Free Republic

The incredible story of Yang Kyoungjong is all the more phenomenal because, while there's very little proof that he ever existed, our need to believe that he did has been so urgent that facts seem to matter very little. But that hasn't stopped at least three reputable historians from telling Yang Kyoungjong's story with confidence, and the premise of his life even became the basis for My Way, a multimillion-dollar South Korean action movie, albeit one embroidered with its own fictions. Yang Kyoungjong's story begins just after D-Day when, in an interview made for historian Stephen Ambrose years later, an...

North Korea’s constitution now calls for an immediate retaliatory nuclear missile strike if leader Kim Jong Un is killed by a foreign power. The change, believed to have been adopted earlier this year, was made soon after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was wiped out in the US-Israeli strikes, the Telegraph reported. “If the command-and-control system over the state’s nuclear forces is placed in danger by hostile forces’ attacks … a nuclear strike shall be launched automatically and immediately,” the revised Article 3 of North Korea’s nuclear-policy law now reads. The revision, likely agreed on by the Supreme People’s...

North Korea has formally amended its constitution to mandate an automatic nuclear strike if leader Kim Jong Un is killed or the regime’s command structure comes under attack. This chilling “dead hand” policy, enacted in the shadow of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s assassination by U.S.-Israeli strikes, reveals the regime’s paranoia and the inescapable logic of deterrence in a world of tyrants.

Madangbawi, a landmark rock on Seoul's Gwanaksan Mountain that has recently gained fame among young people as a place to "absorb good energy," has been defaced with graffiti. The Gwanak District Office completed restoration and referred the case to police. Critics say the sudden surge in popularity has led to unexpected side effects. Madangbawi is a signature landmark located along the No. 1 hiking trail on Gwanaksan. It is widely known as a rest stop where hikers take certification photos. However, a hiker recently defaced the rock by spraying yellow lacquer paint on it. The message left at the scene...

A team of researchers led by Kyungcheol Choy of Hanyang University found evidence of chicken-keeping some 2,000 years ago with the Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) technique, according to a statement released by Hanyang University. This technique allows scientists to analyze collagen peptides and amino acid sequences obtained from small samples of bone, thus allowing the identification of even highly fragmented remains. The chicken bones in this study were unearthed at the Gungok-ri site in southwestern Korea. "We confirmed not only the presence of chickens but also their management during the Proto-Three Kingdoms period," Choy said. Plus, elevated levels of...

In the summer of 1905, two men held a private conversation in Tokyo that the world wouldn't find out about for nearly two decades. No treaty was signed. No announcement was made. But in that room, the United States quietly handed an entire nation over to colonial rule — and set in motion a chain of events that would end at Pearl Harbor forty years later. This is the story of the Taft-Katsura Agreement, the secret deal that validated Japanese imperial ambition at the exact moment it needed validation most. We cover the Meiji Restoration and Japan's transformation from feudal...

According to a report in The Korea Herald, Jeong Choong-won of Seoul National University and an international team of researchers conducted a genetic study of 78 individuals buried in 44 tombs in South Korea's Imdang-Joyeong burial complex, which was in use during the Three Kingdoms period between the fourth and sixth centuries A.D. The scientists detected evidence of close-kin marriages and family-based sacrificial burials among the occupants of the burials. Most of the tombs in the complex consist of a main burial chamber and a secondary chamber. In at least 20 of the main chambers, the researchers found evidence of...

The year was 1490. The location, Qingyang, China. It was a spring evening in this central Chinese city when something strange began to occur in the sky above. For one, there was a recently discovered comet that was coming into view: Comet C-1490 Y1. But this comet pales in comparison to the really strange event that was about to occur. The Meteor Shower That Killed 10,000 People | 19:18 Swegle Studios | 459K subscribers | 709,238 views | July 8, 2025

Retired Navy Capt. E. Royce Williams has been keeping a secret for more than 50 years. To his friends, family, and others he served with, Williams was known as a decorated fighter pilot, who led a successful career in the Navy, where he served for more than 30 years and flew more than 220 missions in Korea and Vietnam. However, even his wife wasn’t aware of what he’d done on Nov. 18, 1952. That morning, Williams was continuing what had become a daily routine for him as a young Navy pilot stationed onboard the USS Oriskany off the coast of...

A heroic battle, the longest dogfight in the history of US Naval aviation, was forgotten, buried among the closest held secrets of the cold war, for over sixty years.

The world of totalitarian dictators is getting a bit of a shake-up this week, as something that has been intensely speculated upon in the South Korean government and media has come to pass at least on some level: North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has reportedly designated his teenage daughter as his official heir, indicating that she would be groomed to continue his family line and dictatorship. That said, it’s difficult to say how much media manipulation and spycraft is involved here–there are many in the South Korean government, media and public who believe that one of Kim Jong Un’s...

