Author: GIKorea

It is pretty clear that the Blue House is going to take the Kang Kyung-hwa approach to getting President Moon’s Justice Minister nominee approved:

Cho Kuk promised Friday to donate all his family’s scandal-plagued wealth to society in an attempt to keep his justice minister nomination from being derailed.

Cho, however, remained silent about suspected academic fraud and other scandals surrounding his daughter, which have become the focus of public disquiet over his controversial nomination. 

“My family and I have been loved by society, but I failed to have the humility to look back on myself,” Cho said in a press conference broadcast live Friday afternoon. He promised to quickly donate his family’s investments in a private equity fund and its ownership of a private school foundation to society at large. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but the current ROK Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-hwa had similar ethical issues as Cho and made face saving public statements like Cho is now making to get approved.

However, Cho’s ethical lapses are even worse than Kang’s:

He made clear, however, that he wouldn’t abandon his nomination to head the Ministry of Justice. “Please trust my sincerity and watch me till the end,” he said. “I will work with a humble attitude.” 

Despite media reporting on suspicious wealth management, Cho insisted the family never used illegal means. While promising to donate the controversial family money and school foundation, Cho gave no explanation about any specific allegation.  

After reading the brief statement about his family’s wealth, Cho ended the press conference without taking any questions. Conspicuously missing in his statement was any mention about the most volatile elements of the scandal surrounding his family, which involve his daughter. 

Cho’s 28-year-old daughter, who currently attends Pusan National University’s Graduate School of Medicine, is suspected of having been wrongly cited as the first author of an English-language paper published in the Korean Journal of Pathology in 2008 and using that accomplishment to gain admission to Korea University in 2010. 

The professor in charge of the controversial paper admitted Thursday that he had given special treatment to Cho’s daughter. 

“She was responsible for experiments and editing of the paper,” Chang Young-pyo, a professor in the Department of Medical Science at Dankook University, told the JoongAng Ilbo on Thursday. “I was responsible for data analysis and writing the first draft of the paper. I cannot deny that a favor was given to her by crediting her as the first author.” 

You can read more at the link, but ROK Heads may remember that one of the reasons former ROK President Park Geun-hye was impeached was because the daughter of her friend Choi Soon-sil, received special treatment to get admitted to college as well.

That is what Oh Young-jin writing for the Korea Times says people in South Korea are speculating about:

A look at the participants in the National Security Office meeting presided over by Chung Eui-yong, Moon’s top security aide, does not reveal these elements in play before the GSOMIA decision. But the movers and shakers that led the move were hidden in plain sight, as it was more the action of working-level presidential aides and others outside Cheong Wa Dae that have inherited Roh’s zeitgeist. 

Some argue openly ― and more wonder ― whether the GSOMIA decision is aimed at diverting public attention from the scandal involving the justice minister-to-be regarding a mushrooming body of allegations of unethical, if not illegal, activities involving his daughter, himself and other family members. The revelations are shocking, dumb-founding and despicable to the point that his nomination deserves an immediate withdrawal. 

But speculation appears quite plausible that Moon ditched the military pact to save his apostle, whom he depends on solely to achieve one of his key presidential agenda items ― reforming the prosecutors, an influential group notorious for colluding with power at a given time and thereby hindering the development of the nation’s democracy. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but the Justice Minister Nominee Cho Kuk is one of President Moon’s closest friends that he wants put in charge of the powerful Justice Ministry. It is ironic that President Moon came to power due to candlelight protests against the supposed corruption of the Park Geun-hye administration and Moon has done the same thing of appointing people with shady backgrounds to important positions in the government. The negative media is worth it because he trusts these people to forcibly advance his agenda.

Giving the media another bright shiny object to follow could have definitely been part of the timing of the GSOMIA calculus, but I feel they were going to withdraw regardless for a variety of reasons.

