Category: Korea-General Topics

Via a reader tip comes this news that President Moon is being accused of the very same real estate speculation that he accuses others of doing:

About half a plot of land purchased by President Moon Jae-in to build a house after retirement turned out to be unfit for construction. The JoongAng Ilbo has reported that Moon and his wife bought the 3,860 square meter (approximately 1 acre) lot in Yangsan, South Gyeongsang, for roughly 1 billion won ($843,170) on April 29, together with the presidential security team.

If Moon really broke his earlier promise to return to his private home in the southern city after retirement just because of security reasons, the people would understand that. But if public suspicions over his violation of the law in the process of purchasing the plot of land and receiving special favors are proven true, that is a serious matter.

Moon purchased the land for “agricultural purposes” in his own name. A document describes him as a “person who has been cultivating a plot of farmland for 11 years.” However, except for just a couple of years he spent as head of the Roh Moo-hyun Foundation after leaving the Blue House as Roh’s chief of staff in 2008, Moon mostly served as a politician until elected president in May 2017. We wonder how he could be identified as a farmer who cultivates his own land for a long period of time.

The current law strictly bans anyone from acquiring a plot of farmland in an illegitimate way. For instance, if someone violates the law, he or she must sell the land within one year or cultivate it on their own. But the Blue House has refused to clearly explain about the lead-up to Moon’s purchase of the land — except for a flat denial of “special favors” for the president.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but does anyone believe President Moon has been a farmer for 11 years?

For a country of 51 million people, having only 3 reported local COVID infections in one day is pretty amazing:

South Korea reported 23 more cases of the new coronavirus Monday, with local infections at a nearly three-month low, health authorities said.

The new cases, including 20 imported cases, raised South Korea’s total cases of COVID-19 to 14,389, with local infections at three, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).

The number of new COVID-19 cases had been in the 30s since Friday when South Korea reported 36 new virus cases. The number fell to 31 on Saturday and 30 on Sunday.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but of the 20 imported cases from Monday, 14 were from Koreans returning to the ROK and 6 were foreigners that arrived and were tested while in quarantine. Even more impressive is that the ROK has had only 301 deaths from the coronavirus.

I believe the ROK demonstrates what competent public health institutions combined with a citizenry that believes in these institutions can accomplishment during a pandemic. This is the complete opposite of what is going on in the U.S. right now.

Here is a power tip for everyone, don’t try to wash and microwave your money; it usually does not end well:

Money laundering is not a good idea, as a South Korean found out when he or she put banknotes in a washing machine to remove possible traces of the coronavirus.

Officials say the loss was considerable.

The person living in Ansan city, near Seoul, placed an unspecified amount of 50,000-won ($42) bills in a washing machine earlier this year. Some of the money was seriously damaged, and the person reached out to the Bank of Korea to find whether it could be exchanged for new bills.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but the Bank of Korea refunded some of his damaged bills but others were too damaged to be refunded causing the man to take a serious loss.

Jeju used to be the go-to spot for Korean honeymooners before the rise of the ROK economy allowed couples to more easily travel abroad. However, COVID restrictions is once again bringing honeymooners back to Jeju:

“Jeju was my last option for our honeymoon because I thought I could go there whenever I wanted,” he said. “But as a plan B, Jeju looked better than other places for good restaurants and attractions.”

The Gohs are not the only newlyweds to celebrate their marriage on the subtropical island amid the coronavirus pandemic.

To meet rising demand from such honeymooners, who replace their overseas trips with domestic ones, hotel operators in Jeju have come up with honeymoon packages in the spring-summer season.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It doesn’t matter if he had COVID-19 or not, the Kim regime is clearly using him for domestic propaganda to discourage defectors by claiming South Korea is filled with people running around with coronavirus:

Last week, a 24-year-old defector returned to North Korea the way he left in 2017, authorities say, but with a coronavirus pandemic raging in the background this time, his illicit trip drew far more attention.

South Korea has identified the man only by his surname, Kim, and said he was the “runaway” who North Korea accuses of illegally crossing their shared border last week with symptoms of COVID-19.

Facing a sexual assault investigation, Kim evaded high-tech South Korean border control systems by crawling through a drain pipe and swimming across the Han River to the North on July 19, the South Korean military has said. He appears to have spent several days there before being caught.

South Korean military chief Park Han-ki told parliament on Tuesday that Kim, who is 163 cm (5.35 ft) tall and weighs 54 kg (119 lb), cut his way through barbed wire fences installed at the end of the pipe leading to the river.

A Seoul official told Reuters that Kim is believed to have taken a similar path when he defected to the South in 2017, and authorities say he scoped out the area earlier in July, apparently in preparation.

Kim’s story as a defector begins and, so far, ends in the city of Kaesong, a North Korean border town that hosted a now-shuttered inter-Korean factory park and liaison office.

When that industrial project was shut down amid rising tensions over North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme in 2016, the economic shock prompted Kim to try his luck in the South in 2017, he said in a YouTube video filmed with a fellow defector in South Korea in June.

Reuters

You can read more at the link, but this defector had $16k in debt he piled up and the job he was pursuing dried up because the pandemic. It is kind of ironic he left Kaesong for economic reasons to end up in a financial straits in South Korea as well. The real reason though he defected appears to be the fact an arrest warrant was issued for a sexual assault he is accused of committing. Hopefully someone tells Kim Jong-un to make sure they keep this guy on the other side of the border this time because he clearly is a scumbag.

Only in Korea is an ambassador shaving off his mustache major news:

U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Harry Harris has figured out a way to stay cooler in a hot and humid Seoul while keeping his mask on amid the coronavirus pandemic ― go clean-shaven. 

Harris is now a mustache-free man after removing his signature facial hair at an old barbershop in central Seoul, a video posted on his Twitter page showed. 

In the video clip, the ambassador says he thought he had to do something to “get cooler” during the muggy and hot summer in the host country while at the same time complying with the coronavirus guideline by wearing a mask. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but this is only news because the Korean left using racist attacks tried to demonize Ambassador Harris as being a Japanese lackey because of his mustache.

Here is something that any foreigner traveling to Korea should keep in mind, the Korean taxpayer will no longer pay for your COVID-19 treatment if you get sick:

The South Korean government on Sunday decided to push to revise the law to require foreign coronavirus patients to cover the costs of their treatment amid a spike in the number of new infections among foreigners arriving from abroad.

The decision was reached at a pan-governmental COVID-19 meeting of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters, chaired by Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun.

Under the current law, in-hospital care and treatment costs for confirmed patients are covered by the government regardless of nationality. 

The health ministry will be in charge of revising regulations to demand treatment costs from foreigners who know they are infected with COVID-19 yet travel to Korea and those who end up confirmed with the coronavirus during their two-week quarantine period upon arrival.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.