Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.
The fact that President Trump does not like dealing with President Moon should come as no surprise. The other claim from the governor is that Trump said Koreans were “terrible”:
U.S. President Donald Trump told governors in February that he doesn’t like dealing with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and thinks the South Korean people are “terrible,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said Thursday.
Hogan, a Republican, wrote in The Washington Post that Trump had harsh words for South Korea, the birthplace of the governor’s wife, Yumi, during a private dinner sponsored by the Republican Governors Association.
“I don’t remember him mentioning the virus,” Hogan said, “but he talked about how much he respected President Xi Jinping of China; how much he liked playing golf with his buddy ‘Shinzo,’ Prime Minister Abe of Japan; how well he got along with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
“Then, the jarring part,” he continued. “Trump said he really didn’t like dealing with President Moon from South Korea. The South Koreans were ‘terrible people,’ he said, and he didn’t know why the United States had been protecting them all these years. ‘They don’t pay us,’ Trump complained.”
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but if true based on the context it sounds like Trump wasn’t saying Korean in general are “terrible”, but the Koreans in the government are terrible for not paying more the upkeep of the US-ROK alliance.
This is another example of how Korea’s libel laws are used to attack people for political reasons. In this example they were used by the Moon administration to attack a liberal political rival for the Presidency:
Gyeonggi Province Governor Lee Jae-myung will be able to retain his position after the Supreme Court sent his case back to an appeals court, Thursday, which had previously found him guilty of violating the Election Law.
The ruling also cleared the way for Lee to pursue a presidential bid on the ruling Democratic Party of Korea’s (DPK) ticket in 2022.
In a 7-to-5 vote, the court ruled that he had not violated the Election Law.
“The law can’t punish Lee Jae-myung for disseminating false information (at the debate) unless he actively declared the false claim was a fact. Some of Lee statements in the debate were simply made to deny claims made by his opponent and this cannot be seen as a deliberate act to disseminate false information…,” Chief Justice Kim Myeong-su ― who wrote for the majority ― said during the session which was televised on TV and livestreamed on YouTube. (………..)The governor was indicted last December for having his older brother forcibly committed to a psychiatric care facility in 2012. The prosecution also claimed he violated the Election Law by lying about the brother in a nationally televised debate with other election candidates in 2018.
Korea Times
You can read more at the link, but the libel laws were also used to go after his wife as well for posting supposed false information on Twitter. She was previously cleared of the allegations as well. Could you imagine if in the U.S. politicians and their supporters could be charged for libel for giving false information on Twitter and during debates? We would have no politicians left.
Anyway this is just an example of how clever and ruthless the Moon administration was to win the Presidency. ROK Heads may also remember that they got Ban Ki-moon to drop out of the race by using what he called deliberate “fake news” against him. With Ban and Lee out of the race Moon then had a clear path to the Presidency after former President Park’s impeachment.
I think it is safe to say that investigation this will go nowhere:
South Korean prosecutors have begun an investigation into North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sister and the North’s military chief on charges of blowing up an inter-Korean liaison office in Kaesong last month, officials said Thursday.
The unprecedented and symbolic probe into Kim Yo-jong, the sister now serving as the first vice department director of the ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Committee, and Army Gen. Pak Jong-chon, chief of the General Staff of the North Korean army, came after a South Korean lawyer filed a criminal complaint against them over the Kaesong office demolition in mid-June.
Seoul-based lawyer Lee Kyung-jae filed the complaint against the North Korean figures with the Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office on July 8, and the case was assigned to the office’s public investigation division on Monday, according to the officials informed of the case.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
One of my favorite Korean actresses Lee Young-ae has been recognized by the First Lady of Uzbekistan:
Lee Young-ae, one of Korea’s most famous actresses, has received a letter of gratitude from the first lady of Uzbekistan recently in recognition of a favor she did for Uzbek television viewers.
Korea Times
According to her agency, Ziroatkhon Hoshimova, the wife of Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, thanked Lee in the letter in June for helping provide “Saimdang, Memoir of Colors,” a big-budget K-drama she starred in in 2017, for free broadcast in Uzbekistan by donating the copyright.
The first lady wrote that she was “very pleased to hear about Lee’s role” in helping the soap opera’s broadcasting in Uzbekistan.
She called Lee’s action “a beautiful one” and that it is “more meaningful in the time of COVID-19 pandemic.”
You can read more at the link.
