Category: Korea-General Topics

Some good news for Korean small business owners that have bore the brunt of COVID related shutdowns:

 The government decided Saturday to lower social distancing levels by one notch each for the greater Seoul area and the other regions next week, but kept tight vigilance to curb COVID-19 by retaining a ban on gatherings of five people or more.

Health authorities said that starting Monday, they plan to lower social distancing guidelines to Level 2 — the third highest in a five-tier system — for the greater Seoul area and Level 1.5 for other regions until Feb. 28.

They will also ease restrictions on restaurants, cafes, gyms and other public facilities in the Seoul metropolitan area to allow them to operate for one more hour until 10 p.m., amid complaints by pandemic-hit small business operators.

Entertainment facilities across the nation will also be allowed to operate until 10 p.m. on condition that they abide by key antivirus rules, such as wearing masks and keeping distance among their clients.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The comfort women controversy is one of these issues where facts do not matter, how people feel about the topic is what matters:

Korean students at Harvard University have strongly criticized a professor over his controversial claim that Japan’s wartime sexual slavery was actually voluntary prostitution, demanding its immediate withdrawal and his official apology to victims.

Harvard Korean Society made the demand in a statement on its website after Harvard Law School Japanese legal studies professor J. Mark Ramseyer caused controversy with his recently published paper titled “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War.”

“It is a wrong conclusion based on grounds very biased and lacking trustworthiness,” the statement said. “Harvard Korean Society demands Prof. Ramseyer’s official apology and immediate withdrawal of the paper.”

“The issue of comfort women is an international inhumane act, and his academic view which justifies and negates the act is an immoral and shameless view,” it added.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I have not read Professor Ramseyer’s paper yet because it is behind a pay wall. Maybe it is out of line, but I would not be surprised if it has similar conclusions to what Sejong University Professor Park Yu-ha wrote a few years ago about the comfort women issue:

“Park believes that Japan did not recruit comfort women in Korea, which was part of Japan from Tokyo’s perspective, in quite the same way that it did on the front lines and in occupied areas, such as in the Philippines. In those areas, records show that Japanese soldiers were directly involved in the forcible and violent taking away of comfort women. ‘Many of the Korean comfort women were apparently recruited while being cheated by agents of prostitution, some of whom were Koreans, or being sold by their parents,’ Park said. ‘While some have testified they were forcibly taken away by military personnel, I suppose that such cases, if there were any, were exceptional.’

She was of course arrested for writing such a book. The Korean public likes to think that all the comfort women were girls sleeping in bed and kidnapped by evil Japanese soldiers while the Japanese rightists like to think they were all willing prostitutes.  Both historical narratives are untrue if one really looks at the history.

What Professor Park writes about is the same historical narrative that Sarah Soh wrote about in her book “The Comfort Women“.  In the book Soh provides documented evidence that most of the Korean women put into the comfort women system were sold by Korean brokers.  The actual kidnapping of Korean women by Japanese soldiers would be a very rare occurrence when the broker system made so many of these women readily available.  This does not absolve the Imperial Japanese from responsibility since they ran the comfort woman system that provided the demand for the Korean brokers to meet.  To make even worse is that many of these girls were teenagers when sold into prostitution.  I see no way that a young teenager should be considered a willing prostitute.  Especially when many girls were sold by their families into prostitution for money due to the extreme poverty.  This was actually a practice that was going on well into the US military era in South Korea.

It is pretty clear that the comfort women issue is not black and white, but ultimately the Imperial Japanese government was responsible for the actions of the Korean brokers that supplied the majority of the Korean girls that were underage.  There is no need to create a false narrative of what happened to the comfort women when the truth is bad enough.

Some further relief for business owners in South Korea:

The government said Saturday it will allow businesses outside the greater Seoul area to operate until 10 p.m. starting next week, relaxing the distancing rules amid growing discontent over the prolonged virus curbs. 

The revised measure will permit businesses like restaurants and fitness clubs to extend their operating hours by one hour under Level 2 distancing currently imposed on the provincial regions, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said in a government response meeting.

“After careful deliberation based on the various opinions from all walks of life, we are adjusting the business hours for publicly used facilities,” he said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I wonder if this really is to cool the real estate market or is it just an attempt by the government to make money from the hot real estate market?:

The government is expected to announce a plan this week to provide a total of 850,000 homes to cool down the overheated property market, government and parliamentary officials said Wednesday.

