The last Open Thread of 2023. I hope everyone has a fantastic 2024, however with a U.S. Presidential election coming in the new year expect it to be a crazy one. Hopefully though it doesn’t get as crazy as the last election year in 2020 got.
The police have caught the people who actually committed the crime, but not the person who paid them to do it yet:
Police are hunting down the mastermind who commissioned a teen to spray paint 44-meter-long graffiti on the walls of a historic palace in central Seoul earlier this month, officials said Tuesday.
A 17-year-old, only identified by his surname Im, was arrested last week after spray painting the phrase “free movie” in Korean on both sides of the western gate to Gyeongbok Palace and palace walls near the National Palace Museum of Korea on Dec. 16.
Investigators have since found that Im was paid 100,000 won to commit the crime.
In an effort to track down the mastermind, police have conducted digital forensics on Im’s mobile phone, looked into the bank account used for the crime, and are scrutinizing the dialogue the two had on the messenger Telegram, according to national police chief Yoon Hee-keun.
But officials said they are having difficulty tracking down the mastermind due to strong security features of the messaging app and its server being based overseas.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
As usual the numbers in the article are used to provoke a reaction that women are being treated unfairly in Korean workplaces, however without further information these numbers do not prove that point. For example are Korean women primarily working in lower wage occupations compared to males? This article doesn’t say, but I suspect that is probably the biggest reason for the wage gap. If someone did a study that showed males were making more than females in the same occupation with the same hours worked and time in service then it would be a meaningful study:
While the wage gap between men and women is narrowing slowly in Korea, female workers still make only 70 percent of what their male counterparts earned per hour last year, according to a report co-published by the gender and labor ministries on Wednesday.
The average hourly wage of female workers was 18,113 won ($14) in 2022, while male workers earned 25,886 won, according to the “Women’s Economic Activity White Paper 2023.” This means that even though they work the same amount of time, women earn only 70 percent of what men receive.
However, the general wage gap has narrowed gradually, from 64.8 percent in 2012 to 65.9 percent in 2017, 69.8 percent in 2021, and 70 percent in 2022. Last year, the average monthly wage of men was 4.12 million won, compared to 2.68 million won for women.
Korea Times
You can read more at the link.
Considering all the criticism past elections have been receiving that is impacting public confidence in elections, hand counts verifid by a machine count I think is the most effective way of maintaining election creditability which is what Korea plans to do:
The National Election Commission (NEC) said Wednesday it will introduce a manual ballot counting system for general elections in April in an effort to ensure transparency and prevent potential election rigging.
Currently, machines are used to sort out and count votes.
Under the envisioned new system, however, ballots will first be sorted out by machines, and election staff will manually check all of them before putting them into the counting machines.
“It is meant to boost transparency and credibility over the course of the elections to prevent vote-rigging suspicions,” the commission said, adding that repeated suspicions over election fraud have “hampered national unity and fostered the boycott of election results.”
It is expected to take longer for the commission to confirm election results under the new system, and the commission will significantly beef up personnel for the process.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
What a quick turn for the worse his life had taken after reaching the heights of fame by winning an Oscar for his performance in Parasite:
Actor Lee Sun-kyun of the Oscar-winning film “Parasite” was found dead in an apparent suicide Wednesday amid an investigation into suspected drug use.
Police found a man in his 40s dead in a car near Waryong Park in central Seoul at 10:30 a.m. and later identified him as Lee. A charcoal briquette, which can cause fatal carbon monoxide poisoning, was found on the vehicle’s front passenger seat.
Lee’s manager had earlier reported to the police that the actor left home after writing a memo akin to a suicide note and that his car was gone. The manager had visited Lee’s home in Cheongdam-dong in southern Seoul as he was out of contact.
Lee’s body was later taken to Seoul National University Hospital for his funeral.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but Lee was under investigation for using drugs at a Gangnam hostess bar. He claims he was being extorted by the hostess and tested negative for drugs when questioned by police. Regardless of the drug allegations, Lee is married with two kids so why is he hanging out at a hostess bar in the first place?
What is ironic about this story is that Arnett did not get in trouble for not taking the COVID vaccine, she got in trouble for refusing to obey orders to board an airplane three times. That is why she was jailed and had nothing to do with the COVID vaccine. Now she is back in Japan getting into more trouble with local authorities:
A Marine veteran who refused the COVID-19 vaccine while serving in Japan and defied orders to return home was arrested this month at her former duty station.
Japanese police allege that Catherine Arnett, 25, was detained by military police after attempting to enter MCAS Iwakuni around 2:30 a.m. Dec. 1, a city police spokesman told Stars and Stripes on Tuesday. She was turned over to Iwakuni city police around 11:30 a.m. that day and released from custody “last week,” the spokesman said.
Arnett was returned to California in Marine Corps custody earlier this year and spent 113 days in brigs awaiting a court-martial before the Corps dropped all charges against her, set her free and administratively discharged her.
As a lance corporal at MCAS Iwakuni, Arnett refused at least three times to board aircraft bound for the U.S. and faced discharge for refusing the vaccine. She was charged separately with insubordination, missing a military flight, disobeying an officer and other offenses over her refusal to leave Japan.
Arnett, who described herself as a staunch Catholic, said the 2021 vaccine mandate from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was an unlawful order. Her case drew attention from a foundation critical of vaccines, Children’s Health Defense, founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who interviewed her on his podcast.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link.
