I am not a fan of occupying Gwanghamun Square with tents, but would the government remove tents of their political allies if they set them up in Gwanghamun Square?:
Officials from the Seoul Metropolitan Government and hired workers tear down tents illegally set up by the Our Republican Party at Gwanghwamun Square in central Seoul, Tuesday, clashing with party members and its supporters. / Yonhap
The Seoul Metropolitan Government removed tents, Tuesday, which had been put up illegally by a far-right minor opposition party in Gwanghwamun Square protesting the imprisonment of former President Park Geun-hye.
However, the Our Republican Party, put up new tent on the same spot just five hours later, indicating a possible clash between it and the city government in the near future.
According to the city government, 500 municipal officials and 400 hired workers raided the spot at 5:20 a.m. to remove two tents and a canopy installed by the party.
The party, which changed its name the previous day from the Korean Patriots Party, set up the tents May 10 for sit-in protests calling for an investigation into the deaths of five pro-Park supporters who died during a 2017 rally against the impeachment of the former president. Seoul City has been sending letters of notification to the party to remove the tents set up without its permission.
The officials and workers clashed with 400 party members and supporters, who tried to protect the tents after a city official read out a notice on the execution of an administrative order.
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:
Kim Myeong-hwan, chairman of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, talks to reporters in front of the Seoul Southern District Court, Friday, before the court review on an arrest warrant over his alleged involvement in violent rallies. He was arrested later in the evening. / Korea Times photo by Hong In-ki
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.
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.
People line up at the KFC in Gangnam District, southern Seoul, on Wednesday to buy fried chicken skins, a hot new item. [CHOI YEON-SU]
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.
Just what South Korea needs Muslim Brotherhood asylum seekers:
Mohamad Sabry, left, a Muslim Brotherhood member from Egypt, talks about his experience in applying for refugee status at an immigration office during a NANCEN-organized media conference, Tuesday. Korea Times photo by Lee Suh-yoon
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.
The findings from this recent poll are especially troubling when you consider that last year a different poll found that 78% of South Koreans said they trusted Kim Jong-un. It would be interesting though if someone polled these two questions together to the Korean public. However, such polling numbers may seem to make no sense that Koreans would trust the leader of country committed to their destruction over a country that has no hostile intentions towards them, but for anyone that has followed Korea and Japan issues it makes perfect sense:
Three-quarters of Japanese do not trust their South Korean neighbours – and the feeling is mutual, a study has found.
A record 74 per cent of Japanese were now distrustful of South Koreans, found the study by the Yomiuri Shimbunin Japan
and the Hankook Ilbo in Korea. That was more than at any time since the study was first conducted in 1996 and well above last year’s figure of 60 per cent. Meanwhile, 75 per cent of South Koreans
had no trust in the Japanese, down from 79 per cent last year.
Those personal sentiments appeared to mirror a strained diplomatic relationship between the two countries. Some 83 per cent of Japanese respondents thought bilateral relations were bad, up from 63 per cent last year, while 82 per cent of Koreans thought the same, up from 69 per cent last year.
You can read much more at the link, but the reasons for the distrust are the usual ones, the Japanese did not apologize enough for World War II and the Japanese say they are tired of apologizing over and over again. Then there is always the Dokdo craziness.
As I have long said there is no reason for the South Korean political left to give up their anti-Japanese stance. It is even hard for the South Korean right to do so, though the prior President Park Geun-hye tried and the current government scrapped the deal she made with Japan. The issue is too great of punching bag for politicians to turn to when they need to deflect attention from domestic issues. How many times have we seen a Korean politician under domestic pressure show up on Dokdo?
This is all why I have long believed that if Japanese Prime Minister Abe was really clever he should apologize for war time sexual slavery once again, but this time in a large public speech to draw maximum media attention. During this speech then announce that Japan to atone for its past sins would become a champion of women’s rights beginning with the plight of modern day sexual slavery of North Korean women in China that both the South Korean and Chinese governments choose to ignore.
North Korean women trafficked in the sex industry in China are the modern day comfort women that the Chinese and South Koreans do nothing to stop. Japan becoming an advocate for these women would expose the current hypocrisy of their critics on this issue.
Such a stance would make it difficult for the political demagogues in South Korean to bring up more demands for apologies when it would reflect negatively on their own current human rights failures. It would no doubt be a bold measure, but I see no other way of ending the current impasse.
The approval rating for the main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP) dropped below 30 percent last week. It rose above 30 percent in the first week of March for the first time since October 2016 and remained there for 13 weeks. The support rate for the LKP had reached a peak of 34.3 percent in the third week of May but dropped over the last two weeks.
