Lego Group officials announced that they have completed the world's tallest Lego tower in Seoul, South Korea, which stands at 104 feet, 8 inches tall. Lego said Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark had the honor of placing the final brick on the structure which was built by 4,000 young contest winners to help mark the 80th anniversary of the Danish toy maker. The tower, which stands in front of Seoul's Olympic Stadium, took more than 50,000 colorful bricks and five days to build. According to Lego, the South Korean tower bests the previous tallest structure which was erected in France that stands at 103 feet, 8 inches tall.

Via WCYB.

Via a reader tip comes this news that the Jogye Buddhist monk scandal in South Korea could become much worse:

Following the recent scandal that exposed monks of the largest Buddhist sect in Korea for gambling while intoxicated, the whistle-blower, Venerable Seongho, reported further allegations yesterday that Jogye Order monks gambled overseas, kept mistresses, had secret wives, frequented room salons and even paid for sex.

Ahead of prosecutor questioning, Venerable Seongho, a former official of the Executive Office of the Korean Buddhist Jogye Order, stated yesterday morning in a radio interview with MBC that while “this may seem shocking to civilians, [gambling] in executive office gatherings is customary.”

And gambling is not just limited to Korea, he said, as monks “go overseas to the Philippines, Macao or Las Vegas and change out of their monk robes” to play slots or pachinko. Some monks lost hundreds of millions of won gambling overseas, he said.

The venerable further stated that Venerable Jaseung, the executive director of the Executive Office of the Jogye Order, was not free from blame either.

“Venerable Jaseung and Venerable Myeongjin in the past went to the Sinbad Room Salon in Gangnam for full service and paid for sex,” he said.   [Korea Herald]

I guess even Buddhist monks are not free from sex scandals.

It looks like the Chinese are continuing with their crackdown on groups assisting North Korean refugees within China:

South Korea’s foreign ministry says China has been holding four of its citizens in Dandong, activists linked to North Korean refugees, since their arrest March 29 in Dalian.

Spokesman Cho Byung-je says Seoul is asking Beijing to handle the case in a fair and swift manner.

“South Korea understands that the investigation is proceeding based on procedures under Chinese law,” said Cho, who did not comment on specific accusations because formal charges have yet to be levied.

The group appears to have been in contact with North Korean refugees in northeastern China to find about life and conditions in their homeland.

Seoul-based activists said at least one of the detained men, Kim Young-hwan, a prominent and controversial figure in human rights circles in South Korea, is likely to face spying charges.

Kim, an independent researcher with the Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights, known as NKnet, is best known for clandestinely boarding a North Korean submarine in 1991 in order to meet the country’s founder, Kim Il Sung. He later renounced his support for Pyongyang’s ideology and became a strong critic of the reclusive country’s human rights abuses.

The other South Korean detainees are identified as Yu Jae Gil, Kang Shin Sam and Lee Sang Yong.

Park Jin-keol, director of NKnet’s international department, said South Koreans who assist North Koreans in China do face danger, but that they are rarely arrested for spying.

“In other cases, usually these people are not charged with espionage,” he said. “Based on what Mr. Kim has been writing in South Korea, he never argued against the Chinese government. He only advocated human rights and the well-being of North Koreans. So we suspect that North Korean spy agencies or authorities are deeply involved in this incident by charging Mr. Kim and other people [in China] for espionage.”  [VOA News]

You can read more at the link.

At a time of reduced budgets where there are people in the Pentagon and within the US government pushing to cut retirement benefits for servicemembers and making retirees pay more for their health the Navy has enough funding to buy fuel that is 4 times more expensive than conventional fuel:

Congressional Republicans have thrown a wrench into the Navy’s plans to get half its energy needs from alternative fuel sources by 2020, Wired magazine reported, voting to effectively ban the military from purchasing biofuels.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced in August that the service would invest $170 million over three years to develop alternatives to fossil fuels to power its ships and aircraft.

In December, the Navy bought 450,000 gallons of biofuel, the largest-ever single biofuel purchase by the U.S. government. The $12 million purchase was enough to operate a carrier group during the 2012 Rim of the Pacific, or RIMPAC, international maritime exercise.

Biofuels cost about four times as much as fossil fuels, but Mabus has said the environmental and homeland security benefits justify the additional cost. “We simply buy too much petroleum from potentially or actually volatile places,” he said in a 2010 energy report.

Republicans on the House Armed Services disagree. The panel voted on May 9 to ban the Defense Department from making or buying an alternative fuel that costs more than a “traditional fossil fuel,” Wired reported.  [Stars & Stripes]

However, the House Republicans have no credibility on this issue when they have authorized billions to be spent on their pet projects that the Pentagon does not want and yet are upset about $12 million spent on the Navy’s bio-fuel program?  Likewise Democrats have no credibility either saying that the bio-fuel program lessens America’s dependence on fossil fuels from countries that don’t like us and yet have been fighting like crazy to stop the Keystone Pipeline. Here is a thought, how about Republicans allow the Navy to keep their bio-fuels and the Democrats allow the construction of the Keystone Pipeline?  But that would be a compromise which is something that you see little of in the run up to an election.

