous crises, including developments in North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, Cold War-era disagreements over South Korea's dictatorship and brief nuclear ambitions, as well as episodic reductions of the U.S. military presence on the peninsula.

The alliance has been underpinned by a pair of complementary military interests: Seoul's need for a defense guarantor in a neighborhood enveloped by superpowers, and Uncle Sam's desire to maintain a physical check on powerful foes that could encroach on U.S. domination of the Pacific.

Faced with the advancing nature of the North Korean threat, Seoul and Washington appear to be doubling down on their alliance, with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and U.S. President Joe Biden agreeing at their first summit in May to coordinate the deployment of U.S. strategic assets to the Korean Peninsula, while U.S. officials on numerous occasions have described their country's commitment to South Korea's defense as "ironclad."

But beneath the reassuring rhetoric, the two countries' alliance, and South Korea's own military capabilities, are under evolving and increasing pressure from the changing geopolitical climate and North Korea's nuclear and missile threats.

As Washington strives to maintain military and technological superiority over Beijing, it also strains South Korea's longstanding strategy of relying on the United States for security and on China for trade to support its economy. By demanding that Seoul fall in line with its supply chain reorganization, which is designed to prevent China from developing cutting-edge semiconductor technology, it could deprive South Korea of its largest market for chips.

While encroaching on Seoul's economic interests, Washington under Biden is also signaling more strongly that the United States would intervene in a hypothetical conflict over Taiwan, despite efforts by the U.S. State Department to maintain official ambiguity about the U.S. response in that scenario.

In such an event, South Korea's alliance with the United States, which is precisely designed to shield the country from war, could drag it into a conflict.

If forced to choose between its economic interests in China and its U.S. alliance — or the worst-case scenario in which it is forced to support U.S. military action over Taiwan — Seoul may have to question its security arrangement with Washington and evaluate the state of its own defenses.

An alliance at crossroads?

Before this question is posed, it is important to note that Washington's military alliances in general have held steady, and that neither the United States nor South Korea have expressed interest in ending their current arrangement.

"The purpose of the South Korea-U.S. alliance is to reinforce the security of South Korea — so why would Seoul end it?" asks Antoine Bondaz, director of the Korea Program for the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research.

Indeed, as the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine makes apparent, the difference between a country having a defense treaty with a global superpower such as the United States and being left to fend for itself is hard to understate.

For the South Korea-U.S. alliance to come to an end, Bondaz suggests the critical condition that would have to be met is that South Korea no longer needs U.S. help to defend itself — but there are other dynamics in play.

For decades, the U.S. military presence in South Korea was backed by the assumption that the United States could mount a conventional as well as nuclear attack on North Korea without risk to the U.S. homeland.

But with the North demonstrating it can launch missiles that could travel a range between 6,700 (4,163 miles) and 8,000 kilometers — well beyond the 5,500 kilometer cutoff that the United States uses for classifying "intercontinental" — there is growing concern that Washington could be constrained in its response if hostilities break out once again on the Korean Peninsula.

"With North Korea developing the ability to strike the United States, Seoul and Tokyo may soon wonder whether the United States would truly give up New York or Los Angeles for them," wrote Ankit Panda, a senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in a 2017 article for the Texas National Security Review.

Here, Panda refers to "decoupling," a Cold War-era term referring to the potential dissolution of alliances when their underlying security guarantees becoming untenable. 

But while Panda says the qualitative changes in North Korea's missile arsenal aren't "game changers," he admits that "reassuring U.S. allies in Northeast Asia will continue to be challenging as long as North Korea maintains its robust nuclear capabilities."

Kim Jung-sup, a senior research fellow at the Sejong Institute, notes that decoupling as a result of increases in the range of North Korea's missiles is unlikely to occur precisely because the United States has long been accustomed to that kind of risk.

"The United States faced down a nuclear threat to its own territory throughout the Cold War — of course, some countries like Britain and France developed their own nuclear deterrents because they weren't certain of the U.S. commitment, but that pledge held steady throughout the period," Kim said. 

"Our alliance with the United States ultimately comes down to a question of trust, and I don't think decoupling is likely without a loss of South Korean faith in the U.S. commitment," he added.

