SEOUL—In a country that fetes its military elites like celebrities, Col. Gen. Kim Yong Bok was rarely seen—or even mentioned—in public. His role leading North Korea’s special forces required him to keep a low profile to conceal his identity. But now he is a very public figure.
He is the top North Korean military official in Russia, where more than 11,000 North Korean soldiers have been deployed to aid Moscow’s efforts to dislodge Ukrainian troops who have seized a chunk of Russian territory.
Kyiv and Seoul officials have confirmed his presence in Russia. In recent days, President Biden gave the green light for Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied, long-range weapons to strike inside Russia—with the new North Korean presence a motivating factor. Ukraine fired those missiles for the first time on Tuesday, hitting an ammunition storage facility in Russia’s Bryansk region.
The rise of Eurosceptic, nationalist, populist parties, which are now making the running in France, Italy, Belgium, Austria, the Netherlands and Germany, has horrified Europe’s political elites.
Using early-voting data, an emerging crop of number-crunchers predicted Trump’s win long before the pollsters and pundits did.
Let’s be real: many of the people who’ve begun identifying as “non-binary” over the past decade are simply chasing social and professional clout. While the worst offenders are “spicy straights,” who want to feel special and oppressed, this charade is also employed by some gays and lesbians who yearn for more moral capital within progressive circles where homosexuality is no longer