Author: GIKorea

Good luck with this:

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon announced on Sunday his vision to turn Seoul into a bicycle-friendly city, including installing elevated bike roads above bus lanes in Seoul, during his visit to Bogota, Colombia.  

“My intention is to turn Seoul into one of the most bicycle-friendly cities in the world,” Park told Korean reporters in Colombia’s capital on Sunday, during his trip to several South American cities to bridge inter-city cooperation on urban regeneration. 

“And there are a few options to go about this plan. One is to take some of the car lanes and turn them into bike highways while making sure that they are completely separated from car roads.”

“Another option,” he continued, “is to build elevated bike roads above bus lanes, or to build enclosed bike lanes on either side of bridges across the Han River.”

Park is traveling through South American cities, including Mexico City, and Medellin and Bogota, both Colombia, from July 8 to 17 to explore inter-city cooperation on urban regeneration.

He made the announcement during a day of ciclovia, which is a local practice in some South American cities such as Bogota and Medellin that involves blocking certain roads from traffic and opening it up to pedestrians and cyclists on Sundays or other designated days.

“In all the options that the city government is considering, it is trying to build a so-called Cycle Rapid Transportation highway, an unprecedented attempt,” the Seoul city government said in a statement on Sunday. “The bike highway would be completely separate from roads used by cars and by pedestrians.”

The Seoul Metropolitan Government said it will inject 300 million won ($254,400) within this year to conduct feasibility studies on the plan. 

Jeong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

“The [Mercedes] cars traveled by ship for 41 days to Dalian…then put on a ship for Osaka…to Busan…Then came the most mysterious part of the passage. The containers were transferred within one day of arrival to…a cargo ship sailing under the flag of Togo,” for Nakhodka, RU https://t.co/DmPxWvpTtH

— Sung-Yoon Lee (@SungYoonLee1) July 16, 2019

The Kim regime was not going to miss a chance to bash Japan:

North Korean media outlets are strongly criticizing Japan amid growing confrontation between Seoul and Tokyo over Japan’s trade restrictions. 

Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the North Korean ruling party, on Wednesday portrayed the Japan’s exports curbs on South Korea as retaliatory measures over the South Korean top court’s decisions on Japan’s forced wartime labor and accused Tokyo of seeking to realize its imperial purposes. 

The paper also asserted that Japan has shown no repentance over its “sinful deeds” in the past and warned the North will not just sit and watch Japan trample the Korean people’s interests. 

KBS World Radio

You can read more at the link, but notice how North Korea bashes Japan for its export restrictions on South Korea as being against the “Korean people’s interests”. This demonstrates how North Korea views South Korean citizens as part of their own population.

If the North Koreans conduct a nuclear or ICBM test, I think that would officially end diplomatic efforts:

The United States looks set to break a promise not to hold military exercises with South Korea, putting talks aimed at getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons at risk, the North Korean Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.

The United States’ pattern of “unilaterally reneging on its commitments” is leading Pyongyang to reconsider its own commitments to discontinue tests of nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), the ministry said in a pair of statements released through state news agency KCNA.The United States looks set to break a promise not to hold military exercises with South Korea, putting talks aimed at getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons at risk, the North Korean Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.

Reuters

You can read more at the link.

What are the unique features of the Yusang-ni Missile Operating Base? Why is it important? @CSIS’s short video answers all of these questions: https://t.co/7gDXqqws58

Want to learn more? Read @BeyondCSISKorea’s report: https://t.co/T2QwXbWnR3 pic.twitter.com/itQqITu43T

— CSIS Korea Chair (@CSISKoreaChair) July 14, 2019

If this report is true it will allow the Kim regime to increase its foreign revenue for giving up nothing in return:

In return for the dismantlement of the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Reactor and a nuclear freeze, the United States would offer the Kim regime a 12-18 month suspension on some U.N. Security Council sanctions. The North Koreans would again be permitted to export coal and textiles, two commodities which have served as Kim’s biggest moneymakers. If Pyongyang agrees to keep its end of the deal, Washington would also consider an end of war declaration and the establishment of liaison offices in one another’s capitals. And if the North cheats or violates the agreement, the Security Council would reimpose the sanctions through a snap-back mechanism.

