Author: GIKorea

This week if you plan to use mass transit or airplanes in South Korea you better bring a mask:

Starting Tuesday, people without a face mask will be barred from taking a bus, taxi or subway train, in a nationwide measure to prevent the spread of coronavirus through public transport.

The measure will be extended to airline passengers ― domestic and international lines ― from Wednesday. 

Operators of these services will be entitled to ban people not wearing a mask. To make sure the system works, the government will not penalize operators based on complaints from people who are refused permission to board. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

I am actually not surprised by any of this. These elderly women have long been exploited for political purposes, so it is no surprise that they were also exploited for financial purposes as well:

Lee Yong-soo, who was forced to serve as a sex slave for Japanese soldiers during World War II, on Tuesday called on prosecutors to investigate the head of a charity that has been looking after her. The 92-year-old woman sobbed as she made her accusations. Lee came to prominence when she testified before American lawmakers about the brutal treatment she endured and played a pivotal role in getting the U.S. Congress to adopt a resolution seeking an apology from Japan. She is virtually the symbol of efforts over the past three decades to get the Japanese government to take full responsibility for forcing women into sexual slavery. But on Tuesday she told reporters, “I did somersaults while they took the money.” Lee added that the head of the charity that supported her, called the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, “shed crocodile tears” at the grave of another former sex slave who died in 2019. Lee gave other accounts of former sex slaves being used by the charity for financial gain.

The activist group is facing snowballing allegations of embezzling donations. Up to W3.7 billion in donations and state grants remains unaccounted for (US$1=W1,233). Yoon Mee-hyang, the head of the charity, took donations on 11 different occasions when a former sex slave died or traveled overseas. They were transferred directly into Yoon’s personal bank account and is now thought to amount to tens of millions of dollars. There are other accounts that the charity spent far less money than it received, collected donations without specifying a clear purpose for their use, and in some years gave not a single penny to the victims.

Chosun Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but the article doesn’t mention this, but this fraud case also has ties back to a convicted spy for North Korea. The comfort women have been long used as a wedge issue between South Korea and Japan and now we know there was a convicted North Korean spy involved in running the organization that supported them.

Unsurprisingly the Moon administration has not commented on this and the head of the ruling party said this was not a serious issue.

I expect that these cluster infections are going to keep happening and tracing to limit the spread of the virus is going to be very important over the coming months:

South Korea on Wednesday reported a continued rise in new coronavirus cases linked to a logistics center in a city west of Seoul, putting health authorities on alert over further community spread.

As of 9 a.m., at least 36 virus cases had been traced to the logistics center in Bucheon, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).

The first related case, confirmed last week, is believed to be linked to a cram school instructor in nearby Incheon, who contracted the virus after a visit to Seoul’s nightlife area of Itaewon.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest dustup between the Moon administration and the American led United Nations Command:

A feud between the government and the United Nations Command (UNC) seems to be intensifying as the former has complained of a series of recent decisions by the command regarding inter-Korean issues.

Some critics, including senior government officials, say the U.S.-led UNC, which administers the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and the Military Demarcation Line (MDL), has overstepped its authority regarding the Moon Jae-in administration’s peace initiatives on the Korean Peninsula as part of efforts to maintain its presence here. 

The latest friction occurred, Tuesday, after the UNC concluded that both South and North Korea violated the Armistice Agreement when they gunfire was exchanged inside the DMZ, May 3, adding that it was unable to determine whether North Korean soldiers fired intentionally or by mistake. 

The findings are in stark contrast to the Ministry of National Defense’s conclusion that the shots fired by North Korean troops across the border were accidental, a stance later echoed by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. As a result, the ministry expressed regret over the UNC’s findings immediately after its announcement, saying in a press statement that the command reached its conclusion without a practical investigation of the gunfire from the North. 

Korea Times

If there was no evidence to support that it was an accidental firing than that is what the UNC should report. The UNC was doing its job while the Moon administration would rather they support the political position they took on shooting incident.