Under the plan, likely to be unveiled Thursday, about 325,000 units will be supplied in Seoul, and the rest in other major cities, including Busan, Daegu and Gwangju, where property prices have soared over the recent months, the officials said. 

Public companies like Korea Land & Housing Corp. and Seoul Housing & Communities Corp. will lead the project to offer quality housing at lower prices, they said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This is a horrible accident caused by speeding:

A speeding van with 12 construction workers and others on board overturned on an expressway exit ramp in central South Korea on Monday, killing seven and injuring the five others, police and expressway officials said.

The fatal accident occurred on the Dangjin–Yeongdeok Expressway’s Sejong section, about 120 kilometers south of Seoul, at 8:20 a.m., when the Starex van turned upside-down on a road leading to the South Sejong Toll Gate after colliding into a roadside signpost.

It was confirmed that the vehicle was speeding to overtake another car just prior to entering the curved exit ramp, where the speed limit is 40 kph, according to police and the Korea Expressway Corp.

The automobile was found to have lost its center of gravity and overturned after first impacting the signpost on the left side of the road while going around the ramp road that curves to the right, they explained.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the only one wearing a seatbelt was the driver.

It is ironic that the Korean left that used a dubious tablet PC to take down the last Presidential administration is claiming these reactor papers are all lies by the political opposition:

The ruling bloc is going all out to defend itself against escalating suspicions that the Moon Jae-in administration attempted to initiate the construction of a nuclear power plant in North Korea in 2018. 

Cheong Wa Dae and the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) are lashing out at the main opposition People Party of Korea (PPP) for raising the allegations ahead of the April 7 mayoral by-elections for Seoul and Busan, claiming it was re-engaging in the politics of “northern winds” often used by conservatives during election season.

President Moon called on the political circle to refrain from outdated political wrangling, in response to the rising calls from the opposition to clarify exactly whether there was any mention of a nuclear plant building project during his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at Panmunjeom in April 2018. 

“At a time when the people are already struggling (from the coronavirus pandemic), we should not instigate conflict and make politics regress through outdated tactics. I urge the political circle to find better ways to cooperate in improving the peoples’ lives,” Moon said during a meeting with senior aides at Cheong Wa Dae, Monday.

Korea Times

The Moon administration is even threatening to take legal action against people criticizing the administration because of the reactor papers. We know this administration has a long track record of jailing journalists and now they may even try and jail a politician:

The presidential office said it would consider taking legal action immediately after PPP interim leader Kim Chong-in remarked Jan. 29 that the ruling bloc’s actions were “benefiting the North” when he first raised the suspicion about the nuclear power plant project. “It is a reckless political offensive meant to delude the people,” a senior presidential aide said Monday.

You can read more at the link.

The ongoing historical disputes between Korea and Japan has caused the sales of Japanese beer to drop by 86% in South Korea:

Japanese beer is fast losing share in the Korean market as drinkers shun the suds from across the East Sea.    
   
In 2020, only $5.67 million worth of Japanese beer was imported, down 85.7 percent, according to Korea Customs Service.  
   
It was the second consecutive yearly decline, and Japan now ranks ninth among imported beers.  
   
The top position is held by Dutch beers, as $40.7 million worth was imported from the Netherlands. American beer ranked second at $34.9 million. Chinese beer took third place at $32.3 million, and Belgium beer ranked fourth at $26.7 million.  
   
In 2019, $39.8 million worth of Japanese beer was imported, down nearly 50 percent year-on-year. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest on South Korea’s never-ending sex doll controversy:

A recent court ruling in favor of importing life-size sex dolls has reignited heated debate here over its possible effects on society.

While importers and supporters say sex dolls should be treated the same as other sex toys on shelves, opponents say the dolls constitute the objectification of women.

Earlier this month, the Seoul Administrative Court overturned a January 2020 decision by the customs office at Gimpo International Airport to ban the importation of life-size real doll products. The office said the dolls would harm public morals, but the court said the toys are for personal use and do not corrupt morals.

Controversy over sex dolls erupted in June 2019 when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of another doll importer that sued the government customs agency for blocking their imports. The top court stated that the government should not interfere with people’s private lives, and using sex dolls was part of that. The customs authorities then allowed imports by the specific company that filed the suit, but have banned those of other companies.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.