National Interest

You can read more at the link.

The trade dispute from South Korea and Japan may intensify by July 24th:

Trade tensions between South Korea and Japan are escalating as Tokyo seems to be preparing to expand the scope of its export controls beyond high-tech materials to a wide spectrum of areas, which could disrupt the global supply chain, industry watchers said Monday. 

Japan began applying stricter export rules on South Korea for three key materials needed for making chips and displays on July 4 over a wartime forced labor issue and is pushing to remove South Korea from a list of trusted buyers, which could affect the supply of other key materials needed for making smartphones, televisions, chemicals and other industrial materials.

Tokyo’s move to exclude Seoul from its “whitelist” of countries on national security grounds would require Korean companies to seek export licenses for a wider range of technologies, which could result in additional costs and time. 

South Korea is currently on the neighbor’s 27-nation whitelist, which includes the United States, Germany, Poland and Italy.

“If Japan removes South Korea from its whitelist, about 1,100 items are estimated to be affected by the new regulations,” a Seoul trade ministry official said, asking not to be named. “We are closely analyzing the potential impact from Japan’s move on the South Korean industry.”

The Japanese government is expected to announce the decision on July 24 after a review process, which goes into effect 21 days later. Seoul’s trade ministry proposed another meeting with its Japanese counterpart before the deadline to discuss the issue, after their first meeting Friday failed to mend the disputes.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but some observers believe the trade dispute will ease after upper house elections in Japan are complete on Sunday. The observers believe Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is using the trade dispute for political advantage in the election.

ROK Drop favorite Dr. Tara O has a good and very detailed article published about the impeachment of former President Park Geun-hye. The crux of Park’s impeachment has always been the tablet PC which many people don’t even realize was likely a fraud and not even submitted as evidence during President Park’s criminal trial:

JTBC’s claims about the tablet have not been verified.  In fact, the government’s forensic report indicates many of the documents were put into the tablet after JTBC found the tablet.  The forensic report also showed that there were multiple users of the tablet, so it could not determine to whom the tablet belonged.  The forensic report did not surface until it was too late–a year later, which is a long time after Park was already impeached. Some continued to question the validity of JTBC and Sohn Suk-hee’s claims about the tablet, and the loudest were put in jail–journalists Byun Hee-jai, and later Hwang Ui-won, Byun’s journalist colleague at the same small media outlet called MediaWatch. 

Despite what the forensic report shows, the prosecutor for Byun Hee-jai maintains that the tablet belongs to Choi, and the judges have refused, thus far, to grant Byun’s request for further discovery of the truths behind the tablet–a violation of the principle of self-defense.  Many people do not even know that the tablet was not the “smoking gun” evidence for the impeachment that JTBC claimed it was. 

In fact, the court never even admitted the tablet as evidence for either Park Geun-hye’s impeachment trial or the criminal trials that followed.  JTBC later stated that “even if there was no such thing as the [insignificant] tablet PC…, [it wouldn’t have mattered]” after initially stating the tablet was the “smoking gun.”

East Asia Research Center

Here is the most suspicious part of Park’s impeachment, the rush to get rid of her:

The National Assembly impeached the nation’s president, Park Geun-hye, in a rush.  There was no hearing, no investigation, and the voting occurred only six days after the introduction of the impeachment bill.  This rushed and unreasonable, if not unconstitutional, impeachment process differs from the U.S. President Richard Nixon case, in which there existed two separate investigations totaling 1 year and 6 months.

I think it is arguable that the impeachment had to be rushed because a true investigation would have uncovered that the tablet PC was not the smoking gun the media made it out to be.

You can read much more about Park’s impeachment at the link.