Author: GIKorea

The Moon administration must be really upset about the criticism they are facing from the KCTU, a major leftwing ally to arrest their leader like this:

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) has pledged an all-out struggle against the government, following the arrest of its Chairman Kim Myeong-hwan, last Friday.

The arrest and the militant umbrella union’s response signal yet another low point in the already strained ties between labor and the Moon Jae-in administration. The latter had hoped for talks with the labor sector to settle various labor issues such as the ratification of key conventions of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and a decision on next year’s minimum wage. 

Kim, former leader of the Korean Railway Workers’ Union, was charged with overseeing “illegal” KCTU protests in front of the National Assembly in Seoul in May last year and earlier this year. During the rallies, labor activists clashed with police officers, tearing down fences and plastic shields to get inside the assembly compound to stop anti-labor bills. 

Three others in the hardline union were arrested on similar charges recently. The clampdown and arrests of union leaders are hardly novel but they reveal how quickly ties can unravel between the labor sector and President Moon, who promised liberal and worker-friendly reforms when he came to power in May 2017.

The KCTU immediately lashed out at the arrest, saying Kim could not be held responsible for incidents of violence between protesters and police.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but the KCTU is upset that President Moon has not kept his promise to further increase the minimum wage. The steep increases in the minimum wage have already increased unemployment which the KCTU apparently is not concerned about.

Here is the latest penpal letter that President Trump has sent to Kim Jong-un:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has received a personal letter with “excellent” and “interesting” content from U.S. President Donald Trump, Pyongyang’s state media said Sunday.

“After reading the letter, the Supreme Leader of the Party, the state and the armed forces said with satisfaction that the letter is of excellent content,” the Korean Central News Agency said, referring to its leader.

“Appreciating the political judging faculty and extraordinary courage of President Trump, Kim Jong-un said that he would seriously contemplate the interesting content,” it added.

The KCNA did not disclose when and how the letter was delivered to Kim.

The letter appears to be in answer to a letter Kim sent to Trump recently in time for the anniversary of their first-ever summit in Singapore last June.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.

Has anyone tried this yet?:

Young Koreans are going crazy for KFC’s new fried chicken skins as the so-called bizarre food trend sweeps the country.

At 9: 40 a.m. on Wednesday, the KFC in Gangnam Station, southern Seoul, was full of people waiting to get their hands on the snack. When the store started serving food 20 minutes later, people rushed to line up at the self-service kiosk stands. 

They were rushing to get their hands on the limited-edition fried chicken skin, which are sold for 2,800 won ($2.40) for 12 pieces. 

The salty and greasy fried skins were first offered at KFC restaurants in Indonesia. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

#KoreanHistoryToday: President Syngman Rhee unilaterally releases 27,312 prisoners of war who disavowed communism in 1953. This caused a major disruption in the ongoing armistice talks between the UN forces and the DPRK/PRC pic.twitter.com/EuJT1901fo

— KEI (@KoreaEconInst) June 18, 2019

This statement from Kiron Skinner from the State Department is just bizarre:

Kiron Skinner says the U.S. is fighting a racial war of civilizations pitting the Americans against a non-Caucasian foe in China for the first time.

What about the Pacific War, part of World War II, waged between the U.S. and Japan? So the U.S. State Department’s policy planning director is factually inaccurate. 

Also her being Afro-American may have tinted her lens, putting the situation in a racial perspective. After all it is plausible that the U.S.-China rivalry, now being expressed in a trade war, is a clash of values, not race, as one of my Western friends argues.

On the surface, my friend’s argument may make sense and it looks like Skinner is out of her depth. That is by and large the reaction so far to her remarks at a security forum in Washington in late April, reflecting the “She is wrong but what if she proves right” kind of sentiment. 

Korea Times

How does someone working at the State Department forget about Imperial Japan during World War II? You can make an argument that the U.S. fighting the communist North Koreans and the Chinese during the Korean War was a clash of civilizations.

It is just troubling that this is one of the senior people making policy in the State Department.

Just what South Korea needs Muslim Brotherhood asylum seekers:

Mohamad Sabry came to Korea in July 2016 to seek asylum. In his refugee interview, Sabry told the immigration officer he faced political persecution in Egypt for being an active member of the Muslim Brotherhood. 

The official didn’t write this down.

“My interview was totally fabricated as they wrote that I had said like this in the interview: I confessed what I wrote in the application was false and I came to Korea to work as I had no job in Egypt,” Sabry told reporters at a press conference organized by NANCEN, a refugee support group, at the National Human Rights Commission of Korea office in Seoul, Tuesday.

Sabry is one of the victims of a deliberately rigged interview process against Muslim and Arab asylum seekers by multiple immigration officers under the Ministry of Justice here. 

In Tuesday’s press conference, five asylum seekers ― three of them now refugees ― spoke out about how certain immigration officials discriminated against them and deliberately falsified their interview testimony. The problem first surfaced in 2017, after NANCEN and other NGOs came across multiple cases where testimony given by Arab or Muslim asylum seekers during refugee interviews were deliberately altered by immigration officers who recorded them ― making up pieces and leaving out crucial claims while adding false information that made the applicants look like they came in Korea just to find a job. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

A country that can afford nuclear weapons, ICBMs, and a space program cannot afford to buy rice?:

South Korea will send 50,000 tons of domestically produced rice as humanitarian aid to North Korea through the World Food Programme (WFP), according to the Unification Ministry on Wednesday.

The food aid package, which is believed to be worth around 27 billion won ($22.9 million), follows Seoul’s donation of $8 million won to the WFP and Unicef earlier this month, which is to be used for emergency nutritional and medical assistance for children and pregnant women in the North. 

This will be the first time in nine years for South Korea to send rice to the North and the first time rice harvested from South Korean paddies will be provided to Pyongyang through the WFP. On earlier occasions when Seoul went through the WFP, its aid packages largely consisted of corn, mixed grains or flour. 

“The government hopes that the food it provides through the WFP rapidly makes it into the hands of the North Korean people,” read a Unification Ministry press release. “The timing and amount of any further food aid to North Korea will be decided after the results of this assistance package are monitored.”

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but it will be interesting to see if this rice ends up on the North Korean blackmarket or not.