On the Korean Peninsula

China let its attack dog off the leash:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met with Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu to discuss military issues and the regional security environment, state media said Thursday as the country celebrated the 70th anniversary of an armistice that halted fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War. ...

During the meeting, Shoigu conveyed to Kim a “warm and good letter” signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, KCNA said. The report did not specify the military matters that were discussed.

Kim also took Shoigu to an arms exhibition that showcased some of North Korea’s newest weapons and briefed him on national plans to expand the country’s military capabilities. Photos from the exhibition showed Kim gesturing while talking to Shoigu as they walked near a row of large missiles mounted on launcher trucks.

 

This North Korea:

Both Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il-sung, and his father, KimJong-il, began displaying portraits and statues of themselves in public in theearly years of their rule.

In a report on the exhibition, the Korean Central News Agency said that the paintings showed “the great personality of Kim Jong-un” and that he has “achieved one victory after another in the confrontations with imperialism and the US that have lasted for centuries”.

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At the age of 92, Lee Dae-bong doesn't particularly enjoy getting out of bed. He has lived enough of a life. As he readjusts his pyjamas, his left hand reveals three missing fingers.

His injury is not the result of the war he fought, but the subsequent 54 years he was forced to toil in a North Korean coal mine.

The former South Korean soldier was captured during the Korean War by Chinese troops, who were fighting alongside North Korea. It was 28 June 1953; the first day of the battle of Arrowhead Hill, and less than a month before the armistice brought an end to three brutal years of fighting.

All, bar three of his platoon, were killed that day. As he and the two other survivors were loaded onto a cargo train, he assumed they were heading home to South Korea, but the train veered North, to the Aoji coal mine, where he would spend most of his life. His family was told he had been killed in combat.

Between 50,000 and 80,000 South Korean soldiers were held captive in North Korea after the Korean War ended with an armistice agreement that divided the peninsula.

A peace treaty never followed, and the prisoners have never been returned. Mr Lee was one of the very few who managed to plot his own escape.