Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.
People in Korea may have to wait until after the holidays before any relief on the indoor mask mandate happens:
![People wear masks at a book store in Seoul on Thursday as the indoor mask mandate is still in effect, as warned on the sign. [YONHAP]](https://i0.wp.com/koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2022/12/07/6c4ad525-55fe-4480-acbf-93c1a9d9573f.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
Korea may lift the indoor mask mandate, one of its last Covid restrictions, as early as January.
Joong Ang Ilbo
Still, masks are likely to be required in hospitals and on public transport.
Commissioner of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) Peck Kyong-ran announced Wednesday that the government will ease the indoor mask-wearing rule early next year. The only other major Covid restriction still in force is the mandatory seven-day quarantine for confirmed patients.
You can read more at the link, but what is happening is that the government officials are going to wait until after the holiday travel period and see if another COVID wave happens. If one does then don’t expect to have the mask mandate lifted.
The daughter of former ROK President Roh Tae-woo just received a huge divorce settlement from her ex-husband:
The court approved the divorce of SK Chairman Chey Tae-won and his wife, Roh Soh-yeong, director of Art Center Nabi.
Korea Times
If neither side appeals, the high-powered couple will end their 34 years of marriage marked by ups and downs years after Chey’s public acknowledgment that he has been in extramarital relationship with a woman and that they had a child out of wedlock.
Seoul Family Court approved their divorce on Tuesday, ordering Chey to pay alimony of 100 million won ($75,700) and a property settlement of 66.5 billion won ($50.4 million) to Roh.
Chey, the eldest son of the late former SK Chairman Chey Jong-hyun, tied the knot with Roh, the daughter of Korean former President Roh Tae-woo, in 1998 at the Blue House. It is known that both had met while studying in the United States. They have two daughters and one son together.
In 2015, Chey revealed that he had fathered a child out of wedlock and expressed his intention to split up with Roh through a three-page letter sent to Segye Ilbo, a local newspaper.
You can read more at the link.
This is a really bad situation and I had no idea that South Korea does so little to return children that are abducted:
On a cold Nov. 30 afternoon, when temperatures nosedived to minus seven degrees Celsius in Seoul, bringing with it the nation’s first cold wave alert of the season, John Sichi was walking on a treadmill in front of Dongdaemun Design Plaza in central Seoul. Undeterred by the biting winds, the U.S. citizen walked for nearly four hours.
Korea Times
Near the treadmill stood a placard reading, “Please let me see my children,” and a life-size cardboard cutout of his two kids ― a 5-year-old boy and 3-year-old girl.
People walking by approached him ― some with curiosity and some with empathy ― to see why a man would be walking on a treadmill in freezing weather. A woman handed him 10,000 won, probably assuming it was a fundraising campaign.
Sichi has been staging the treadmill protest since October in various spots in Seoul, in a desperate effort to find his missing children who have been allegedly abducted by his Korean wife.
His demand is simple: The Korean government should enforce court orders from both the U.S. and Korea that the children should be returned to the U.S.
You can read more at the link.
It looks like the COVID-19 vaccination requirement for all DOD service members may soon be coming to an end if this legislation passes and is signed by the President:
The final version of the fiscal 2023 defense authorization bill is likely to rescind Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III’s August 2021 memo ordering COVID-19 vaccines for most troops, a source familiar with the matter said Monday.
Ending the requirement, under which service members who aren’t fully vaccinated are subject to discharge, has been a top priority of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and other senior Republicans in both chambers. McCarthy raised the issue with President Joe Biden in a meeting last week and reiterated over the weekend that the mandate should be repealed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link.
I don’t think this is a good analogy to compare truckers trying to get higher wages with the mafia state in North Korea:
President Yoon Suk-yeol has likened the ongoing truckers strike to North Korea’s nuclear threats, saying the government should respond sternly with principles like it does to protect the people from Pyongyang’s repeated actions of menace.
“If we had pursued (consistent) North Korea policies based on the principle of nuclear intolerance, we wouldn’t be facing North Korea’s nuclear threat as we do now,” he was quoted as saying by multiple officials, according to Yonhap News Agency on Monday.
“The vicious cycle will repeat if we give in to (their) illegal activities and violence,” he said, stressing union leadership should be sternly punished for blocking members from returning to work.
Korea Herald
What I can agree with is that the KCTU based on their past activities is sympathetic to the North Korean regime:
His party, the People Power Party, went further, claiming the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, the umbrella group initiating the ongoing strike, “represents the interest of the North Korean regime.”
Park Jung-ha, a senior spokesperson of the People Power Party, accused the KCTU of taking orders from North Korea to initiate anti-US and anti-government struggles, denouncing that it should change its name to “Minrochong,” a North Korean way of referring to Minnochong, by which the KCTU is known in Korean.
Here is what the truckers are protesting about:
The truckers union has been on a general strike since Nov. 24, saying the government has failed to keep up its end of the bargain to continue the safe trucking freight rate system that both sides had agreed on in June to end an eight-day strike at the time. The safe trucking freight rate system is a measure that guarantees minimum cargo rates for truck drivers to prevent dangerous driving and overwork. It also imposes fines on shippers who pay less than the minimum rate. It was introduced as a three-year system in 2020 and expires at the end of this year.
I am supportive of higher pay for truck drivers, however what I don’t support is unions threatening and assaulting other truck drivers to prevent them from going to work.
