Author: GIKorea

Ever since being accused of sexual assault by a number of actresses, Kim Ki-duk has kept a low profile and has now reportedly passed away from the coronavirus in Latvia of all places:

Filmmaker Kim Ki-duk has died following complications after contracting the coronavirus.   
   
Foreign media reported Friday evening that the 59-year-old filmmaker had passed away at a hospital in Latvia.   
   
Local media later confirmed the reports after contacting Kim’s family.   
   
Kim is best known for his 2012 drama “Pieta,” which won him the Golden Lion Prize at the Venice Film Festival that year, and other representative works include “Arirang” (2011) and “Moebius” (2013).   

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

ROK Heads may remember that this guy is a notorious career criminal who used the “I was drunk” defense to have his sentence reduced:

Cho Doo-soon, one of South Korea’s most notorious child rapists in recent memory, was released from prison on Saturday amid strong protests against the heinous criminal’s return to society. 

Cho served a 12-year term for kidnapping and raping an 8-year-old girl in a church bathroom in Ansan, 42 kilometers southwest of Seoul, in December 2008. A huge public outcry has erupted over what has been seen as too lenient a punishment for a horrendous sexual crime against a minor.

He left the correctional facility in southern Seoul early Saturday and returned to his home in Ansan, south of the capital, escorted by probation officers. 

Some of about 150 angry protesters, who waited for his appearance near his residence, threw eggs at Cho when he arrived and shouted slogans calling for him to be executed or expelled from the city.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This may be a new daily record of 950 COVID cases for Korea, but compared to California’s daily rate of over 35,000 daily cases it is still quite low:

The daily number of new coronavirus cases in South Korea crossed the 900-mark on Saturday, reaching a record high nearly 11 months after the country reported its first virus case.

The country added 950 more COVID-19 cases, including 928 local infections, raising the total caseload to 41,736, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). 

Saturday’s daily caseload marks a sharp jump from 689 the previous day and is the highest mark since January, when the country reported its first confirmed COVID-19 case. The previous record was 909 tallied on Feb. 29. 

Cluster infections from private gatherings coupled with massive infections at a church and a hospital pushed up the tally.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.

The LA Times has an interesting read about how a high school student in Jeonju was infected with the coronavirus in restaurant from someone seated 20 feet away:

Dr. Lee Ju-hyung has largely avoided restaurants in recent months, but on the few occasions he’s dined out, he’s developed a strange, if sensible, habit: whipping out a small anemometer to check the airflow.

It’s a precaution he has been taking since a June experiment in which he and colleagues re-created the conditions at a restaurant in Jeonju, a city in southwestern South Korea, where diners contracted the coronavirus from an out-of-town visitor. Among them was a high school student who became infected after five minutes of exposure from more than 20 feet away.

The results of the study, for which Lee and other epidemiologists enlisted the help of an engineer who specializes in aerodynamics, were published last week in the Journal of Korean Medical Science. The conclusions raised concerns that the widely accepted standard of six feet of social distance may not be far enough to keep people safe.

The study — adding to a growing body of evidence on airborne transmission of the virus — highlighted how South Korea’s meticulous and often invasive contact tracing regime has enabled researchers to closely track how the virus moves through populations.

LA Times

You can read the rest at the link, but the study shows once again that air conditioning is able to push infectious droplets over distances longer than 6 feet. People with their back to the air conditioning flow were not infected, but those with their face directed towards the air conditioner were.

The classic Chinese honey trap which people keep falling for:

A woman suspected of being a Chinese spy slept with at least two US mayors and got close to numerous Bay Area politicians in a years-long intelligence campaign directed at influencing American officials early in their careers, Axios reported on Tuesday.

Fang Fang, also known as Christine Fang, was heavily involved in Bay Area and national US politics from 2011 to 2015, the outlet reported.

Two US representatives Fang reportedly fundraised for — Eric Swalwell and Tulsi Gabbard — both ran as 2020 Democratic presidential candidates.

Business Insider

Note to old guys in positions of influence, if some young, hot Chinese woman wants to sleep with you, it is not because she wants to practice English. Yes that really was her excuse that people believed:

FBI surveillance also caught her having intercourse with an Ohio mayor in a car. Apparently, when the mayor asked her why she was into him, she told him it was because she wanted to improve her English.

NY Magazine