Author: GIKorea

I doubt anyone who follows inter-Korean issues ever expected this to last very long:

North Korea appears to have dispatched soldiers to some empty guard posts inside the Demilitarized Zone, sources said Thursday, following its warnings that it would beef up its military presence in border areas.

On Wednesday, the General Staff of the (North) Korean People’s Army vowed to set up “civil police posts,” which had been withdrawn from the DMZ under an inter-Korean military agreement, as part of next steps against South Korea after the demolition of the inter-Korean liaison office in the border town of Kaesong.

According to the military sources, several soldiers were spotted being dispatched to empty sentry posts inside the buffer zone from late Wednesday. 

North Korea is believed to have around 150 such posts, and some of them were vacated in accordance with the inter-Korean tension-reducing pact signed in Sept. 19, 2018.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This is a pretty prestigious recognition for Coupang:

Coupang is No. 2 on the 2020 CNBC Disruptor list.  
   
It is the first Korean company to make it onto the list, which has been published by the U.S. business channel since 2013. Coupang was also the first Korean company to be nominated.  
   
Each year, the broadcaster identifies 50 private companies with breakthroughs influencing business and market competition. All private, independently owned start-up companies founded after Jan. 1, 2005 were eligible to be nominated this year.  
   
Coupang was ranked No. 2 from a total 1,355 nominees selected by the station and a board of advisors.    
   
How the companies reacted to the coronavirus was key in the selection process this year. CNBC gave credit to the retailer’s fast delivery service, and its effort to replenish necessities, such as face masks and hand sanitizers, during the pandemic.    
   
The American broadcaster ranked Coupang high on the list considering its ability to withstand a rush of online orders during the virus outbreak while maintaining its quality delivery service. CNBC complimented the company for freezing the prices of face masks and hand sanitizers to prevent customers from being adversely affected by the disruption in the supply chain caused by the outbreak.    
   
Coupang said in a statement Wednesday that its vast logistics network and infrastructure it aggressively built in recent years may have helped it reach second place. The retailer claims more than 70 percent of the Korean population lives 10 minutes away from its “Rocket Delivery” logistics hubs.    
   
Coupang said it will continue to contribute to the fight against the pandemic. It created around 20,000 jobs in the first quarter in the face of a national unemployment crisis.   

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

A screen capture from a North Korean state television broadcast from Wednesday shows the North’s demolition of the inter-Korean liaison office on Tuesday afternoon. [YONHAP]

I figured that South Korea would take notice of President Trump’s threat to pull U.S. troops out of Germany. However, I would not be surprised if the Moon administration would welcome removing half of U.S. troops:

U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday he will cut the number of U.S. soldiers in Germany by about half, fueling concerns in Seoul he could make similar reductions to American troops in Korea.    
   
“One of the only countries that hasn’t agreed to pay what they’re supposed to pay is Germany,” Trump said to reporters at the White House in Washington. “So I said, until they pay we’re removing our soldiers, a number of our soldiers, by about half. And then when we get down to 25,000, we’ll see where we’re going.”  
   
Trump claimed that Germany was “delinquent” in payments to NATO and has been treating the United States “very badly on trade.”    
   
He added, “And I’m not only talking about Germany, by the way; I’m talking about plenty of other countries,” without specifying further.   

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Why are these people in the Moon administration surprised by any of this? This is all straight out of the North Korean playbook:

 The office of President Moon Jae-in strongly condemned the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Wednesday for her “rude and senseless” criticism of Moon and warned that it won’t tolerate the North’s unreasonable words and acts anymore.

“It is a senseless act to disparage (Moon’s speech earlier this week) in a very rude tone without understanding its purpose at all,” Yoon Do-han, Cheong Wa Dae’s senior secretary for public communication, said in a war of words between the two Koreas. (……..)

It’s an “unprecedentedly unreasonable” act to deliberately distort the purpose of the proposal, he stressed, adding that the North should have “basic etiquette.”

The North said Moon had “begged” it to accept his scheme to send either National Security Director Chung Eui-yong and National Intelligence Service Director Suh Hoon as a special envoy.

Making public such a sensitive issue unilaterally is something of a taboo in diplomacy and other state-to-state relationships.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but as long as Seoul’s response continues to be strongly worded statements they will continue to keep being pushed around by the Kim regime. They know there will never be any real consequences for their provocations as long as Moon is in power.

It is pretty clear that Kim Jong-un is using his sister to be the hard liner to push the Moon administration to make as many concessions as possible. When concessions are made then Kim Jong-un will pop up looking like a reasonable peacemaker.

The U.S. embassy’s virtue signaling didn’t last very long:

The U.S. Embassy in Seoul took down a “Black Lives Matter” banner from its mission building Monday, only two days after the banner was unfurled in solidarity with “the fight against racial injustice and police brutality” in the United States.

In a statement sent to The Korea Times Tuesday, an embassy spokeswoman said Ambassador Harry Harris removed the banner to avoid misapprehension that he supports any specific groups leading the protests.

“The ambassador’s intent was not to support or encourage donations to any specific organization,” the spokeswoman said. “To avoid the misperception that American taxpayer dollars were spent to benefit such organizations, he directed that the banner be removed.

“This in no way lessens the principles and ideals expressed by raising the banner, and the embassy will look for other ways to convey fundamental American values in these times of difficulty at home.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but it does seem strange that the State Department would be advocating for an organization that supports illegal immigration and defunding police departments.

It looks like it is not a good time to be an Itaewon business owner:

COVID-19 has done no favors to food and beverage businesses since the initial outbreak in Daegu months ago, but many restaurants continue to open as they find themselves in a catch-22. They won’t survive if they don’t open ― but if they do, they have to just hope they aren’t visited by an infected patient which puts them on the map. 

The government has done an amazing and internationally touted job with its test-and-trace program to keep residents informed but it has some pitfalls, as businesses in Itaewon have learned. 

“While I appreciate and applaud the efforts made by the Korean government to mitigate and curtail the spread of COVID-19 in the country,” explained Juweon Kim, cofounder and CEO of Vatos Urban Tacos in Itaewon, “I think what we have experienced in Itaewon is one of the negative consequences of the very public track-and-trace methods being employed by the government. Itaewon served as the low-hanging fruit for the 24-hour news cycle during a period when the news cycle was slowing down for COVID-19-related stories.”  (……..)

Residents around Korea need to be vigilant and take precautions as the pandemic continues to spread, but according to Juweon there has been “a mischaracterization by the media to make Itaewon sound like it’s the epicenter of the spread and it’s where there’s a high concentration of COVID-19 infections. This false narrative must change.” 

Despite the government-released data that showed patient zero came from Yongin and the majority of the infected do not live or work in Itaewon, the media quickly labeled the uptick the “Itaewon cluster” and turned the once-popular district into a ghost town. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.