I guess we will see how long this lasts:

 North Korea appears to have stopped jamming satellite signals in an apparent attempt to disrupt air and maritime traffic navigation systems in parts of South Korea, a high-ranking government source in Seoul said Tuesday.

The North has been blamed for global positioning system (GPS) disruptions that affected hundreds of commercial flights and ships in and out of South Korea since April 28, although no damage was caused as all had backup navigational systems.

“GPS jamming signals from North Korea have not been detected since May 14,” the source said on condition of anonymity, adding the South’s military is keeping “close watch” on the North’s activities.

The source did not rule out the possibility North Korea could send such signals again.

The South’s military is analyzing why North Korea sent the GPS jamming signals from its western border city of Kaesong, officials said.  [Yonhap News]

If Al Qaeda was doing this it would be considered terrorism but since it is North Korea no one cares and the ROK government is left to deal with it:

North Korea has continued to jam satellite signals to try to disrupt air and maritime traffic navigation systems in South Korea, a government official said Sunday, in defiance of Seoul’s warning to take the issue to a U.N. communications agency.

The North’s global positioning system (GPS) jamming signals originating from its western border city of Kaesong since April 28 have not caused damage to airplane flights or ship navigations in South Korea’s border areas, the official said.  [Yonhap]

I think the South Koreans really should force this as a big issue with the United Nations and make nations like China on the UN Security Council that enable behavior like this to vote on sanctioning North Korea for the GPS jamming.

Here is the case of two South Korean illegal immigrants that I just heard about on the radio today that were arrested last year for selling fake driver’s licenses to other illegal immigrants in California:

Two men have been arrested for their alleged role in a scheme to obtain valid California driver’s licenses for illegal aliens.

Dae Wahn Ahn, 49, from Diamond Bar and 47-year-old Chong Hwan Kim from Norwalk were arrested Wednesday in Los Angeles.

They are accused of using altered Canadian passports and legitimate Social Security numbers to obtain valid California driver’s licenses for illegal aliens from Asia who traveled to Kern County.

The arrests were the result of a 17-month probe by a multi-agency task force, including U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement and Bakersfield DMV investigators. Investigators said the suspects recruited clients through advertisements in Korean newspapers and by word of mouth.

Investigators said the scheme charged clients $3,500 to $5,000 to obtain the licenses and estimated that more than 200 foreign nationals from Korea and China may have exploited the scheme.

“With these arrests and continued enforcement actions, our message is clear- activities related to fraudulently obtaining a California driver’s license simply will not be tolerated,” said George Valverde, director of the California DMV.

Ahn and Kim were arraigned in Bakersfield Thursday on multiple felony counts. The two suspects are both Korean nationals who are in the U.S. illegally after overstaying their original visas.  [ABC 7 News]

Here is more details about the case where they were selling these fake licenses to Korean and Chinese illegals.  Why this case was being brought up on the radio was because these guys received 3 months in jail and will face deportation proceedings.  The argument was that the sentencing was too light considering the amount of fraud they committed.  If you Google driver’s license fraud in California it is amazing how many people have been arrested for this crime to include a number of DMV employees in the state.  Is it any wonder why Republicans complain about voter fraud when all these illegal immigrants with fake driver’s licenses can register to vote in the state?

Here is a perfect example of election year politics in the US that is going to unnecessarily cause tension between the government and people of South Korea and the US military that will bear the consequences of the protests and public anger such a move will likely cause:

South Korea’s military has reacted negatively to a possible U.S. push to redeploy tactical nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula, saying such a move won’t be helpful in resolving the North Korean nuclear issue.

A source in the South’s military said Sunday that a redeployment of tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea would run counter to a 1992 inter-Korean declaration on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and work against persuading the North to give up its nuclear weapons program.

The response came after reports last week that a U.S. congressional committee is pressuring the Obama administration to redeploy tactical nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula. The House Armed Services Committee, dominated by Republicans, approved an amendment to the fiscal 2013 national defense authorization bill Thursday that calls for the re-introduction of the sensitive weapons to South Korea, according to Foreign Policy magazine.

The U.S. pulled all of its forward-based nuclear weapons out of Korea in 1991 before the two Koreas signed a deal on the denuclearization of the peninsula. Since then, the U.S. has provided a so-called nuclear umbrella for the South.  [Yonhap]

Like with the phony student loan fight or the so called “War On Women” created by the Democrats as election year issues, the Republicans are firing back with their own manufactured election year issue by trying to make Democrats look weak on defense.  Besides trying to get the Democrats to appear to be soft on North Korea, the Republicans are also trying to get the Democrats to be on record as being soft on defense of the home land by trying to construct a missile defense base on the East Coast that the Pentagon doesn’t want.  There is little to no truth in any of these issues, but creating perceptions about the other is all that matters in an election year.  Unfortunately too many US voters are to unaware to realize the phony nature of these issues.