Author: GIKorea

Is anyone surprised that the person who assigns prosecutors was not found of any wrong doing?:

The prosecution on Monday cleared Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae of allegations that she had abused her power to arrange special treatment for her son while he was serving the military in 2017.    
   
The Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors’ Office announced Monday it found no grounds on which to indict Choo, her son or her former aide after a monthslong probe into the allegations.    
   
Choo and her family have been battling accusations that her son, surnamed Seo, had received special treatment when he was serving in the Korean Augmentation to The United States Army, or Katusa, from November 2016 through August 2018. At the time, Choo was the chairwoman of the ruling Democratic Party (DP).   (…….)

The prosecution added that Seo had asked Choo’s aide to inquire the military about the extension, not his parents.    
   
The prosecution also dismissed the suspicion that Choo or her husband had asked the Ministry of National Defense to arrange the extension. Although a document purported to be a military record created by Seo’s commander on June 15, 2017 said that Seo’s parents had made a request to the ministry, the prosecution said it failed to find any record from the ministry to corroborate it.   

Joong Ang Ilbo via a reader tip

You can read more at the link, but since Choo’s aid supposedly helped her son that makes it okay then?

At the end of the article the journalist admits that she sees know way the U.S. could replicate what South Korea has done because of the different mentality of Americans:

A bag arrived from the local authority the next day that contained a thermometer, a pack of disposable masks, two types of hand sanitizers and a garbage bag. For the two weeks of my quarantine, I would need to discard any of my garbage in the government-mandated bag. I was told it would be collected at the end of my stay.

On day seven of the quarantine, my mom received yet another call from my appointed Covid-19 contact. They wanted to speak with me. I was asked to confirm that I was, in fact, me, before asking some questions and offering mental health services if I required one.

Whenever a new case emerged in a neighboring town, my iPhone would ping with a new notification, the same noise phones make when there is an Amber Alert in the U.S. I would get two or three of these alerts almost every day.

NBC News

You can read more about her whole experience traveling to South Korea under pandemic conditions at the link.

The Chosun Ilbo oped page is letting everyone know what they think about President Moon’s handling of the murder and burning of the body of a South Korean civilian:

The president videotaped his speech on Sept. 15 and sent it to the UN on Sept. 18, so of course he could not have foreseen the murder. But why did Cheong Wa Dae allow the speech to be aired even when it was fully informed a whole day before the speech was to be broadcast? Could it not have asked the UN to cancel the speech or, if that was too much to bear for the president, to switch the order of speeches and record a fresh one? How hard is that? It is clear that Moon had no intention to do anything about it. When he presided over a ceremony promoting military officers on Wednesday morning, he acted as if nothing had happened and only reiterated his calls for “peace.” He clearly no longer has any grasp of reality.

The military also behaved appallingly. The Defense Ministry watched from the sidelines as a South Korean citizen was brutally murdered and incinerated and then lied to the press about it. Then some minor official was wheeled out to threaten dire consequences, two days after it had watched the incident through binoculars. North Korea must be laughing at these men who pose as soldiers but refuse to do anything to protect the life of their citizens. What is the point of having a military at all? 

Now the government and military are claiming that the official wanted to defect to North Korea, though the public have only the word of some officers who have proven that they cannot be trusted. But even supposing the poor man had wanted to defect, that makes no difference to their duty to protect him until they can be absolutely sure. 

After North Korea blew up the inter-Korean liaison office in the border town of Kaesong earlier this year, Moon said he felt “anger and frustration,” but he soon got over it. Now Cheong Wa Dae has warned of terrible consequences for the North, but already some people in the government are saying that the slaughter did not violate an inter-Korean military agreement to reduce tensions in the border area. There is no denying that Moon is in love with the fat Barbarian on the other side. What will he do for him next?

Chosun Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but what I have been wondering about in regards to this incident is that the North Koreans supposedly watch this guy float in the water for six hours before shooting him. Why didn’t the ROK military do anything to try and rescue him?

They should have put protester tents in the concept photo because that is what people are going to see mostly at Gwanghwamun Square:

Construction on Gwanghwamun Square will commence next month as the Seoul city government tries to turn it into something more like a park and less like a traffic island.    
   
“The roads on the east side of the square will be changed in a stage-by-stage manner so as to incur the least possible traffic difficulties,” the Seoul Metropolitan Government said in a statement Sunday. “The construction will start at the end of October.”  
   
The city government’s plan to revamp the square was first announced in 2018. It involved expanding the square westward and incorporating the southbound roads between the square and the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, and rerouting the roads in front of Gyeongbok Palace to incorporate that area into the square as well.  
   
Some experts warned of traffic nightmares and the public opposed earlier plans, leading to major changes.  
   
The southbound roads west of the square will still be incorporated, but not the roads in front of the palace. Instead the five lanes of northbound traffic on the eastern side will be expanded to three going in one direction and four going in the other. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

The National Interest has an article that goes through the history of the US-ROK OPCON transfer which has long been chronicled here at the ROK Drop. The main point made at the end of the article is that the coronavirus has impacted the joint military exercises to validate the transfer. With Moon’s time in office running out a new President may relook the transfer if not complete:

These delays raise difficult questions about political timing, compounding present ambiguities in the ROK-U.S. security relationship. Moon’s term expires in the summer of 2022, leaving a relatively small window within which to complete the FOC and FMC—Moon is ineligible to run for reelection, and there is no firm guarantee that his successor will share the current administration’s strident vision of South Korean military independence. Nor is the situation entirely clear from Washington’s vantage point: if Donald Trump were to lose his reelection bid, it remains to be seen whether or not a Joe Biden administration would pursue a Korea policy conducive to further military disentanglement between the United States and South Korea.

The National Interest

You can read more at the link.

North Korea after giving a rare apology is now back to normal warning the ROK to stop violating the NLL. This is standard stuff for the North Koreans who have their own version of the NLL you can see below in Red:

North Korea warned the South on Sunday to stop violating the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de facto inter-Korean maritime border in the Yellow Sea, as the search continues for the body of a South Korean fisheries official shot last Tuesday.    
   
South Korea’s Navy and Coast Guard however said that they have been searching for the body of the 47-year-old official surnamed Lee — who was shot and killed by North Korean soldiers last Tuesday after he mysteriously went missing the previous day — in waters south of the NLL.    
   
Pyongyang’s warning came two days after an apology from North Korea Friday claiming that the man’s body had been lost at sea after he was shot, rather than burned, as initially reported by the South’s military.    
   
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported in an English-language dispatch Sunday, “We can never overlook any intrusion into our territorial waters and we seriously warn the south side against it.”  
   
The North urged South Korean authorities to “immediately halt the intrusion across the military demarcation line in the west sea that may lead to escalation of tensions.”    
   
The North may be referring to the West Sea military demarcation line (MDL), a line south of the NLL in the Yellow Sea that Pyongyang unilaterally declared in 1999. North Korean has long disputed the NLL, which was set by the United Nations Command (UNC) in 1953 after the three-year Korean War ended in a ceasefire. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.