But while the United States has publicly reassured South Korea of the extension of its nuclear deterrent — the so-called "nuclear umbrella" — this does not mean there are no doubts about the effectiveness of current arrangements, especially the location of U.S. nuclear weapons.

Yang Uk, an associate research fellow at the Asan Institute, pointed to logistical complications in the allies' cooperation as a result of the advancing North Korean nuclear threat.

"Conditions on the Korean Peninsula have certainly changed – for example, there are more questions than before as to whether the United States can employ its nuclear weapons in time, given that Kim is threatening to deploy and deputize the use of nuclear weapons to North Korea's frontline tactical nuclear operations units," Yang said.

According to recent reports by Pyongyang's state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the North appears to be shifting the focus of its nuclear weapons program towards tactical nuclear weapons and away from strategic nuclear weapons.

Strategic nuclear weapons are aimed at destroying wide areas, such as entire cities, while tactical nuclear weapons have a comparatively smaller explosive yield and are designed to attack military targets and destroy a limited area.

There is also the question of how South Korea would view its treaty alliance with the United States if the latter should decide to intervene to prevent a forceful takeover of self-governing Taiwan by China, which enforced a mock naval blockade around the island after U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taipei in August.

"Korea faces a dilemma [in the case of Taiwan] since it doesn't want to be dragged into an unwanted conflict, but it also doesn't want to be abandoned because it reneged on its alliance commitments," Kim said, suggesting that one way Korea could balance these two objectives "is by providing materiel and logistical support for U.S. military action — that is, supporting military action at a distance from the main battle theaters."

But there remains a risk that Korea would not be able to maintain such a balance if a hypothetical war over Taiwan spreads to its territory.

"If the Chinese military were to launch an attack on United States Forces Korea (USFK) bases here in South Korea, would we treat it as an attack on our territory?" asks Yang, adding that any conflict over Taiwan "would raise all sorts of questions over Korea's level of involvement."

A cat-and-mouse game

Military experts widely agree that in conventional terms, South Korea's military dominates its northern rival.

"In strictly conventional terms, South Korea is definitely capable of fighting a war without the aid of the United States — it's just that from the North Korean perspective, the South would be a less formidable target if it doesn't have U.S. support," says Yang. "There is just no comparison between the two Koreas' conventional forces, especially their air forces and navies."

Even where the North appears to have a numerical troop advantage, Yang says, the South Korean military is better prepared to fight a conventional war. 

"There is a disparity between the size of the two Koreas' land armies, with the North having almost twice as many active-duty soldiers as the South at any given time because of demographic trends in South Korea and the much longer North Korean military service period," Yang acknowledged. 

"That being said, South Korea has a deeper pool of men and reservists to fight in a hypothetical conflict, because our population is almost twice the size of North Korea's." 

The big caveat in these comparisons is that they do not factor in the North's nuclear weapons.

Seoul's current deterrence-through-punishment strategy vis-à-vis nuclear-armed Pyongyang is composed of three components: a Kill Chain, which relies on surface-to-surface missiles and earth-penetrating weapons to destroy North Korean missile-launching capabilities before missiles can be fired; Korea Missile Defense (KMD), which would destroy incoming missiles mid-air with a mixture of Patriot missiles and Korean medium-range surface-to-air (KM-SAM) missiles; and the Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation (KMPR) system, which would target individuals in North Korea's leadership and military command.

But KMPR, as Yang points out, is based on the assumption that the United States would use its nuclear weapons after North Korea uses, or attempts to use, its nuclear arsenal.

"KMPR does not work if it is put into action without nuclear weapons, so by extension it requires coordinating U.S. action," Yang says. 

Kwon Yong-soo, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for Military Affairs (KIMA) and a former professor at the Korea National Defense University, goes so far as to rule out the idea of the South attempting to defend itself with solely conventional means.

"To use the term 'independent defense capabilities' to refer to a country faced with a nuclear-armed adversary is inappropriate," Kwon says. "Dealing with the North Korean nuclear threat requires a comprehensive security strategy that entails not only military and defense cooperation, but also political, diplomatic and economic coordination" with the United States.

But even with the U.S. nuclear deterrent in play, Seoul's K-3 strategy may not be sufficient, according to Bondaz.

