Author: GIKorea

Notice how the media has been making headlines out of every attack on Asian-Americans now?:

A beauty store owner was attacked inside her own store by two women in Harris County, Texas on March 17.Jung Kim, who is of Korean descent, asked the five women who knocked over the store’s wig displays to leave the premises. However, two of them doubled back and caused further destruction.Surveillance footage caught the moment one of the women attacked the 59-year-old, punching her at least eight times while shouting racial insults.

Yahoo News

Random crimes like this against Korean American business owners have been going on for a long time. Remember the LA Riots that targeted Koreatown, the Baltimore riots and Ferguson riots against Korean businesses, or the Korean-American gas station owner in Dallas who was called racist for defending his store from a criminal. Plus many Korean-American businesses were looted and destroyed during the Black Life Matters riots last summer. Where was the media defending Asian-Americans then?

Also notice how the criminals that attacked Ms. Kim in the above incident were black, but the headlines make no mention of that. Even the article makes no mention of their race, yet if a couple of white women committed this crime it is likely the headlines would talk about “white Kareans attack store owner”.

Besides the US-ROK joint exercise that the North Koreans are unhappy about, this designation by President Moon might also be why the North Koreans conducted their recent missile test:

The government designated the fourth Friday in March as the Yellow Sea Defense Day to remember those who were killed in waters off the west coast during three battles against North Korea’s provocations in 2002 and 2010.

This year marks the 11th anniversary of two of the three incidents — North Korea’s deadly sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan on March 26, 2010, and the communist nation’s artillery shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, a front-line island in the Yellow Sea, on Nov. 23, 2010.

Moon said that the government has worked hard to possess “overwhelming” military strength to preserve and create peace. 

“Not a single soldier has been injured or killed in the past four years in the Yellow Sea due to armed clashes or military provocations. This is proof that a powerful force creates peace,” he said.

The president also highlighted the government’s plan to deploy a light aircraft carrier by 2033 produced by South Korean technology and deploy a 3,000-ton submarine program, which has been in development since 2018, by 2024.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but I was a bit surprised that the Moon administration actually made this designation considering their default appeasement policy towards North Korea. Plus many in the Korean left still believe that North Korea did not sink the Cheonan.

By the way there has been far more incidents than just the sinking of the Cheonan and the Yeonpyeong Island shelling in the Yellow Sea. The 2002 West Sea Naval Battle was another major deadly clash in these waters:

The Nam Hyun-woo in the Korea Times writes that Trump was soft on North Korean missile launches and that the Biden administration will take a harder line:

This contrasts with the previous Donald Trump administration, which downplayed Pyongyang’s missile launches while attempting to achieve denuclearization through summit talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

In contrast, the Biden administration has been signaling a hard-line approach to North Korea and diplomatic efforts simultaneously, with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying both pressure and diplomatic options are on the table to deal with Pyongyang.

“During the Trump administration, the U.S. did not respond to short-range ballistic missiles, but now the Biden administration is mentioning Thursday’s launch violated U.N. resolutions,” said Go Myong-hyun, a senior fellow at Asan Institute for Policy Studies. “Although Biden also said the U.S. can also respond on its own, the bottom line is that it is returning to a rules-based international order based on liberalism.”

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but Mr. Nam must have forgotten all the “rocket man” and “fire and fury” rhetoric from former President Trump on top of the pressure campaign that is widely believed to have brought Kim Jong-un into negotiations. The negotiations as we all know went no where, but it did stop the missile launches and nuclear tests.

It is too early to state whether the Biden administration is taking a hardline or not on North Korea, but to claim that the Trump administration was some how soft on North Korea is inaccurate.

Not a good look even if there isn’t corruption going on, but in the case of the LH scandal we know there was corruption likely going on:

About half of top officials at the central government and state-run institutions own land as part of their wealth, a government report showed Thursday, amid mounting public outrage over a land speculation scandal involving public officials. (…….)

The report came in light of a snowballing controversy surrounding alleged speculative land purchases by employees at the Korea Land and Housing Corp. (LH), the state housing supply arm, based on insider knowledge. 

At least 20 LH employees are suspected of having purchased huge swathes of undeveloped land around Seoul over a few years with undisclosed information on plans to construct major residential towns there. The scandal has rocked the nation as it emerged at a time when public anger over the nation’s soaring housing and rent prices is running high.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Ahn Cheol-soo, left, chairman of the People’s Party, embraces Oh Se-hoon, who won the ticket of the opposition bloc to run in the Seoul mayoral by-election, at a party lawmakers’ meeting in the National Assembly in Yeouido, western Seoul, on Wednesday. Ahn accepted co-chairmanship of the campaign for Oh, who beat Ahn in the preliminary opinion polls. [OH JONG-TAEK]