Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.
It definitely appears the family from Gwangju killed themselves after their car was found submerged in the waters of Wando island:
Police investigating the mysterious deaths of a 10-year-old girl and her parents found last month in a car sunk in waters off the southwestern coast said Wednesday that sleeping pill ingredients have been found in their bodies.
Korea Times
The Gwangju Nambu Police Station said it was recently informed by the National Forensic Service of the detection of sleeping pill ingredients in the remains of Cho Yu-na, a Gwangju elementary school student, and her parents in their 30s.
Cho and her parents, who resided in the southwestern metropolitan city of Gwangju, were found dead on June 29 inside their family car pulled out of waters off Wando, a quiet island about 120 kilometers south of their home. The family went missing about a month earlier after last being seen alive on closed-circuit TV at a Wando guesthouse on May 30.
You can read more at the link, but it seems very selfish to commit suicide with the 10-year old girl that had no say in this.
Rodriguez Range has been using for live fire training for decades and the complaints about the noise from the range have continued to build as the population in the area continues to grow:
Speculation is growing that U.S. Apache helicopters may return to the Rodriguez Live Fire Complex in Pocheon, Gyeonggi Province, for live-fire exercises amid persisting complaints from nearby residents over noise and other inconveniences due to the drills.
Korea Times
According to the Korean military, Wednesday, the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) plans to conduct the training from July 18 to 29 during the day and night.
The exercises will be carried out in order to measure the intensity of noise from live-fire drills, based on a recently enacted law aimed at compensating local residents suffering from noise caused by military airports and shooting ranges. Under the law, people residing near military airports and ranges are entitled to receive up to 60,000 won ($45) per person per month without filing a lawsuit.
The USFK has not conducted live-fire drills since July 2018 ostensibly due to stray round incidents, but taking a closer look, the noise issue is the main reason for the suspension of the exercises, according to military sources.
You can read more at the link.
The BA.5 variant is surging in South Korea and many other parts of the world. South Korea is increasing quarantine measures based supposedly on science. We will see what that means soon, but at least the social distancing mandates are coming back yet. However, in the below article there is a great discussion about the lowering of the vaccine booster age to 50 because it essentially does nothing:
The government on Wednesday announced a set of quarantine measures in an effort to respond to the resurgence of infections driven by the highly contagious BA.5 subvariant of Omicron, which is soon expected to become the dominant strain here.
These were the first pandemic-related measures introduced by the Yoon Suk-yeol administration, which has vowed to carry out quarantine policies based on scientific data.
Medical experts, however, had doubts about whether the measures would be effective in curbing the new wave of infections, which may lead to as many as 200,000 daily cases by mid-September.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) decided to lower the age of eligibility for a fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to 50, from the current 60. People with underlying diseases aged 18 and over have also become eligible for the second booster.
The government did not reinstate social distancing measures such as limits on the operating hours of multiuse facilities or the number of people at private gatherings, which were lifted in April.
“Considering the high transmissibility of the BA.5 strain, from the point of view of returning to normalcy, as well as in terms of public acceptance, we believe that social distancing measures, if reintroduced, would have limited effects in curbing the spread of the virus,” said KDCA Commissioner Peck Kyeong-ran during a briefing.
“But we may review partially bringing back the distancing measures if the fatality rate rises,” she added.
However, the newly-announced measures have raised eyebrows among some medical experts.
Chon Eun-mi, a respiratory disease specialist at Ewha Womans University Mokdong Hospital, viewed that lowering the age limit of the second booster was rather unnecessary.
“It is hard to understand why the government has expanded the fourth shot to people in their 50s when the fatality rate among that age group is near zero,” she said.According to the latest KDCA data, the figure stands at 0.04 percent, lower than that of the total population, which is 0.13 percent.
Korea Times
“Although vaccines have proven to be effective in preventing severe illnesses or deaths, they are not a panacea. During the BA.5 wave, anyone can get the virus, regardless of the person’s vaccination status,” she said, given that the BA.5 subvariant substantially evades antibodies created by the currently available vaccines or by infection.
Chon went on to say that, right now, the government should more actively use antiviral treatments to prevent vulnerable groups from falling into critical condition, rather than counting on the available vaccines to protect them.
“Instead of expanding the age eligibility for the fourth dose, the authorities should have introduced measures to increase the inoculation rate among the elderly aged over 60, who account for over 90 percent of critical cases and deaths,” said Kim Woo-joo, an infectious disease specialist at Korea University Guro Hospital.
You can read more at the link.
He hasn’t been President very long, but a 32.5% approval rate is definitely something for the Yoon administration to be concerned about:
President Yoon Suk-yeol’s approval rating fell to 32.5 percent, with his disapproval rating rising to nearly twofold of his approval rating, a survey showed Wednesday.
Korea Times
The Rnsearch poll of 1,045 voters conducted from Saturday to Tuesday showed 32.5 percent of respondents approved of the way Yoon handled state affairs while 63.5 percent gave a negative assessment.
Yoon’s approval rating, which came in at 52.5 percent four weeks earlier, has been trending lower in the past month. After falling to 42.6 percent in the same poll a week ago, it plunged 10.1 percentage points to 32.5 percent this week.
In the same period, those who were unhappy with Yoon’s performance jumped from 43 percent to 63.5 percent.
The latest poll comes amid growing concerns over the economy and political turmoil at the ruling People Power Party (PPP).
Korea has been grappling with rising inflation and global supply chain disruptions, which prompted the central bank to deliver an unprecedented 0.5 percentage point rate hike early Wednesday.
You can read more at the link.
This is something that many civilians don’t understand that a military jury just needs a majority to convict someone. This makes the threshold of convictions easier:
A Germany-based military judge’s ruling that a unanimous guilty verdict was required to convict an Army officer facing sexual assault charges was rejected by the service’s top appeals court.
Lt. Col. Andrew Dial initially faced a court-martial in January, but proceedings were delayed after military judge Col. Charles Pritchard said that allowing a split verdict would violate Dial’s constitutional rights.
Prosecutors challenged that decision before the Army Court of Criminal Appeals, arguing that Pritchard’s ruling was based on faulty reasoning.
In a June decision, the appeals court concurred, saying it was not persuaded by the argument that because military and civilian court procedures are generally similar, military defendants are “similarly situated” to civilian counterparts.
“Rather, we adhere to the well-established view that ‘the military is a specialized society separate from civilian society’ which has, by necessity, developed laws and traditions of its own during its long history,” the court said.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link.
