SOUTH KOREA
Police raid aerospace office
Police yesterday raided the head office of Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) in connection with two Indonesian nationals accused of leaking technology related to a fighter jet project, a police official said. The two engineers are accused of breaching the Defense Acquisition Program Act and leaking technology related to the KF-21, a homegrown fighter jet that is partially backed by Indonesia. The raid started on Thursday and was continuing for a second day, an official at the security investigation bureau of Gyeongnam Provincial Police said. A KAI spokesperson said the company was “actively cooperating” to ensure it could provide anything necessary for the police investigation to establish the truth. The KF-21, developed by KAI, is designed to be a cheaper, less stealthy alternative to the US-built F-35, on which Seoul relies. An Indonesian foreign ministry spokesperson last month told reporters that Jakarta was gathering evidence about the allegations.
EL SALVADOR
Bitcoin savings hit US$406m
President Nayib Bukele on Thursday said that his country has stored more than US$400 million in bitcoin in an offline “cold wallet” as the cryptocurrency forges new record highs. “We’ve decided to transfer a big chunk of our bitcoin to a cold wallet, and store that cold wallet in a physical vault within our national territory,” Bukele wrote on X. “You can call it our first bitcoin piggy bank,” he added. The cold wallet protects cryptocurrency investments by keeping them offline to prevent hacking attacks. Bukele shared a screenshot of the investment showing a total of 5,689.7 bitcoin, with a valuation of US$406.6 million. The nation was the first in the world to legally circulate bitcoin as legal tender on par with the US dollar in September 2021. “It’s not much, but it’s honest work,” Bukele said about the cold wallet initiative.
CHINA
US envoy mocks criticism
US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns yesterday said that Beijing’s position on a potential TikTok ban in the US was “supremely ironic” given the Chinese Communist Party’s censorship of online platforms within its borders. The US House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a bill that would force the short-video app to break with its Chinese parent company or face a nationwide ban. Beijing called the move Washington’s “bandit” mentality and accused US lawmakers of “unjustly suppressing foreign companies.” During an online seminar by the US-based East-West Center, Burns said Chinese officials “won’t even let TikTok be available to 1.4 billion Chinese.” Many Western platforms, including Google, Facebook and Instagram, are blocked from operating in the country.
SOUTH KOREA
Actor guilty of sex crime
South Korean actor O Yeong-su, who starred in the first season of the hit Netflix series Squid Game, was yesterday convicted on charges of sexual harassment and handed a suspended prison sentence, a court official said. The Seongnam branch of the Suwon District Court sentenced O to eight months in prison, suspended for two years, as well as 40 hours of attendance at a sexual violence treatment program, the court official said by telephone. The 79-year-old actor, who was charged with two counts of sexual harassment in 2017, had denied the accusations. O told reporters he planned to appeal against the decision. He has seven days to appeal or the ruling will be upheld.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
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