Hong Kong police to enable AI facial recognition on CCTV network this month

South China Morning Post - Nov 5, 2026

Hong Kong police will enable artificial intelligence-powered facial recognition technology across their expanding smart surveillance network this month to improve the tracking of missing persons or suspects, with plans to save the data it generates for up to 180 days. The force said the facial recognition technology was widely used by law enforcement agencies around the world and stressed that residents’ privacy rights would be protected. “Leveraging AI [facial recognition] would cut the time we...

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[FRIENDS OF KOREA] An American teenager in Seoul in 1967

I was 13 when our family of 10 (mom, dad and eight kids ranging in age from 1 to 15) arrived at Kimpo Airport in August 1966. We arrived a bit prior to the first volunteers of the Peace Corps K-1, because our school started in early September. The older kids attended Seoul Foreign School (SFS) in Yeonhui-dong, behind Yonsei University. In fact, the founders of our school were some of the same missionaries who founded Yonsei, such as the Underwoods, the Allens and the Avisons. Today, there is a statue to Horace Grant Underwood in front of one of the Yonsei buildings. Being born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and at our young ages, none of us kids were very familiar with the outside world, so when Dad (Kevin O'Donnell, the first Peace Corps country director for Korea) told us he got a new job and we were going to move to Korea, we thought he said Berea, a Cleveland suburb near the airport, and wondered why in the world would anyone want to move there. He said, "Not Berea — Korea. It's a foreign country over by China and Japan." This got most of us quite excited, but my older sister wa

[FRIENDS OF KOREA] An American teenager in Seoul in 1967

[FRIENDS OF KOREA] How one Peace Corps Volunteer helped deaf Koreans find their voice

As I trudged across Sinchon Rotary and up the steep walkway to Severance Hospital, I kept repeating to myself a phrase from a childhood story about a train engine: “I think I can, I think I can.” It was a bitter cold winter morning in 1969. Today was the day that I was to come to the hospital and show the doctors in the ear, nose and throat section of the hospital that I could, indeed, get a deaf child to speak. Only days earlier, I had arrived in Korea to volunteer for the Peace Corps at age 23. Once it got around that I had training as a speech therapist for the deaf, Peace Corps Korea Director Kevin O'Donnell urged me to pursue it. At the time, Korea had no speech pathology center. George Worth, an American missionary in Korea, introduced me to staff at both Seoul National University (SNU) Hospital and Severance Hospital. Both hospitals were interested in starting a program but wanted to see how it could work, so they told me to come back the next day, when they could bring me a patient. That's how I found myself "auditioning" for a speech and hearing center. I was confident tha

[FRIENDS OF KOREA] How one Peace Corps Volunteer helped deaf Koreans find their voice

[FRIENDS OF KOREA] Two Peace Corps Volunteers' brush with cinematic fame in 1960s Myeong-dong

One evening in Seoul, having nothing better to do, I decided to go out on the town in Myeong-dong with my friend Ron Rezac, a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer. Back in the 1960s, Myeong-dong was a trendy spot for Korean youth, filled with bars, cafes and music venues. After a few hours and a few beers (maybe more than a few), I let it be known that I, strangely, wanted to cap off the evening with some tea. The two of us hightailed it to a nearby "dabang" cafe, walked up some stairs to get in and were met at the door by a man who told us the place was closed and we couldn't come in. "What do you mean we can't come in!" we protested. "We have our rights!" we demanded in our excellent Korean, no doubt causing him to nearly keel over from the fumes of our beer breath. Seemingly at a loss, he let us in, pointing to a table where he wanted us to sit. Once inside, we learned that the reason they didn't want to let us in was that a movie company had taken possession of the dabang for the night to shoot a feature film. They decided on the spot that the scene in the dabang would now include two drunk

[FRIENDS OF KOREA] Two Peace Corps Volunteers' brush with cinematic fame in 1960s Myeong-dong

Children bear cost of adoption delays, advocate says

Children awaiting adoption in Korea are losing precious time to form bonds with permanent families as lengthy reviews and unclear screening standards delay placements, the head of an adoptive families’ advocacy group said. In an interview with The Korea Times after a press conference Tuesday outside the Board of Audit and Inspection in central Seoul, Oh Chang-hwa, head of the National Adoptive Family Federation, called for faster adoption matching and transparent assessment standards. “Children are there and parents are there. But they cannot meet,” he said. His organizations and six other civic groups submitted a petition asking the state auditor to inspect the screening and matching procedures under the new adoption system, which took effect on July 19, 2025, shifting responsibility for adoption procedures from private agencies to the central and local governments. Their complaints center on administrative delays, allegedly inconsistent screening and excessive collection of sensitive family information. According to figures submitted to the National Assembly and cited by the fede

Children bear cost of adoption delays, advocate says

Documentary spotlights Peace Corps Volunteer's role in Gwangju Uprising

The 1980 Gwangju Uprising produced a great many memorable photos, not least of which was one of a young man with blonde hair helping carry a man on a stretcher through the streets. The identity of this foreigner remained a mystery for decades, but as U.S. Peace Corps Volunteers (PCV) who were there began publishing their memoirs, his identity and role in the uprising gradually came into focus. The person in the photo was a PCV named Tim Warnberg, who had arrived in Korea in 1978 to work as a health volunteer at Gwangju Christian Hospital. Those who knew him before his arrival in Korea remember him as someone whose character and concern for others help explain his actions in 1980. Warnberg was from Brainerd, Minnesota, where his father was the town’s longest-serving sheriff. His mother was, as his sister Roxanne Wilson remembers, “devoted to caring for others” and creating “a home that was warm and inviting to neighbors, friends and persons in need.” As his closest childhood friend, Keevie Fairbanks, put it, “Tim was the best of both of his parents.” Robert Grotjohn, who at

