Free Republic

'North Korea capable of hitting Seoul with nukes' By Lee Tae-hoon Song Young-sun, a lawmaker of the National Assembly Defense Committee, said Friday that North Korea’s military is capable of striking South Korea with its nuclear weapons via missile or by dropping them from a “stealth”aircraft. “Pyongyang has yet to secure the technology to hit Hawaii, which is 3,600 kilometers away, or the U.S. mainland with a nuclear warhead,” Song of the minor opposition Future Alliance Hope told The Korea Times. “However, they have already developed numerous Scuds and other types of missiles highly capable of carrying small nuclear warheads...

Like most Seoulites, Hong Jin-ah, a 27-year-old graduate student, had never given a second thought to a North Korean invasion. Despite the rogue country’s close proximity to Seoul, most people here have grown deaf to the threat it poses. But after Pyongyang leveled Yeonpyeong Island on Nov. 23 with dozens of artillery blasts, many here are now making contingency plans. Hong was stumped when she considered where she would go if a war broke out. She turned to her smartphone for an answer. Her search for bomb shelters in Hapjeong-dong, western Seoul, turned up nothing. Next she checked a blog...

The violence has sparked anger and political turmoil in South Korea. The country's defense minister, Kim Tae-young resigned after the exchange of fire, and veterans of the South Korean military protested Saturday on the streets of Seoul, stating they were angry that their country's government had not done enough to respond to the North's shelling. One group of protesters gathered near the defense ministry building Saturday, clashing with police officers with some charging and kicking officers.

Seoul not safe from artillery attacks By Bae Ji-sook Seoul is never safe from North Korea’s artillery attacks such as the one that broke out on Yeonpyeong Island earlier this week, analysts say. As the capital city is filled with skyscrapers and a complicated layout of roads, the severity of damage that could be caused by any military attack threatens to be even higher, they said. According to the Seoul Metropolitan Government, there are 3,919 underground shelters in the city including the underground floors of public organizations, local administration units, large buildings and metro stations. The specific address and information...

Military Projections Show The Devastating Capabilities Of North Korean Artillery Gus Lubin | Nov. 23, 2010, 4:59 North Korea is said to have the world's largest artillery force. South Korea's capital city is only 35 miles from the border. This frightening military scenario is suddenly relevant after North Korea fired shells this morning at a South Korean military facilities on a rival island. At least one person was killed in the attack, and now South Korea has returned

Talks broke down on Thursday night after the European Parliament demanded a say over new EU taxes as the price for dropping a Brussels budget demand that would have cost British taxpayers an extra £880 million next year. A rather empty looking European parliament during the mini plenary session in Brussels MEPs were told by national finance ministers that their ultimatum that the parliament should have a direct part in giving the EU tax raising powers after 2013, was "completely unacceptable". Justine Greening, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, said that Britain had been joined by Germany and other countries...

On his current visit to Beijing, UK Prime Minister David Cameron has said China will soon reclaim its position as the world's biggest economy - a role it has held for 18 of the past 20 centuries. But how did the US, Britain and the rest of Europe interrupt this reign of supremacy? It comes down to location. Europeans have been asking this question since the 18th Century, and Africans and Asians since the 19th. But there is still not much agreement on the answers. People once claimed Westerners were simply biologically superior. Others have argued Western religion, culture, ethics,...

Anne, 45, has always considered herself middle-class: As a single mom earning $65,000 a year in ad sales, she was able to rent a one-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side for $1,000 a month and send her daughter, now 12, to private school. “I was able to make it,” she says. “Even go on vacation sometimes.” In the span of 15 months, she has come to define herself as poor — even if the government won’t, denying her multiple applications for welfare and food stamps because, she says, she once made “too much money.” Upon losing her job in...

http://finance.yahoo.com/intlindices?e=europe http://www.cnbc.com/id/17689937 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/european-stocks-fall-hard-after-shanghai-slump-2010-11-12

I woke up, turned Fox FNC channel on and see Live from Seoul, our "professor" President "naked" without teleprompter answering questions during the press conference there. What an embarrasment! Demonstrating before the world that he is clueless, full of hot air rhetorics that do not make any sense, but on the path to destroy what was achieved by US so far. I hope that much will be U-tubed and shown to anger more of the unemployed and overataxed subjects. Seems that the only "benefit" of the whole extravaganza is the "fashion statement" of the first whatever. Now the world can...

