Top Asian News 4:50 a.m. GMT

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Large crowds of South Koreans were expected to march in the streets on Saturday, calling for the permanent removal of impeached President Park Geun-hye and extending the historically biggest protest movement in the country to Christmas Eve. The protest comes as a special prosecutor widens an investigation into a corruption scandal surrounding Park, which saw millions of people take to the streets before the country's opposition-controlled parliament on Dec. 9 voted to impeach her. Organizers expected Saturday's rally in Seoul to be festive, but there was tension as Park's conservative supporters planned to gather in nearby streets.

SINGAPORE (AP) — A Singaporean teenager whose video posts and blogs mocking his government and its late founder landed him in jail twice has been detained in the U.S. where he is seeking asylum, his lawyer and a human rights group said Saturday. The Human Rights Watch deputy director for Asia, Phil Robertson, called on the U.S. to recognize Amos Yee's asylum claim, saying he has been consistently harassed by the Singapore government for publicly expressing his views on politics and religion and severely criticizing the city-state's leaders, including late Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. Yee, 18, was imprisoned for six weeks in September on charges of hurting religious feelings of Christians and Muslims after repeatedly breaching bail conditions following a four-week prison sentence he served in July last year on the same charges.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Kem Ley, a poor rice farmer's son turned champion of Cambodia's have-nots, was sipping his usual iced latte in the same chair he had occupied most mornings for years. Eyewitnesses say a former soldier walked into the Caltex gas station cafe, fired a semi-automatic Glock pistol into his chest and head and casually walked away. Two weeks later, tens of thousands of mourners thronged Phnom Penh's streets to trail the glass casket bearing Kem Ley's body in the largest public rally Cambodia has witnessed in recent times. The funeral march reflected not only grief for the popular government critic, but also anger at a government that this year has decimated opponents through imprisonment, intimidation and, many believe, the still-unresolved killing of Kem Ley.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — A Sri Lankan court has acquitted five suspects including three navy personnel who were accused in the shooting death of an outspoken ethnic Tamil lawmaker. Nadaraja Raviraj was shot dead in his car in 2006 during the country's long civil war with Tamil Tiger rebels, which ended in 2009. He was an advocate for greater self-rule for minority Tamils and had explained the Tamil perspective of the conflict in Sinhala, the language of the majority. The verdict was delivered by High Court Judge Manilal Waidyatilleke on midnight Friday following the unanimous decision reached by the jury in the monthlong trial.

MIRPUR KHAS, Pakistan (AP) — The mother rummages through a large metal trunk, searching for a picture of her young daughter taken away in the night to be the bride of a man who says the family owed him $1,000. Beneath the blankets, clothes and silver ornaments that she wears with her sari, Ameri Kashi Kohli finds two photos, carefully wrapped in plastic, of her smiling daughters. Ameri tries to remember her daughter Jeevti's age; few of this country's desperately poor have birth certificates. With a grin at a sudden recollection she says, "I remember her sister, my youngest, was born when there was a big earthquake in Pakistan." That was 2005.

BEIJING (AP) — Beijing prosecutors said Friday they had dropped criminal charges against five police officers over the death of a man who died in their custody, a 180-degree turn in a case that has sparked outrage in a country deeply suspicious of police abuse. Six months earlier, the Beijing Municipal People's Procuratorate, which is responsible for both investigation and prosecution in China's legal system, had declared that police acted "improperly" during the detention of Lei Yang and arrested two officers on charges of negligence. The announcement on social media of the reversal said investigators found that five officers had used excessive force and deliberately sought to cover up Lei's death, but the procuratorate concluded that their actions did not necessarily merit prosecution under Chinese law because they "admitted their crime and showed repentance." The case comes three years after top Communist Party leaders began to declare that they would strengthen the rule of law in China, where top judicial officials openly acknowledge that wrongful convictions are rife and police brutality and torture often result in the shocking miscarriage of justice.

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — If Santa Claus stops in North Korea this year, he'll find some trees and lights and might even hear a Christmas song or two. But he won't encounter even a hint of what Christmas actually means — not under a regime that sees foreign religion a very real threat. There are almost no practicing Christians in North Korea. But there used to be. And while the trappings of the holiday season they once celebrated haven't been completely expunged, any connections they had to the birth of Jesus have been thoroughly erased. Take Christmas trees, for example.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine authorities seized more than half a metric ton of suspected methamphetamine Friday in suburban Manila and arrested six people in what could be one of the largest drug seizures under President Rodrigo Duterte. National Bureau of Investigation agents initially seized about 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of the substance, locally known as shabu, in six bags and arrested four Filipinos in a car in the upscale Greenhills residential district, metropolitan Manila police spokeswoman Kimberly Molitas said. Almost simultaneously, other agents raided a nearby house and found about 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) of meth and arrested two suspects believed to be Chinese.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A high-profile North Korean defector told South Korean lawmakers on Friday that the massive protests that led to the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye still feel strange to him but he sees the demonstrations as the country's strength. Thae Yong Ho, the former North Korean deputy ambassador to London, said in a closed-door briefing to lawmakers that he was impressed with the South's democracy because its government continued to function despite the protests, according to the office of Lee Cheol Woo, one of the legislators who attended the event. Thae also saw as remarkable that powerful individuals linked to the scandal that brought down Park were grilled by lawmakers on live TV, Lee's office said.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Police in Australia have detained five men suspected of planning a series of Christmas Day attacks using explosives, knives and a gun in the heart of the country's second-largest city, officials said Friday. The suspects were inspired by the Islamic State group and planned attacks on Melbourne's iconic Flinders Street train station, neighboring Federation Square, a fashionable bar and restaurant precinct, and St. Paul's Cathedral, an Anglican church, Victoria state Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton said. He said they had been plotting the attack for three weeks. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said it was one of the most substantial plots that have been disrupted over the last several years.