Referring to the KMD component of the plan, Bondaz says, "Most studies underestimate the significance of North Korean missile technology advances in the last five years as demonstrated by newly tested [North Korean] short-range missiles such as the KN-23 and KN-24, as well as these missiles' precision and their ability to penetrate antimissile defenses."

These missiles do not fly in the usual parabolic trajectories of ballistic missiles, but can perform "pull-up" maneuvers at lower altitudes as they approach their targets, thereby evading missile defense system that target them in their descent phase.

Retired Lt. Col. Kim Yeoul-soo, who is a senior researcher at KIMA, is in agreement with Bondaz, saying, "The current range of KM-SAM systems is approximately 30-40 kilometers, while the operational range of Pac-3 systems is 40 kilometers, so our antimissile defense systems would have to increase in range and become more varied to target different types of North Korean missiles."

But Panda argues South Korea faces a broader problem than North Korea's increasingly maneuverable missiles."Simply put, even an adversary like North Korea that's quite resource-constrained can cost-effectively stress missile defense systems by simply building more missiles than the defender — South Korea in this case — has interceptors," he says, adding, "Both qualitative and quantitative missile defense defeat strategies are at play for North Korea."

Yang also cautions that the quest for an infallible missile defense system would be misplaced.

"There is no such thing as a perfect, impenetrable missile defense system," he says. "The K-3 strategy was drawn up when we assumed the North would use Scud-type missiles in the event of war, but they've moved onto Iskander-type missiles since 2017, and we can only assume they will continue diversifying their missile arsenal, which would lead to constant cycle of the two sides trying to catch up with one another, then trying to one-up the other's weapons."

Kim Jung-sup argues that while antimissile defense systems are important, South Korea needs to focus on the credibility of its retaliatory response to preclude a North Korean attack.

"Since the attacker firing missiles usually holds the advantage over a defender equipped with interceptive capabilities, the correct approach to missile defense is to enhance our own missile deterrent capabilities — that is, to threaten consequences so severe in response to an attack that it would deter a potential attacker in the first place," he said. 

"South Korea should not only improve its Hyunmoo ballistic missiles, but also the explosive and penetrative power of its missile warheads to destroy underground North Korea facilities and enhance its satellite reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities."

Still others, like Kwon, argue that the use of weapons systems in the K-3 plan should be integrated with other combat forces and fighting knowledge.

"We need to seriously reconsider our contingency plans as it becomes more likely that North Korea will use a variety of different kinds of missiles equipped with tactical nuclear warheads," Kwon says. "Instead of focusing solely on weapons systems, we absolutely must enhance our fighting capabilities by adapting new strategies and integrating our combat forces, as well as increasing training for our weapons systems' operators."

The nuclear elephant in the room 

One area where all experts are in agreement is that no South Korean response strategy to a North Korean attack would be effective without nuclear weapons — and almost all cautioned that Seoul would have to ponder many other options before considering developing its own nuclear deterrent.

But their advice doesn't jibe with South Korean public opinion. According to a survey included in a February report by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 71 percent of respondents said Seoul should develop its own nuclear weapons.

"It's because South Koreans are ill at ease with the current situation that our politicians talk about getting the United States to deploy its tactical nuclear weapons to the peninsula," says Kim Yeoul-soo. "But nuclearization wouldn't happen overnight. There would be several options we would examine, beginning with deploying U.S. tactical nuclear weapons or sharing control of the U.S. nuclear deterrent, before we progressed to a discussion about developing our independent nuclear deterrent."

Kim Jung-sup highlighted the risk that nuclear weapons development could actually undermine and not bolster Seoul's security.

"The United States is currently committed to the extension of its nuclear deterrent to its East Asian allies, but if we were to decide to develop our own nuclear deterrent, it could jeopardize the U.S. pledge to protect South Korea," he said.

Kim also highlighted the fact that the U.S. nuclear umbrella is contingent on a continuing commitment by Washington.

"If there were to be another president like Donald Trump — that is, another president or change in the U.S. administration that were to pursue isolationism — that would definitely give cause to reconsider our current nonproliferation stance, especially if it brought the credibility of the U.S. commitment to South Korea's defense in doubt," he acknowledged.

