Monsoon season is hitting hard this year in South Korea:
The death toll from weeklong heavy rains here rose to 21, officials said Saturday. At least 11 people were reported missing and seven injured, while more than 3,000 were displaced, according to the national disaster control center and local governments.
Korea Times
Torrential rain has wreaked havoc across the country since Aug. 1 amid the prolonged monsoon season.
You can read more at the link.
If the White House settles for something less than full denuclearization a deal can likely be reached with North Korea:
U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday he will make deals with North Korea “very quickly” if reelected in November.
Trump was referring to his administration’s stalled efforts to get North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program in exchange for concessions.
“If and when we win, we will make deals with Iran very quickly. We’ll make deals with North Korea very quickly,” he said during a press conference in Bedminster, New Jersey.
“Now whatever happened to the word North Korea? You haven’t seen that, have you?” he continued. “If I didn’t win the election in 2016, our country would now be — maybe it would be over by now — but in war with North Korea.”
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but the best deal North Korea will ever agree to is “pretend denuclearization“.
Via a reader tip comes this news that President Moon is being accused of the very same real estate speculation that he accuses others of doing:
About half a plot of land purchased by President Moon Jae-in to build a house after retirement turned out to be unfit for construction. The JoongAng Ilbo has reported that Moon and his wife bought the 3,860 square meter (approximately 1 acre) lot in Yangsan, South Gyeongsang, for roughly 1 billion won ($843,170) on April 29, together with the presidential security team.
If Moon really broke his earlier promise to return to his private home in the southern city after retirement just because of security reasons, the people would understand that. But if public suspicions over his violation of the law in the process of purchasing the plot of land and receiving special favors are proven true, that is a serious matter.
Moon purchased the land for “agricultural purposes” in his own name. A document describes him as a “person who has been cultivating a plot of farmland for 11 years.” However, except for just a couple of years he spent as head of the Roh Moo-hyun Foundation after leaving the Blue House as Roh’s chief of staff in 2008, Moon mostly served as a politician until elected president in May 2017. We wonder how he could be identified as a farmer who cultivates his own land for a long period of time.
The current law strictly bans anyone from acquiring a plot of farmland in an illegitimate way. For instance, if someone violates the law, he or she must sell the land within one year or cultivate it on their own. But the Blue House has refused to clearly explain about the lead-up to Moon’s purchase of the land — except for a flat denial of “special favors” for the president.
Joong Ang Ilbo
You can read more at the link, but does anyone believe President Moon has been a farmer for 11 years?
With poll numbers dropping it appears this is President Moon’s way of shifting blame to his staff:
President Moon Jae-in’s Chief of Staff Noh Young-min and all five senior secretaries of his team offered to resign on Friday, taking responsibility for recent management of administration, the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said.
The five are Kang Gi-jung for political affairs, Yoon Do-han for public communication, Kim Jo-won for civil affairs, Kim Geo-sung for civil society, Kim Oe-sook for personnel management.
“They are offering to resign to take overall responsibility for recent situations,” said a high-ranking presidential official who is familiar with the matter.
Asked if the “recent situation” referred to the public criticism over what many people believed to be a failed real estate policy, the official did not provide a direct answer.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
It appears that the Korean public is tiring of the overreaching by the ruling Korean left:
The approval rating for the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) has continued on a downward spiral as a result of botched real estate policies and the autocratic passage of controversial bills, further narrowing the gap with the main opposition Untied Future Party (UFP) to below 1 percentage point, a survey showed, Thursday.
Korea Times
In the poll of 1,510 adults conducted by Realmeter from Monday to Wednesday, 35.6 percent said they support the DPK, while 34.8 percent expressed support for the UFP. The approval rating of the DPK fell 2.7 percentage points from the previous week, while that of the UFP rose 3.1 percentage points.
You can read more at the link.
Apparently Representative Ryu Ho-jeong does not like dress codes. So does she think that everyone should just wear whatever they want? Should male parliament be able to show up in shorts and tank tops? What about Korean schools, should the uniform requirement be removed from there?:
A red mini dress sported by a young female lawmaker during the latest assembly session is stirring up a heated spat over what is suitable for female lawmakers to wear on duty.
Rep. Ryu Ho-jeong of the progressive minor Justice Party drew public attention as photos of her walking down an aisle during a plenary parliamentary session Tuesday in a red wrap dress circulated online.
As online reactions were largely divided on the fashion choice of Ryu, the youngest member of the assembly at age 28, some internet forum users launched misogynistic verbal attacks on the lawmaker. (…….)
In a Facebook post, Rep. Ko Min-jung of the ruling Democratic Party (DP) thanked Ryu for “shattering excessive rigorism and authoritarianism at the National Assembly.”
Ryu herself said the dress was meant to show her determination to fight the male dominance culture in the assembly as represented by the predominant dress code of a suit and a tie.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but this is just basically another example of a millennial wanting to draw attention to themselves.