Of course here come the usual suspects to include North Korea’s favorite bag man Im Jong-seok to condemn the UNC:

Former presidential chief of staff Im Jong-seok said in a recent interview with a local magazine that the UNC was trying to exceed its authority.

“The command has to do only what it has to do over entry into and exits from the DMZ and passage over the MDL, but it is acting like it has special rights. This needs to be fixed as soon as possible,” he said.

Moon Chung-in, the special security adviser to President Moon, also said in a media interview, last September, that the UNC was the “biggest barrier” to improving inter-Korean relations.

“The UNC blocks North-South Korean transactions across the DMZ. According to the Armistice Agreement, it only has to administer the DMZ and the MDL. Should it continue doing so, South Korean people may have antipathy toward the command,” he said.

Im Jong-seok makes it seem that the UNC should just be gate guards that allow free passage of anything the Moon administration wants to do to include violating sanctions.

I have been saying that after the April elections that if the Moon administration did not feel like that their was momentum in their inter-Korean strategy that they would eventually play the anti-US card. This may be their first trial balloon towards playing the anti-US card.

If you ever wondered what former President Park was convicted of that landed here in jail for 33 years, Dr. Tara O has a really good write up about it that is well worth reading:

During the initial trial, the prosecutor wanted a 30 year jail sentence.  Seoul Central District Court Judge Kim Se-yoon (김세윤) judged that Samsung’s provision of three horses owned by Samsung and associated costs (insurance, fee) worth ₩7.29 million ($6.4 million) to equestrian Chung Yu-ra was a bribe, and interpreted that Park “received” the bribe.  The judge deemed that the total amount of “bribery” received or requested was ₩23.2 billion ($18 million).  As mentioned earlier, she did not receive any money, and there is no evidence that proves bribery occurred.  On April 6, 2018, Judge Kim sentenced Park to 24 years in jail and fined her ₩1.8 billion ($16.2 million), stating “she does not show remorse.”  In fact, she stopped attending the trials after October 2017, after she realized the court was rigged.

The prosecutor appealed the case and at the appeals court, the “bribery amount from Samsung” increased to $8.68 billion ($7.8 million).  The judge increased Park’s sentence to 25 years and the fine to ₩2 billion ($180 million).  The Supreme court returned the case to the Seoul High Court, instructing it to split the case.  She also received additional jail sentences of 8 years from other cases, for a total of 33 years of prison sentences.

East Asia Research Center

I recommend reading the rest at the link, where she compares Park’s treatment to the treatment of former Justice Minister Cho Kuk’s wife’s corruption trial. I have always said that Korea is a rule by law country and not a rule of law country and this is a perfect example.

This article claims the Patriot batteries removed from Saudi Arabia are heading to “Northeast Asia” which likely would mean South Korea:

On May 5, a report by imagery experts at Jane’s Intelligence Review and the Center for Strategic and International Studies confirmed in the unclassified space the existence of a near-completed missile assembly and storage facility large enough to accommodate all known North Korean ballistic missiles and launchers. It is an almost braggadocious representation of the missile modernization program North Korea has pursued over the past decade while simultaneously feigning sincerity about curbing its nuclear pursuits.

As such, the removal of Patriot batteries from Saudi Arabia should not be a surprise. They will once again be moved to Northeast Asia to guard against the more imminent threat from an unpredictable Kim Jong-un.

The National Interest

You can read more at the link, but the Patriot batteries in Saudi Arabia were deployed there from units based in the U.S. They are just not going to pick up and move to Korea. Their redeployment means they are going back to the United States. Sending them to South Korea would be a large troop build up and after the THAAD fiasco does anyone think the Moon administration is ready for more U.S. troops and missile defenses to be sent to South Korea?

What is likely going on is that returning the Patriots to the U.S. would give U.S. military planners flexibility to deploy them to augment missile defenses in Korea if a crisis was to occur. The batteries being deployed to Saudi Arabia reduces this flexibility. Additionally it is arguable that providing the missile defenses to Saudis also take the onus off of them to buy and equip their own missile defense to defend themselves.