Documentary spotlights Peace Corps Volunteer's role in Gwangju Uprising

Remembering Peace Corps' 15 years in Korea

It may come as a shock to many these days that the Peace Corps once had a mission in Korea. The U.S. volunteer agency sent more than 2,000 young volunteers to Korea between 1966 and 1981 in 51 waves, from K-1 to K-51. The country they arrived in was very different from the advanced nation Korea has grown to become. Coming out of the 1910-45 Japanese occupation and 1950-53 Korean War, Korea was for decades one of the poorest nations in the world. In the mid-1960s, when Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) began arriving, Korea's hills were barren, and the gutters were filled with human waste. The authoritarian government maintained a strict curfew, barring people from the streets from midnight to 4 a.m. “My first impression was ‘My god, what have I got myself into?’” Ed Klein (K-1) said in 2016. “It was the way it was,” David McCann (K-1) said in 2019, “and that didn't strike me as strange.” U.S. President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps in 1961 with an executive order. It was designed to serve three main goals: helping various countries meet their need for trained me

Remembering Peace Corps' 15 years in Korea

Foreign residents' first hurdle is housing. Enkostay says it can clear it.

For many foreign residents, the first few weeks in Seoul can feel almost effortless. The subway works. Convenience stores are everywhere, and there is always another café, restaurant or corner of the city to discover. Then the paperwork begins. An appointment for a residence card. A landlord asking for a deposit that can run into the tens of millions of won. Almost overnight, the experience shifts from exploring Korea to deciphering it. For years, newcomers have leaned on Facebook groups for answers, and learned to sift through thousands of unverified listings and contradictory advice. Now they’re asking a blunter question, often on Reddit: Is this website legit? That was the question Huy Kim Nguyen, better known online as Kim Ninja, kept seeing about Enkostay, a rental platform for foreign residents. Nguyen came to Korea five years ago and began documenting the realities of living in Korea while working as a software developer. His YouTube videos explaining how Enkostay works went viral, drawing more than a million views. "You can't always trust the internet with a pretty website these

Foreign residents' first hurdle is housing. Enkostay says it can clear it.

Defiant Hegseth tells Democrats their impeachment push ‘won’t work’

US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth said he will “not back down” against a “lame duck” Congress, and that the drives for his impeachment will “not work” in his first reaction after Democrats’ landslide victory in Tuesday’s election. In a video uploaded by the Pentagon on Thursday, Hegseth said that “a disgruntled, defeated congressman, along with all his Democrat allies,” have been submitting bills for his impeachment, resembling that of the similar attempt against US President Donald...

Defiant Hegseth tells Democrats their impeachment push ‘won’t work’

US sanctions Chinese firms over alleged military supplies to Cuba

The United States has imposed sanctions on two Chinese companies it accuses of supplying equipment and components to Cuba’s military, as Washington intensifies pressure on Havana’s foreign suppliers and expands its authority to target businesses operating on the island. The US State Department said on Thursday that China National Electronic Import and Export Company, or CEIEC, and Beijing H&C Technologies had worked with Cuban arms procurement company Sociedad Mercantil Duna to supply...

US sanctions Chinese firms over alleged military supplies to Cuba

Chinese scientists chill atoms to record low on Tiangong space station

Chinese scientists have chilled atoms aboard the Tiangong space station to the lowest temperature ever measured, smashing US and German records and paving the way for ultra-precise space sensors that could find hidden minerals, track climate change and test Einstein’s theory of gravity. Researchers from Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences brought thousands of rubidium atoms, packed into a cloud smaller than a grain of sand, to less than 10 trillionths of a degree above absolute...

Chinese scientists chill atoms to record low on Tiangong space station

Hong Kong police arrest operator of prisoner support group over allegedly seditious books

Hong Kong national security police have arrested an operator of a local prisoner support group on suspicion of importing seditious publications, days after the group revealed that customs had seized dozens of books it had ordered from Taiwan. Police said officers carried out an enforcement operation in Mong Kok on Thursday morning, arresting a local man, 34, on suspicion of “importing a publication that has a seditious intention”, an offence under the Safeguarding National Security...

Hong Kong police arrest operator of prisoner support group over allegedly seditious books

After US$474m gamble flops, what happens now to Elon Musk’s Tesla, SpaceX and China ties?

Elon Musk bet nearly half a billion dollars that political spending could keep Washington friendly to his sprawling business empire. On Tuesday, that bet came up short. As Democrats recaptured control of the US Congress in the midterm elections, the world’s richest man found himself facing an abruptly altered political landscape. After pouring a record-breaking US$474 million into political groups – overwhelmingly backing Republicans – Musk now faces a divided Washington keen to examine his...

After US$474m gamble flops, what happens now to Elon Musk’s Tesla, SpaceX and China ties?

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