Yang points out "the economic and security consequences of withdrawing from the international nonproliferation regime could be very severe," and that South Korea "ought to consider other options, like participating in planning for the use of U.S. nuclear weapons in the way NATO does nuclear sharing, before going down the road of nuclear weapons development."

Kwon highlighted the diplomatic ramifications of Seoul pursuing nuclear weapons.

"If we were to develop our own nuclear deterrent, we would not only be endangering the global nuclear nonproliferation regime, but also undermining the legal basis for sanctions against North Korea," he said. "If we want to change the current status quo, we must not only strengthen our alliance with the United States, but also work to foster trust with China. Any changes will need to rely on diplomatic goodwill and be phased in a way that is appropriate at the moment."

Panda, who described himself as "not fatalistic" about South Korean proliferation, said, "In practice, going nuclear will require South Korea to make many compromises that will affect its prosperity and security. It's not at all obvious that nuclear weapons will solve South Korea's security problems too — many problems Seoul faces now could even grow worse if it chose to develop nuclear weapons."

Bondaz cautioned that while South Korea could theoretically withdraw from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in a legal manner, it would have to ponder several important questions.

"One question Seoul should ask itself before it decides to pursue nuclear weapons is whether the West is sufficiently dependent on South Korea to not sanction it, even if it withdraws from the treaty," Bondaz says. 

"We can imagine that some in South Korea believe that the global economy is so dependent on the country it would never be sanctioned by the United States — but I would say the principal problem of South Korea going nuclear is not the United States, but China," he added.

"What would be the reaction of China if South Korea goes nuclear?" he asked.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]

11. Bracing for the North’s chemical weapons

There has been a lot of. backsliding on this issue since the CINC in the 1990s, General Tilelli, supported by Dr. Bruce Bennett from RAND conducted a series of exercises that influenced the ROK government and military to improve its chemical defense.

Sunday

October 30, 2022

 dictionary + A - A 

Bracing for the North’s chemical weapons

https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2022/10/30/opinion/columns/chemical-weapons-North-Korea-WMD/20221030192444281.html

Choi Yun-hee

The author, Ret. Admiral, is former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

After legislation in September authorizing a preemptive nuclear attack by North Korea, its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) poses a substantial security threat to South Korea. If the North deploys tactical nukes in battles after a seventh nuclear test, South Koreans must live under an existential nuclear threat. The Yoon Suk-yeol administration hopes to cope with this situation by ensuring the U.S. nuclear deterrence, but it stops short of underscoring the importance of a watertight security posture based on mobilization of all capabilities of the nation.

Many countries brace for such threats by ensuring an all-out security posture. North Korea repeatedly threatens to reduce South Korea to ashes with its WMDs. How should we defend ourselves? Regrettably, our perception of the threat — and defense posture — is full of loopholes. Many simply brush it off by pointing to the North’s fear of a massive retaliation by the South Korea-U.S. alliance. Would North Korea really not use such weapons? If you think it wouldn’t, that’s a serious miscalculation — particularly given the way North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has behaved. He even ruthlessly assassinated his older half-brother to tighten his grip on power.

Security research institutes, including the RAND Corporation, classifies WMDs into nuclear weapons and the rest, which includes chemical and biological weapons, electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons and cyberwar capability. But circumstantial evidence strongly suggests North Korea would use chemical weapons first before pushing the nuclear button.

After receiving know-how on chemical weapons from China and Russia in 1954, North Korea is assumed to possess 2,500-5,000 tons of them. They can be fired by rockets or dropped by aircraft or loaded onto ballistic missiles at any time. If the North drops 1,000 tons of chemical weapons in Seoul and the capital area, it could cause approximately 125,000 casualties. As North Korea did not sign the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), it thinks it can avoid criticism if it uses them. Because North Korea does not recognize chemical weapons as WMDs, it believes it can avoid U.S. retaliation, according to Gen. Leon LaPorte, former commander of the ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command.

We are well aware of the fatality of chemical weapons. South Korea tries to deter the weapons based on the alliance, but realistically there are many risks. If the allies fail to block just a single chemical bomb, it will immediately send the whole country into a panic.

