Category: Korea-General Topics

The LA Times has an interesting read about how a high school student in Jeonju was infected with the coronavirus in restaurant from someone seated 20 feet away:

Dr. Lee Ju-hyung has largely avoided restaurants in recent months, but on the few occasions he’s dined out, he’s developed a strange, if sensible, habit: whipping out a small anemometer to check the airflow.

It’s a precaution he has been taking since a June experiment in which he and colleagues re-created the conditions at a restaurant in Jeonju, a city in southwestern South Korea, where diners contracted the coronavirus from an out-of-town visitor. Among them was a high school student who became infected after five minutes of exposure from more than 20 feet away.

The results of the study, for which Lee and other epidemiologists enlisted the help of an engineer who specializes in aerodynamics, were published last week in the Journal of Korean Medical Science. The conclusions raised concerns that the widely accepted standard of six feet of social distance may not be far enough to keep people safe.

The study — adding to a growing body of evidence on airborne transmission of the virus — highlighted how South Korea’s meticulous and often invasive contact tracing regime has enabled researchers to closely track how the virus moves through populations.

LA Times

You can read the rest at the link, but the study shows once again that air conditioning is able to push infectious droplets over distances longer than 6 feet. People with their back to the air conditioning flow were not infected, but those with their face directed towards the air conditioner were.

The spread of COVID continues to worsen in South Korea:

 South Korea’s new virus cases neared 700 on Wednesday on soaring community infections in the greater Seoul area despite toughened social distancing measures.

The country reported 686 new virus cases, including 662 domestically transmitted ones, raising the total caseload to 39,432, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).

Of the 686 new virus cases, 524 were reported in the greater Seoul area, covering Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, just west of Seoul.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This is one of the benefits of having the COVID pandemic under control, the South Koreans can watch other nations be guinea pigs before conducting mass vaccination of their own people:

Health authorities said the government decided to up the vaccine supply from 30 million people to 44 million to better fight the virus, but it won’t be in a hurry to inoculate people due to uncertainty over the vaccines’ safety and efficacy.

“As the outbreak in South Korea has remained within a manageable level, I think the government doesn’t have to hastily deploy vaccines like European nations and the United States as efficacy and safety concerns remain,” Lee Hoan-jong, an emeritus professor of Seoul National University, said during the briefing. 

“We can secure enough vaccines to deploy them in different groups after closely monitoring potential side effects that may be discovered two or three months after vaccination in other countries.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

For a Buddhist monk that preaches piety he sure is living quite the lifestyle:

A popular Buddhist monk, who has faced public criticism over his lifestyle that appears to contradict his preaching of non-possession, belatedly apologized Thursday over another controversy over an apartment in New York believed to be owned by him. 

Ven. Haemin, also an author and teacher, has recently faced widespread criticism over his posh private home in central Seoul, and a subsequent news report claimed that he made gains by selling a building to a Buddhist organization allegedly run by him in the past.

Further allegations arose earlier this week that he had purchased an apartment complex in Brooklyn, New York, together with a foreign national in May 2011, for the price of US$610,000.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but he is of course sorry about all this now that he has been caught.

It was pretty clear that once the Moon administration came to power that the Korean left would find a way to put a true democracy activist like Park Sang-hak in jail:

Prosecutors have indicted the leader of an anti-North Korea leaflet campaign for alleged assault against journalists, officials said Thursday.

Park Sang-hak, 52, the head of Fighters for a Free North Korea, was charged on Nov. 25 with beating and throwing bricks at producers and crew from the broadcaster SBS on June 23. They visited his home in southern Seoul to interview him about the leafleting campaign but are said to have sustained injuries from his attack.

The North Korean defector is also accused of firing a tear gas gun at police officers who were dispatched to the scene following a report.

The Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors Office charged Park on four counts, including assault and obstruction of justice.

Regarding Park’s complaints against the SBS employees over housebreaking, the prosecutors did not charge one of them and suspended indictment for three others. 

Meanwhile, Park is currently under a separate prosecution investigation on charges of violating the Inter-Korean Exchange and Cooperation Act by sending propaganda leaflets into the North.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but Kim Yo-jong complained about the balloon launches to the Moon administration and shortly after the balloon launches were criminalized. Then the reporters break into house late at night for a so called interview. ROK Heads may remember that Park Sang-hak has been the victim of multiple assassination attempts by North Korean agents and assaulted by Korean leftists. What was he supposed to do get tea for the people that broke into his property late at night?

The cases continue to rise, but South Korea continues to maintain an extremely low number of deaths:

The daily number of new coronavirus cases in South Korea bounced back to over 500 again Wednesday, adding to concerns that the country faces a bigger wave of the pandemic in winter amid tougher social distancing measures.

The country added 511 more COVID-19 cases, including 493 local infections, raising the total caseload to 35,163, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). It reported no additional coronavirus fatalities, bringing the total to 526.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

For anyone that has been to Ulleung-do, they will know this will be a difficult construction project considering the topography and sea states that surround the island:

Construction has begun on an airport in Ulleung Island in North Gyeongsang Province, which will cut down travel time from Seoul from the current seven hours to just one.

A ground-breaking ceremony took place Friday attended by Ulleung Governor Kim Byeong-su and a hundred other local and central government officials.

Ulleong Island is located in the East Sea, some 120 kilometers from mainland South Korea. The Ulleong Country administrative area includes the Dokdo Islets.

Once finished, Ulleung Airport will mainly service small aircraft with fewer than 50 seats. Local authorities expect it will increase annual tourist numbers to the remote island to one million, likely boosting the number of people taking sightseeing tours to the Dokdo Islets as well.

KBS World Radio

You can read more at the link, but I am not a big fan of the airstrip because Ulleung-do is one of the few areas in Korea that is not over run with tourists due to the boat trip currently required to get there. It just seems the small coastal road that goes around the island is going to have a hard time supporting all the tourists coming in.

South Korea’s daily coronavirus case rate has now reached the same levels of when Daegu was ground zero for the global pandemic back in March:

The daily number of novel coronavirus cases in South Korea surpassed 500 for the first time in over eight months on Thursday due to sporadic cluster infections across the country as health authorities strive to curb a third wave of infections. 

The country added 583 more COVID-19 cases, including 553 local infections, raising the total caseload to 32,318, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).

It marks the first time that the country’s daily virus cases exceeded 500 since March 6, when the figure reached 518 due to a massive outbreak in the southeastern city of Daegu. 

It is also above the peak in the country’s second wave of virus infections on Aug. 27, when 441 cases were confirmed in a single day.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the ROK Army cluster infection is now up to 68 cases, a dance academy in Seoul had 66 cases, a sauna in Seoul had 48 cases, and a Korean traditional drum class in Ulsan had 53 cases. It is pretty clear that large group gathers indoors is what drives the spread of the coronavirus when looking at these numbers.