Author: GIKorea

Look who was let out of jail, the guy the coronavirus pandemic in South Korea has been blamed on:

The leader of a minor religious sect that was at the center of the early coronavirus outbreak in South Korea was released on bail on Thursday.

The Suwon District Court, south of Seoul, allowed the bail request of Lee Man-hee, the founder of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, citing a low risk of destroying evidence and his deteriorating health.

The court set the bail bond at 100 million won (US$89,700) and ordered him to stay at his residence and wear an electric device to trace his movement. 

The 89-year-old leader was indicted in August for allegedly submitting false documents to health authorities on the whereabouts and number of participants at Shincheonji’s gatherings in February when the sect was blamed for spikes in the spread of COVID-19.

He is also accused of embezzling 5.6 billion won from church funds and holding unauthorized religious events from 2015 to 2019.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but ROK Heads may remember that Lee Man-hee was blamed in the early days of the pandemic as causing its spread in Daegu. Some argued however that Lee was scapegoated for the pandemic to cover for the Moon administration’s decision to not restrict travel from China.

ROK Drop favorite Professor B.R. Myers has a new article posted about the intense propaganda campaign launched by the Korean left to first impeach President Park and now is currently being used to cover up for ruling party scandals and setting conditions for implementation of the Korean confederation:

Druking, Burning Sun, Mokpo real estate, SillaJen, the Ulsan mayoral race, Pak Won-soon, Optimus, Yun Mi-hyang, Lime, Cho Kuk — Justice Minister Cho Kuk: More interesting than any of the recent scandals these keywords stand for has been the nationalist left’s unyielding defense of the pols and officials involved. We even saw self-described feminists jeer the frightened woman who had complained of the Seoul mayor’s sexual advances. Whistle-blowers and investigators are denounced as “pro-Japanese” elements working for the opposition, which is in fact the most docile and insignificant one this country has seen since the early 1980s.

The temptation now, to which my conservative acquaintances have succumbed with a certain relief, is to write off the ruling camp as a network of insider traders and real-estate speculators: old-school pols who rig elections, demote prosecutors, and imprison journalists for no other reason than to keep outsiders from the trough. But corruption and conviction are not the antitheses they are made out to be. One can hardly expect people who question the very legitimacy of the South Korean state to fret overmuch about breaking its laws. This is not to imply that the parliamentary right is more honest.

Granted, the  cascade of scandals has given the lie to the ruling camp’s vaunted commitment to reform. The general non-response, meanwhile, has belied the public’s commitment to it, something the foreign press corps — “big-mouthed and clueless,” to borrow what Peter Handke once said of the Spiegel — took at face value in 2016.  None of the alleged misconduct, which uncannily replicates or amplifies that for which Park and her people were convicted, has aroused much indignation from the man in the street. Even considering that voters are more tolerant of abuses of power when public expenditures are rising sharply (Melo and Pereira, 2015), as they have been here since 2017, we must acknowledge that the so-called Candlelight Revolution was a more top-down affair than we were led to believe.

This should have been obvious to us from the demonstrators’ struggle to give coherent reasons for their festive-seeming “outrage” on the nightly news. They weren’t really mad as hell, but they believed they should be, thanks to an intense propaganda campaign orchestrated by the politico-media complex. 

B.R. Myers

I highly recommend reading the whole thing at the link. Professor Myers goes on to talk about the propaganda efforts going on now to describe the Korean left’s Confederation idea as being like the European Union. The propaganda effort is also trying to bury historical memory of North Korea in order to set Clinton era like conditions for a deal to be struck with the U.S. All this is going on with little notice or care from the media or the so called North Korea policy experts who Myers is most critical of in his article.

Here is the latest world leader to contact Joe Biden after his media declared election win:

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his incoming U.S. counterpart, Joe Biden, agreed to work closely together to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue, as they had a 14-minute phone conversation Thursday, Cheong Wa Dae said.

Biden described South Korea as a “linchpin” of security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region, according to Moon’s spokesman Kang Min-seok.

Moon asked Biden to “communicate closely” for the forward-looking development of the Seoul-Washington alliance, denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and establishment of lasting peace here.

The president cited the allies’ 70 years of partnership for the protection of such shared values as democracy and human rights, Kang said.

Biden reaffirmed Washington’s firm security commitment to South Korea and said that he would “closely cooperate” for a resolution to the North Korean nuclear issue, he added.

They also agreed to expand cooperation on global challenges, including COVID-19 and climate change, and agreed to meet at an early date after Biden’s inauguration, Kang said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but really nothing new in this phone call.

This news is only going to further motivate the Korean left to destroy Yoon Seok-youl:

 Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl has surpassed political heavyweights from the ruling Democratic Party (DP) to rank top in the latest popularity poll of prospective presidential candidates released Wednesday.

According to a survey of 1,022 people 18 years and older by pollster Hangil Research & Consulting, 24.7 percent said they support Yoon as South Korea’s next president.

Lee Nak-yon, chairman of the Democratic Party, ranked second with 22.2 percent, while Gyeonggi Province Gov. Lee Jae-myung, also affiliated with the party, came next with an approval rate of 18.4 percent, the poll said.

It is the first time that Yoon has topped the list of prospective presidential candidates in polls.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but I wonder if they will find a way to put him in jail before the election? They are already pressuring him by trying to put his wife in jail.

It is believed that the Biden administration is going to take the more conventional approach to North Korea policy that gave us the nuclear armed Kim regime we have today:

Analysts say that once Biden takes office in January, he is likely to take a far more conventional approach to relations with North Korea than his predecessor—who famously eschewed formal diplomatic channels and instead put his faith in his personal relationship with Kim.

“I strongly suspect the Biden Administration’s approach on North Korea will rely on pressure and sanctions to raise the cost to North Korea of its nuclear and missile programs,” Revere says.

Having served as Vice President from 2008 to 2016 under Barack Obama, Biden comes into office familiar with the North Korea question. The Obama Administration took a starkly different approach to Pyongyang than the outgoing Trump administration did, refraining from any high-level dialogue as part of a policy dubbed “strategic patience.”

The core of the policy was waiting for international sanctions to cut off North Korea’s sources of outside revenue, eventually forcing Pyongyang to take verifiable steps toward denuclearization as a way of winning sanctions relief and gaining access to the international trade system.

The policy achieved none of its objectives, however, as North Korea expanded its nuclear capability throughout Obama’s term.

TIME magazine

You can read more at the link, but I would not be surprised if the Biden administration lets the Moon administration lead the way on North Korea policy making. That means and end to the Korean War declaration followed by the easing of sanctions on North Korea for cross border projects for little to nothing in return from the Kim regime.

As long as the Korean left remains in power in South Korea this issue is not going to go away no matter who the U.S. President is:

Despite growing speculation that the United States may play a mediating role in the ongoing dispute between Korea and Japan under the Joe Biden administration, diplomatic experts suspect that the new American president’s brokering efforts will not be as active as some expect.

Tensions between Korea and Japan have shown no signs of abating, sparked by the latter’s imposition of export controls on three key materials critical for the semiconductor and display industries here in apparent retaliation for a ruling by Korea’s Supreme Court ordering Japanese companies to compensate Koreans who were forced to work for them before and during World War II. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.