A bigger problem is the public’s naïve dismissal of WMDs as a threat. Such a laidback attitude prevents the government from drawing up — and carrying out —countermeasures. The experience by South Koreans of incessant provocations from North Korea has made them oblivious to the threat. The government is also reluctant to publicize the danger for fear of provoking unnecessary fear among the public. The administration gives evacuation tips online to citizens to deal with earthquakes, but it does not say anything about threats from chemical weapons. Earthquakes cannot pose a graver threat than chemical weapons. The time has come to establish an effective PR system before it is too late so as to convince the public of the horrendous threat from chemical weapons.

For our collective protection, subways and other underground shelters should be greatly upgraded to defend against chemical weapons. Reliability of the protection system has never been scrutinized, and detailed evacuation guidelines have not been set. Those shelters only carry symbolic meaning. No consensus has been reached on the individual protection system either, as seen in a critical dearth of gas masks, decontamination equipment and related exercises. The government must hand out a gas mask to each citizen and teach them how to put it on. I was shocked to see North Koreans thoroughly preparing for a chemical weapons attack by South Korea even though the country does not have any intention to use such weapons. They do training as they know the lethality of chemical weapons.

A rapid decrease in military draftees in the South due to its low birthrate calls for an epochal change in the structure of our military and mobilization system. Carlyle Institute research shows that South Korea’s military manpower will dwindle to 150,000 by 2040 from 300,000 in 2027 and 400,000 in 2021. The current soldier-based operation system cannot be sustained. The government must change it to an integral system encompassing a regular force, a mobilization force and a reserve force. The reserve force system must be improved to make the best of science and tech talent to meet the demands of modern warfare beyond the level of making up for losses in the regular force.

There is barely any difference between a regular force and a reserve force in Israel. During the 1967 Six-Day War, the country filled 23 of the 30 brigades of ground forces with members of its reserve army. In the Gulf War, the United States mobilized 360,000 soldiers from its reverse army to replace dead or wounded soldiers on the battlefields or to deploy them in logistics support. 28 percent of the Swiss people possess a firearm and receive combat trainings in peacetime. We must change our system in a similar way.

The mobilization system established in 1969 and the government’s Chungmu Plan also need to be revamped to properly reflect the shifts in the economy and demographics. The Chungmu Plan, which specifies government roles for wartime support for the military, in particular, should be fundamentally upgraded. As the plan involves the declaration of martial law and mobilization of civilians — a pillar of military operations during war — it can hardly be carried out without effective support from local governments.

Since the January 21 infiltration of North Korean commandos to attack the Blue House in 1968, military drills have been augmented since 1976 after they changed into joint military-civilian drills. But a weakened sense of security among the public shakes the fundamentals of security. After being appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2013, I repeatedly stressed the importance of a joint drill, but unfortunately it became a nominal exercise for lower-level government officials. That led to a collapse of the security sense and obligation of civil servants. What more explanation do I need when the past administration even stopped military drills for the regular forces?

People who have participated in joint drills with the U.S. forces are amazed to see their sincere attitude. Even if they conduct simulation exercises, they sincerely discuss possible countermeasures just like in real battles. What matters is a sense of devotion, repeated exercises, and fixing any problems discovered.

I experienced an interesting development during the Ulchi-Freedom Guardian drill a decade ago. Controversy broke over the bombing of the Hangang Bridge — the first bridge built on the Han River — to block North Korean forces from further advancing to the South. During the 1950-53 Korean War, that was the only bridge on the river bisecting Seoul. But now, there are 33 bridges. And yet, the drill was conducted based on the hypothesis that we still have one bridge on the river. You cannot expect a success from such soulless exercises.

A county’s nuclear development and operation plans are top secret. The information must not be disclosed. But North Korea is a country irrational enough to make public the legislation of a preemptive nuclear attack.

That’s why we must accept the North’s WMD stockpiles as an imminent threat. A minor mistake on our part can lead to the annihilation of the country. Who knew that a superpower could lose over 3,000 citizens from a terrorist attack in 2001? The government must build an integral security system to defend the country. At the same time, it must declare a stern response to the recalcitrant state across the border if it chooses to cross a line.