SEOUL, South Korea — President Obama’s hopes of emerging from his Asia trip with the twin victories of a free trade agreement with South Korea and a unified approach to spurring economic growth around the world ran into resistance on all fronts on Thursday, putting Mr. Obama at odds with his key allies and largest trading partners. The most concrete trophy expected to emerge from the trip eluded his grasp: a long-delayed free trade agreement with South Korea, first negotiated by the Bush administration and then reopened by Mr. Obama, to have greater protections for American workers. And as officials...

YOKOHAMA, Japan -- President Barack Obama, capping a far-flung Asian trip of mixed results, assured Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Sunday that getting the Senate to ratify the START nuclear weapons treaty is a "top priority" of his administration. "I reiterated my commitment to getting the START treaty done during the lame-duck session," Obama said, noting that Congress returns next week for its postelection session. In talks with Medvedev on the sidelines of the summit of the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), Obama also reiterated his support for bringing Russia into the World Trade Organization, calling Russia "an excellent partner." ..."

Go to the Link HERE.Stream the one minute report--by hitting the white triangle in center of page, showing Obama meandering throughout Asia country by country, but ending on the tone that "his Asian trip basically accomplished little", and saying that President Obama now heads into a weakened situation back home with the emboldened and multiplied Republicans waiting for him in D.C.Most computers can stream this short JNN video, voice over is in Japanese but good visuals of Obama "in action"; it will be up for a day or two.

The U.S. government is apparently debating how to stage joint exercises with South Korea not only this month but all year round as a response to North Korea's torpedo attack on the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan in March. A diplomatic source in Washington on Tuesday said the U.S. is thinking a lot about these joint exercises "to deliver a clear message to the North." Following the planned joint drill this month, the two countries will further upgrade the Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise, which is staged in August every year, and may also possibly conduct various other kinds of drills....

The world's biggest military alliance, NATO, is looking to increase cooperation with South Korea and other partners beyond Europe and North America to meet global challenges such as proliferation and piracy, a senior NATO official said Tuesday. "Our security interests and security interests of countries like Korea coincide today more than ever," Dirk Brengelmann, NATO's assistant secretary general for political affairs and security policy, said in an interview with Yonhap News Agency. "NATO's intention is not to become a global police. We intend to remain a Euro-Atlantic organization. But it's at the same time necessary to do cooperation with these...

The planned creation of the U.S. Korea Command has been delayed to October or later, according to a source at the Ministry of Defense yesterday. The source told the JoongAng Ilbo that the new command structure was supposed to be created on June 1, but Seoul and Washington agreed to push back its creation to October or later, because of the delay of the transfer of wartime operational control of South Korean soldiers from the U.S. to South Korea. The U.S. Korea Command will be a new organization of the U.S. military forces here to be used after Korea is...

Leaders of South Korea and the United States have delayed Seoul’s scheduled takeover of wartime operational control of its troops to Dec. 1, 2015, pushing back the transfer date three years and seven months. The decision was made at a meeting between Presidents Lee Myung-bak and Barack Obama before the Group of 20 financial summit here on Saturday. The two leaders also discussed security issues and North Korea’s recent provocation, government officials said. When the 1950-53 Korean War began, South Korea handed over peacetime and wartime operational control of its soldiers to the U.S.-led United Nations Command, after which the...

South Korea has decided to strengthen scrutinizing of North Korean asylum-seekers as spies from the communist country are attempting to enter the South pretending to be refugees. "We will conduct tighter screening," said an official at the National Intelligence Service. The move comes after two North Korean agents — both majors in the army's reconnaissance bureau — were arrested in April on charges of attempting to assassinate Hwang Jang-Yop, a high-ranking North Korean defector who has led anti-North campaigns. All North Koreans who entered the South undergo questioning by South Korea's intelligence agency service for up to 90 days. But...

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and his American counterpart Barack Obama announced a three-year delay in Washington's transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON) to Seoul, citing the volatile atmosphere on the Korean Peninsula with North Korea's continued military provocations, most recently a deadly naval attack on a warship. The leaders also agreed to make concrete efforts to revive their long-stalled free trade agreement talks, as Obama set November as the deadline for completing necessary discussions. Obama began the summit with Lee with a show of his resolve to make North Korea pay a price for sinking a South Korean warship,...