North Korea is executing schoolchildren for watching South Korean TV shows and listening to K-Pop, including Netflix’s hit series “Squid Game,” according to Amnesty International. Escapees told the human rights group that teenagers and even middle school students have been publicly executed, sent to labor camps or subjected to brutal public humiliations for consuming foreign media banned by the regime. The accounts are based on 25 in-depth interviews conducted in 2025 with North Koreans who fled the country between 2012 and 2020, the organization said. Most were between ages 15 and 25 when they escaped. One interviewee said people, including...

Korean War hero Royce Williams is being awarded the Medal of Honor, and his actions are something not even Hollywood could have dreamed up. Congressman Darrell Issa announced on Wednesday that President Donald Trump officially informed Williams of his MoH. The Medal of Honor is the nation's highest military award. It is only awarded for actions so heroic that oftentimes, the person earning it is killed. Williams is still with us in 2026, and his once-secret actions are now out in the public. Buckle up for one of the most insane war stories you'll ever hear.

The host city for World Youth Day 2027 will be Seoul, South Korea. The fact that an American Pope will be presiding and that Korean culture generally is pretty popular in the US means that interest in attending should be pretty high among Americans. I suspect that some of my own kids may find their way over there for the event. This being the case, what better time for American Catholics to find out about the vibrant past and hopeful future of the Church in Korea? Seoul is a particularly appropriate site for WYD 2027 considering that Catholicism had its...

This post is the first in a series drawn from a new book entitled Martyrs of Blood, Martyrs of Sweat: The Letters of Saint Andrew Kim Dae-geon and Venerable Father Thomas Choe Yang-eop, as translated and edited by Brothers Anthony and Han-yol of the Community of Taizé, published by Arx Publishing. This engrossing work contains all of the extant correspondence of these first two native Korean Catholic priests. Andrew Kim would go on to be martyred and later canonized a saint. Thomas Choe perished of exhaustion and sickness after ministering in his native land for over a decade. During their...

SEOUL, Jan 14 (Yonhap)-A special counsel team has requested the death penalty for former President Yoon Suk Yeol over his failed imposition of martial law, describing him as the ringleader of an insurrection who sought to stay in power by seizing control of the judiciary and legislature. Special Counsel Cho Eun-suk's team made the request during the final hearing of Yoon's trial at the Seoul Central District Court on Tuesday, just over a year after the then president declared martial law on Dec. 3, 2024, with the stated aim of eradicating anti-state forces. The court plans to hand down its...

SEOUL, Jan 12 (Reuters) - South Korean authorities have launched an investigation focused on the possibility civilians may have flown drones that North Korea said violated its ‌airspace, the Defence Ministry said on Monday. President Lee Jae Myung has vowed a swift ‌probe and said on Saturday if civilians had indeed operated the unmanned aircraft, it would be a "serious crime" that threatened South Korea's security and peace on the Korean peninsula. South Korea is ⁠willing to jointly conduct ‌the investigation with North Korea but has not made the proposal, a defence ministry spokesperson said ‍citing Minister Ahn Gyu-back. North...

Hyun-bo Son, a Korean pastor known for his outspoken stance on biblical teachings, remains jailed on election law charges. His case gained fresh international attention recently after his son, Chance Son, spoke in Arizona at Turning Point USA's AMFEST, sharing his father's story with thousands of attendees… Support from Americans is also growing. That includes the late Charlie Kirk, who met Pastor Son in Seoul at a conference during Kirk's final international appearance. Son said, "My father was able to share what's happening in Korea, especially to the Christian leaders, including himself. And also the possibility that my father could...

More than 4,000 elementary, middle and high schools across Korea have shut their doors as the country’s student population shrinks, new data shows. According to the Ministry of Education’s latest figures, revealed on Sunday by Rep. Jin Sun-mee of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, since 1980, 4,008 schools under 17 regional education offices nationwide have closed as of March this year. During the period, the number of enrolled students decreased from 9.9 million to 5.07 million. Elementary schools account for the majority of closures, with 3,674 shut down permanently, compared with 264 middle schools and 70 high schools. Over...

SIXTY-EIGHT years ago tomorrow, Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. In the brutal Pacific war that would follow, millions of soldiers and civilians were killed. My father — one of the famous flag raisers on Iwo Jima — was among the young men who went off to the Pacific to fight for his country. So the war naturally fascinated me. But I always wondered, why did we fight in the Pacific? Yes, there was Pearl Harbor, but why did the Japanese attack us in the first place? ... The one who had the greater effect on Japan’s...