Author: GIKorea

The unhappiness of the Korean public is growing at the Moon administration’s efforts to manipulate the real estate market:

With the average jeonse price in Seoul millimeters from the 500-million mark, people are taking to the streets and claiming the government is forcing them into rent servitude and denying their rightful place as members of the propertied class.  
   
According to KB Kookmin Bank’s monthly report on real estate prices Thursday, the average jeonse long-term deposit price for apartments in Seoul was 499.22 million won ($421,500) last month, up 7.7 percent from the same period last year.    
   
In July the average jeonse price in Seoul for 3.3 square meters (35.5 square feet) was 19 million won. This means the jeonse price for an 86.95-square-meter apartment in Seoul is 499.3 million won.  (…………….)

Civic groups gathered in front of the government’s administrative office in Gwanghwamun Thursday demanding President Moon remove Land Minister Kim Hyun-mee from her post. Their criticism was strong, calling the real estate measures a failure. They also urged the government stop coming up with more, claiming that the real estate measures have created many innocent victims.    
   
“They are nothing but a political ploy that goes against market principles and are ineffective in helping the lower classes. The government wants to turn everyone into rent migrants so that more people become their core supporters,” said one participant at the event.     
   
Another participant mentioned how torn younger people are to hear the government promote the monthly rent system over living in a jeonse flat and asked if the administration will be “happy to see everyone in the country live as tenants in government-owned rental apartments.” 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

This just shows how touchy of an issue real estate is in Korea; that mostly this one issue has caused the ruling party to quickly slide in public polling:

081401-Poll-Graph

For the first time since the 2016 political scandal that led to President Park Geun-hye’s removal from office, the approval rating of the United Future Party (UFP) overtook that of President Moon Jae-in’s Democratic Party (DP), a poll showed Thursday.  
   
According to a Realmeter poll conducted earlier this week, 36.5 percent of respondents said they support the UFP, up by 1.9 percentage points from the previous week. That figure was the highest since the party was rebranded in February.  
   
In the same survey conducted from Monday through Wednesday on 1,507 adults nationwide, the DP’s approval rate was 33.4 percent, down by 1.7 percentage points.  
   
It was the first time the UFP outstripped the DP in Realmeter’s weekly approval rating poll since October 2016.   

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but the Korean public is upset about the government’s efforts to manipulate the real estate market while many government officials to include President Moon are being accused of hypocrisy and benefitting from real estate speculation.

This is not a good look for doctors to be going on strike during a pandemic, but they are at least going to keep the ICU’s staffed with personnel:

Doctors working at vital departments, including intensive care units, will continue to be on normal duty on Friday despite the strike. Last week, trainee doctors at hospitals also launched a one-day walkout.

As of Thursday, 8,365, or 24.7 percent of 33,836 clinics across the nation, reported they will close their doors on Friday, according to the health ministry.

“It will take some time to estimate how many hospitals will join the strike, as some of them may also be closing for the vacation season,” a ministry official said.

South Korea’s medical law stipulates that the minister, or related regional governors, can issue an order for hospitals to open if “a serious hazard occurs or is likely to occur to public health.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but this strike has to do with the Moon administration trying to increase the quota on how many doctors can be trained each year to try and better staff rural areas. However, the doctors are saying there are plenty of doctors, the problem is most of them want to live in the Seoul area for better hospitals and quality of life.

This seems like an almost impossible task for Korean families members trying to find out what happened to their relatives that were conscripted to work on Sakhalin Island during World War II:

Historians say Japan forcibly mobilized around 30,000 Koreans as workers during the late 1930s and 1940s on what was then called Karafuto, or the Japanese-occupied southern half of Sakhalin, near the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.

They endured grueling labor in coal mines and logging and construction sites as part of Imperial Japan’s wartime economy, which became heavily dependent on conscripted Korean labor when Japanese men were sent to war fronts.

Families thought their loved ones would return when Japan’s surrender in WWII cemented the Soviet Union’s full control over Sakhalin.

Soviet authorities repatriated thousands of Japanese nationals from Sakhalin. But they refused to send back the Koreans, who had become stateless after the war, apparently to meet labor shortages in the island’s coal mines and elsewhere.

Moscow’s attitude hardened further after Communist ally North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950; most of the Korean laborers in Sakhalin had come from the South.

South Korea and Russia established diplomatic relations in 1990 and about 4,000 Koreans have returned from Sakhalin since. But people like Shin who lost track of their relatives long before then have seen little progress.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but there are descendants from these Korean forced laborers that still live on Sakhalin Island that organizations sponsor to visit Korea.

Just another example that the freedoms that the people in Hong Kong once enjoyed are over:

Right before China retook control of Hong Kong in 1997, tycoon Jimmy Lai started Apple Daily in part to promote democracy in the city. For 25 years, the newspaper survived advertising boycotts and political pressure but never backed off its tough coverage of the Chinese government and pro-Beijing lawmakers.

It might not last through the summer. Hong Kong police arrested Lai and several of his top executives on Monday and sent hundreds of officers to search the Apple Daily offices, a demonstration of the broad potential for the new national security law to silence criticism and dissent beyond pro-democracy protests and activism.

Passed in June, the legislation bars “crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces” as interpreted by the Chinese government and enforced by Beijing’s new security office in Hong Kong. Lai’s arrest wasn’t entirely unexpected, but it still shook the foundations of press freedom in the financial center and raised fears about what might come next.

His arrest under the security law was part of an investigation into an online activist group that received more than $129,000 (HK$1 million) funding from overseas bank accounts, the South China Morning Post reported Tuesday, citing unidentified people.

Agnes Chow, a prominent activist and founding member of the-now dissolved pro-democracy Demosisto party, also was arrested for on suspicion of breaching the security law, Cable TV reported Monday night.

Bloomberg

You can read more at the link, but if the CCP was smart they would just arrest these people for violating “libel laws” like the Moon administration in South Korea does. This sounds better than arresting people for violating national security laws. These arrests show they don’t care what international community thinks and just want to publicly show the people in Hong Kong that the way things were before are over.