In the latest poll of 2,002 adults over 19 conducted by Realmeter for four days from June 3 to 5 and on June 7, the LKP’s approval rating came to 29.6 percent, down 0.4 percentage points from the week earlier.
The approval rating for the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) recorded 40.5 percent, down 0.5 percentage points from the previous week, while fluctuating between 38.7 and 40.2 percent for the past six weeks.
It took two weeks but finally the sunken tour boat in Hungary has been lifted:
A joint rescue team from Korea and Hungary searches inside the Hableany, the sightseeing ship that sunk on May 29 in the Danube River, after the ship was salvaged on Tuesday. [YONHAP]
The Hungarian sightseeing boat carrying Korean tourists that tragically sank in the Danube River in Budapest nearly two weeks ago was salvaged Tuesday, leading to the immediate discovery of four more missing bodies.
The Hableany, which sank near Margaret Bridge in the Danube River in Budapest, was lifted by a large floating crane, the Clark Adam, after operations to fasten four cables to the hull of the vessel were completed the previous day.
Hungarian authorities began lifting the wreck around 6:40 a.m. local time. The wheelhouse of the boat could be seen above the surface of the water within half an hour and the deck and cabins were in view within two hours.
The Hableany, or Mermaid, carrying 33 Korean tourists and two Hungarian crew capsized on the evening of May 29 after it was struck by a larger Swiss ship, the Viking Sigyn, helmed by a Ukrainian captain. Seven survivors were rescued immediately after the sinking and seven bodies recovered.
Bodies from the recent boat sinking in Hungary continue to be found:
South Korean and Hungarian workers prepare to go into the Danube River on June 4, 2019, to search for missing victims in last week’s sinking of a tourist boat in Budapest. (Yonhap)
The five bodies found in the Danube River in the last two days were all confirmed to be South Koreans missing in last week’s deadly sinking of a sightseeing boat in Hungary, officials said Wednesday. That puts the death toll of last Wednesday’s tragedy in central Budapest at 12 Koreans, with 14 others still unaccounted for. Two Hungarian crew members also remain missing. Seven other Korean passengers were rescued right after the accident.
Hungarian workers search for missing victims of a tourist boat sinking in the Danube River in Budapest on May 31, 2019. (Yonhap)
South Korean and Hungarian workers carried out joint operations on Saturday to search for 21 missing victims of this week’s tourist boat sinking in Budapest, officials said, although high waters and strong currents remain tough challenges. They conducted surface-level searches up to 50 kilometers down the Danube River from the site of Wednesday’s disaster that left seven Koreans dead and 21 people missing, including 19 Koreans. The South Korean team, consisting of staff from the Navy and fire agency, was to search the river three times on the day with four boats provided by the Hungarian authorities. In response to requests by South Korea and Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria have also been conducting search operations in parts of the Danube River.
You can read more at the link, but the ROK Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha has traveled to Hungary and the Ukranian boat captain that struck the tourist boat has been arrested.
Whatever dreams Roh Moo-hyun may have had, President Moon his former Chief of Staff is moving forward with them and considering the current poor economy and state of affairs with North Korea is not going so good:
This year marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Roh, who jumped off a cliff behind his home in Bongha amid the prosecution’s widening probe into allegations that his family members accepted illicit funds.
In his memorial address, National Assembly Speaker Moon Hee-sang, who served as Roh’s first chief of staff, said bidding farewell to the late president was too much of a grief to bear.
[Sound bite: National Assembly Speaker Moon Hee-sang (Korean)] “Your election on December 19, 2002 was itself the symbol of resolving regionalism. Three state tasks have yet to be accomplished: ‘The Era of East Asian Peace and Prosperity,’ ‘Democracy with the People,’ and ‘Balanced Development of a Co-prosperous Society’ We will march again for the dream of Roh Moo-hyun.”
Moon added that South Koreans overcame the anguish of his death and participated in candlelight vigils to create a new nation moving towards peace.
Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon said the late president embraced challenges no one had ever dared to take on and endured setbacks never before experienced.
Lee said Roh’s existence was hope for the ordinary people and his defiance was the people’s dream.
Also in attendance was former U.S. President George W. Bush, who was in office when Roh was South Korea’s president from 2003 to 2008, and First Lady Kim Jung-sook.
[Sound bite: Former US President George W. Bush (English)] “President Roh stood for what he believed was best for his country. And may we have some differences but no disagreement ever outweighed our shared belief of the U.S.-South Korea relationship.”
