Author: GIKorea

Another American tech company has pulled out of China:

Yahoo Inc. said Tuesday it has pulled out of China, citing an increasingly challenging operating environment.

The withdrawal was largely symbolic, as many of the company’s services were already blocked by China’s digital censorship. But recent government moves to expand its control over tech companies generally, including its domestic giants, may have tipped the scales for Yahoo.

“In recognition of the increasingly challenging business and legal environment in China, Yahoo’s suite of services will no longer be accessible from mainland China as of November 1,” the company said in a statement. It said it “remains committed to the rights of our users and a free and open internet.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

It looks like a lot of people may be seeing jail time for selling drugs at massage parlors across South Korea:

Nearly 50 people, including foreign nationals, have been apprehended in recent police crackdowns on a drug trafficking ring based at massage parlors across the country that hired foreigners, police said Monday.

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said it has detained 24 members of the drug trafficking ring for selling methamphetamine and other banned substances at massage parlors with foreign employees nationwide from February to last month and 23 other people who bought the drugs from them.

Of the 47 drug trafficking suspects, 33 people, including foreigners, were put under arrest on charges of violating the Narcotics Control Act, the police agency said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This is a standard Kim regime playbook item, make unreasonable demands for little to nothing in return:

North Korea is said to have demanded, as preconditions for talks on declaring the end of the Korean War, that South Korea and the United States stop their combined military exercises and that economic sanctions against Pyongyang be lifted.

A lawmaker who attended a parliamentary audit of the National Intelligence Service on Thursday told reporters later that the agency’s chief had made the revelation. 

South Korea and the US have already reduced their combined drills, both to ease inter-Korean tensions and due to the coronavirus pandemic, to the extent that there is great concern about preparedness.

Above all, there is no chance of Pyongyang giving up on its nuclear weapons. It has tested an array of missiles while reportedly reactivating its nuclear facilities. 

Korea Herald via OFK

Yet this is what the Moon administration wants to do. In fact President Moon wants the U.S. to agree to an end of Korean War peace treaty which even the Korean Herald has now picked up on what I have been saying for years is a very bad idea:

The Moon regime argues that an end-of-war declaration would open the way for denuclearization. But with the war over, North Korea would likely demand the dissolution of the United Nations Command and the withdrawal of US troops from South Korea. A formal end to the war would only obscure the mandate of the UN Command — created under US leadership after the Korean War broke out — and ultimately of the US forces stationed in South Korea.

Without a doubt, these are demands that would jeopardize the nation’s security, and yet the Moon administration is pushing almost blindly for an end-of-war declaration — or even for inter-Korean dialogue to that end. The North, which had been unresponsive to the South’s proposals at first, seems to be seeking to take advantage of Moon’s obsession. It has offered preconditions just for discussion of the issue, not for an end-of-war declaration itself. 

Fortunately so far the Biden administration has resisted these calls from the Moon administration and hopefully it stays that way.

So it begins:

South Korea loosened its COVID-19 social distancing measures Monday following “public fatigue” from the prolonged pandemic response and the increased number of vaccinations. The government’s plan, according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, is to ease restrictions over three steps, each lasting four weeks, followed by a two-week evaluation period. Each step will introduce new business hours, curfews and limits to public gatherings.

Public businesses in metropolitan areas have been typically open until 10 p.m. during the pandemic. Under the plan announced Monday, restaurants and cafes are allowed open for their normal business hours. Time restrictions and music bans at gyms and bathhouses were also lifted.

The Health and Welfare ministry described its step-by-step plan as “the roadmap for gradual return to normal,” with the goal of becoming “the better Korea.” (………)

U.S. Forces Korea, the military command responsible for roughly 28,500 troops on the peninsula, announced last month that the South Korean government would recognize proof-of-vaccination cards issued for U.S. service members.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

President Moon is doing what just about every other world leader is doing, setting a lofty emissions goal that he won’t be responsible for making happen. When it doesn’t happen he can just blame the person in power in 2030 for not making it happen when he is already long out of office:

President Moon Jae-in officially declared South Korea’s commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from the 2018 levels by 2030 as he addressed the annual U.N. climate conference.

Moon also said South Korea will try to bring carbon emissions down on the entire Korean Peninsula by pushing for tree planting campaigns in North Korea during a keynote speech at the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow.

South Korea’s reduction target represents a sharp raise from its previous goal of 26.3 percent.

“This is a bold objective that was raised by about 14 percent from the previous target,” Moon told the climate summit that brought together more than 100 heads of state, including U.S. President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but I don’t know how Korea will make this emissions target without nuclear energy that President Moon says he wants to get rid of. The few solar farms they have are already causing deforestation and devastating farming and there isn’t enough windmills to make a difference.

Another pervert has been uncovered and this time it was a school principal spying on his own female teachers:

Teachers’ groups are calling for a thorough investigation and heavy punishment for an elementary school principal who was arrested for allegedly installing a hidden camera in a restroom for female faculty members. 

Members of the Korean Federation of Teachers’ Associations and its Gyeonggi Province branch issued a joint statement, Friday, calling for strong punishment of the principal to discourage others from committing such voyeuristic sex crimes. (…..)

Meanwhile, a local court issued an arrest warrant for the 57-year-old, whose name was withheld, Saturday, for violating the law on sex crimes, saying he was likely to flee or destroy evidence, according to Anyang Dongan Police.

The principal allegedly installed a spycam inside a tissue box beside a toilet in the restroom for female teachers at his school in Anyang, Gyeonggi Province, which was found by a teacher.

The principal allegedly tried to dissuade teachers from reporting the incident to police, but the teachers reported it anyway. 

The police, suspicious of the principal’s reluctance, talked with him and found out he installed the camera. He claimed he bought the camera for security purposes and installed it the previous day to check if it works, and he had no intention to commit a sex crime, according to the police.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but besides being a pervert this guy is a total idiot if he thought no one was going to notice that easily spotted camera in the restroom.