The Moon administration has decided that domestic politics is more important than national security:

 South Korea consulted with the United States often and adequately on the fate of a bilateral pact with Japan on sharing military intelligence, Cheong Wa Dae said Friday, as Washington has voiced “strong concern” and “disappointment” over Seoul’s decision to discard the key tool for strengthening trilateral security cooperation in Northeast Asia.

“It’s true that the U.S. hoped for the extension of the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA),” South Korea’s Deputy National Security Adviser Kim Hyun-chong said in a press briefing.

Thus, he added, it was “natural” for Washington to be disappointed with Seoul’s move, which represents its toughest countermeasure yet against Tokyo’s export curbs.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but what allows the Moon administration to make this decision more easily than it should of, is that they know the U.S. will share with them any pertinent information the Japanese have on North Korea anyway.

This decision allows the Moon administration to show they are “doing something” in response to the trade dispute with Japan, burnish their anti-Japan street cred with the South Korean left, without really giving anything up in return.

As mainland Chinese students and Hong Kong students protest and face off on university campuses around the world, it’s important to remember that mainland students are exercising a right they don’t actually possess back home. And most (none?) of them seem to recognize that irony.

— Melissa Chan (@melissakchan) August 17, 2019

It looks like another President Moon recommendation for a governmental position has a shady background:

President Moon Jae-in is facing growing calls to withdraw his nomination of Cho Kuk as justice minister due to a widening scandal involving one of his most trusted aides. 

The allegations of irregularities regarding his daughter’s academic history, in addition to the possible evasion of military service and the dual nationality of his son, who also holds U.S. citizenship, have produced a huge public backlash. A recent poll showed that almost 50 percent of respondents thought Cho was an inappropriate choice for justice minister. 

Even some ruling party lawmakers have started to voice concerns about the impact of the Cho scandal on Moon’s leadership. “The people who supported Moon in the presidential election and our party are more actively raising questions about this issue,” Rep. Park Yong-jin of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) said in a radio interview, Wednesday. “If the nominee fails to give an explanation that is convincing to the public, the President will be faced with an inevitable decision.”

In particular, the younger generation of voters who have supported President Moon’s special focus on establishing a fair and just society, are feeling a sense of betrayal and expressing outrage on social media amid their own tough struggle to get into good schools and find stable jobs in the hyper competitive Korean society. Many angry citizens are questioning whether Cho is really the right choice to spearhead Moon’s cherished reform drive to promote transparency and fairness, the “core values” of the Moon administration, in the judiciary.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but Cho’s kids seem like they have the same shadiness following them that critics say is why President Moon is currently hiding his daughter overseas.

All 8 #SouthKorean airlines are now operating in red. Sudden/drastic increases in minimum wage didn't help. Neither did won depreciation nor boycotting travel to Japan. https://t.co/cVlEgfhm21

— Tara O (@DrTaraO) August 18, 2019

Hotel I’m staying at in Gangneung has a “Royal Suite” named after the woman who used it first in 2018:

North Korea’s Hyon Song Wol pic.twitter.com/JikCYdZ7Md

— Chad O'Carroll (@chadocl) August 18, 2019

I wonder if this is something we will eventually see happen at all South Korean subway stations as well:

To prevent drunken people falling off platforms or being hit by trains, railway operators across Japan are turning benches at their stations sideways to the tracks.

The move is driven by a study that showed that moving them perpendicular to tracks could be the difference between life and death for passengers who have had one too many.

West Japan Railway Co. (JR West)’s Safety Research Institute examined security camera footage in 2014 of 136 inebriated people who fell onto the tracks and made contact with trains.

It found that 60 percent fell after suddenly standing up from benches and elsewhere and then heading straight toward the tracks. The result shattered the common notion that most such accidents are caused by people standing or walking too close to the platform’s edge.

About 25 percent of the accident victims, the second largest number, stood or sat motionless on the edge of platforms and then fell, while only 15 percent tottered and lost their footing.

Asahi Shimbun

You can read more at the link.