Author: GIKorea

Here is the latest COVID policy coming to South Korea:

South Korea will introduce a digital certification system to verify a person’s COVID-19 vaccination status through a smartphone application this month, amid the government’s efforts to boost people’s participation in the public vaccine program, the prime minister said Thursday.

“The people will be able to experience a sense of return to normality from a vaccine passport or green card systems,” Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said during a daily interagency meeting on the government’s coronavirus response.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Remember how popular President Moon was a few years ago, well now his own party members do not want much to do with him:

Amid declining approval ratings for President Moon Jae-in especially following public anger over property speculation scandals involving public officials, the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) and its candidates running in next week’s Seoul and Busan mayoral by-elections are keeping the Moon administration at arm’s length, with some even criticizing its policy failures including its real estate drive.

This trend of erasing any vestiges of an unpopular state leader among the ruling side is raising speculation that they would accelerate Moon’s descent into a “lame-duck” presidency after the April 7 by-elections. Moon’s term is scheduled to end in May 2022. 

According to a Gallup Korea survey last week, Moon’s approval rating dropped to its lowest point at 34 percent, along with the highest disapproval rating at 59 percent, due mainly to his administration’s poor real estate policy that has failed to curb skyrocketing housing prices across the nation. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest unit scheduled to deploy to Korea this summer:

 Fort Bliss will send about 3,700 soldiers to South Korea as part of an ongoing rotation of troops to defend the peninsula, the Army announced Thursday.

The 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Armored Division at the west Texas base will replace the Fort Stewart, Ga.-based 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division for the nine-month deployment, which supports the U.S. commitment to South Korea.

Nicknamed the “Bulldog Brigade,” the unit will send the majority of its soldiers and equipment for the nine-month rotation in the summer.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

The producers must have been paid quite a bit to put this Chinese ad into this drama knowing the blow back it might get from viewers:

Producers of the popular Korean TV series “Vincenzo” said Wednesday that they will remove the controversial scene featuring a Chinese product from overseas streaming services amid rising domestic anger over Chinese sponsorship.

In the eighth episode of the dark comedy that aired on March 14 on tvN, an instant Chinese bibimbap brand was exposed while the lead characters Vincenzo (Song Joong-ki) and Cha-young (Jeon Yeo-bin) have a meal.

Bibimbap is a popular Korean dish consisting of a bowl of warm white rice topped with seasoned vegetables and chili pepper paste.

Korean viewers frowned upon the fact that Chinese bibimbap appeared on a Korean drama amid the recent Chinese claims that some elements of Korean culture, including kimchi, originated from China.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Could it be that in 1904 neither Korea or Japan cared about Dokdo because there was no exclusive economic zones back then thus making it a worthless pile of rocks unlike now?:

 A Japanese elementary school textbook published about a century ago did not define the easternmost Korean islets of Dokdo as Japanese territory, a Seoul-based public foundation said Wednesday.

The state-funded Northeast Asian History Foundation disclosed the old Japanese geography textbook printed in 1904 at a seminar of history experts in Seoul, slamming Tokyo for its latest approval of school textbooks renewing territorial claims to Dokdo.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

My theory has always been that the Moon administration is making the sustainment of the THAAD base challenging in hopes that the U.S. will just remove the system itself one day:

South Korea is closely discussing with the United States ways to improve living conditions for American service members stationed on the THAAD missile defense base in the country, the defense ministry said Monday.

Ministry spokesperson Boo Seung-chan made the remarks after a recent Chosun Ilbo report that said US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin strongly protested poor conditions of the base during his recent visit to Seoul, calling the neglect “unacceptable.”

“I do not confirm details of what Secretary Austin said. But there have been talks about how to ensure conditions for training of the US Forces Korea (USFK),” ministry spokesperson Boo Seung-chan told a regular briefing.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.