We coped with Kim Jong-un’s threat to turn Seoul into a sea of fire — and the Yeonpyeong shelling — with cool heads. But chemical weapons cannot be compared to any of its past provocations. The government must accept this existential threat and devise effective measures to deal with it. Foreigners are often surprised to see South Koreans maintaining unrivaled calmness in the most dangerous country on earth. That is a two-edged observation.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.

12. Could Itaewon tragedy have been prevented?

Hindsight is 20/20.

Leaderless revolution, leaderless terrorism, and now a leaderless Halloween event. Note the distraction of and deployment of other resources for the protests in Gwanghwamun.

While admitting that a large number of police were deployed in Gwanghwamun due to several protests, Lee said the Itaewon crush did not seem to be "an incident that could have been prevented by deploying more police or fire officers."

Experts pointed out that, as the event was held without an organizer, there was reduced scope for holding people responsible.

...

"(For other type of events) the organizers could be punished under the law (for mismanagement), but it is difficult for someone to take the blame for the event as this was a voluntary event without an organizer," Yeom Gun-woong, professor at the Department of Police & Fire Administration at U1 University, said on a YTN radio show Sunday morning.

...

“District events held by local governments or institutions have to have safety plans and measures if more than 1,000 people are expected to participate. But this was a district event without a specific organizer, lacking the safety control function,” professor Lee Young-ju from the Department of Fire and Disaster at the University of Seoul told broadcaster YTN.

Could Itaewon tragedy have been prevented?

koreaherald.com · by Im Eun-byel · October 30, 2022

With the nation in shock with the overnight tragedy from the crowd surge at Halloween festivities in Itaewon, questions surfaced about the lack of safety control and crowd management over the event.

The tragedy happened as a large number of people were packed at a narrow alley that connects Exit 1 of Itaewon Station with the World Food Street -- a street filled with clubs and bars -- behind the Hamilton Hotel.

Witnesses observed people pushing each other as they tried to go up or down the crowded alley. The alley is 45 meters long and 4 meters wide, and slopes downward toward the main road and the station.

As authorities look into how and why the tragedy unfolded, some say the catastrophe could have been prevented, or at least partly controlled.

The Halloween party in Itaewon has been a long-publicized event as the central Seoul area has functioned as its main venue for years. Every year, crowds dressed in costumes have gathered for the Halloween festivities.

It was anticipated that a large crowd would gather in the area as it was the first Halloween in three years to be held without pandemic restrictions.

Last year, even in the midst of the ongoing pandemic, crowds gathered at Itaewon to celebrate the occasion, drawing criticism about the possible risk of virus transmission.

While questions were raised about the lack of police crowd control, Interior Minister Lee Sang-min claimed the tragedy could not have been prevented by deploying more police officers.

"This was not a gathering of a large size that caused special concern" or a size that was different from previous years, Lee said at a briefing held at the governmental complex in Seoul on Sunday.

While admitting that a large number of police were deployed in Gwanghwamun due to several protests, Lee said the Itaewon crush did not seem to be "an incident that could have been prevented by deploying more police or fire officers."

Experts pointed out that, as the event was held without an organizer, there was reduced scope for holding people responsible.

"(For other type of events) the organizers could be punished under the law (for mismanagement), but it is difficult for someone to take the blame for the event as this was a voluntary event without an organizer," Yeom Gun-woong, professor at the Department of Police & Fire Administration at U1 University, said on a YTN radio show Sunday morning.

“When the rescue workers arrived on the scene, the casualties were more severe than expected. Authorities had to mobilize the ambulances and rescue workers across the greater Seoul area,” Yeom said.

Emergency vehicles and rescue workers could not easily approach the site due to traffic congestion and crowding even though the tragedy happened just 100 meters from the nearest fire station. With nearly 300 victims, there were not enough people to cope with the tragedy, either.

“District events held by local governments or institutions have to have safety plans and measures if more than 1,000 people are expected to participate. But this was a district event without a specific organizer, lacking the safety control function,” professor Lee Young-ju from the Department of Fire and Disaster at the University of Seoul told broadcaster YTN.

“This was a disaster that could have been controlled or prevented. But this was not taken care of, with no one taking the responsibility in the first place."

By Im Eun-byel (silverstar@heraldcorp.com)

koreaherald.com · by Im Eun-byel · October 30, 2022

​​

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

Mental Models for Learning Anything