It will be interesting to see if the claim of upcoming sanctions is true or not. I always figured that the Trump administration would wait until after the mid-term elections before taking any tough actions on the Korea front. This rumor may be a warning to the Moon administration that the US is ready to take action if Korea tries to do any banking deals with North Korea:
US Treasury Department
A rumor that the United States Treasury is considering including a Korean bank in a secondary boycott in early November has pushed down the shares of major financial institutes, although the country’s financial regulator and banks deny the claim.
A rumor surfaced early this week through Kakao Talk and other internet messengers that the U.S. Treasury Department will announce sanctions against a South Korean bank for illegally trading with North Korea before Nov. 6. While not specifying the bank, the rumor said that the bank was notified on Oct. 12.
The Financial Services Commission (FSC) refuted the claim on Wednesday, calling it a groundless rumor. Local banks echoed the denial.
“The rumor that the U.S. is pushing forward with a secondary boycott is not true as we confirmed with local banks,” said the regulator in a statement.
The measure was designed to punish third-party companies that engage in illicit trade with Pyongyang. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but South Korean bankers have recently publicly said they will not do any business with North Korea until the sanctions are dropped.
KCNA: "Anyone, who values truth in sincerity, should instead ask for an investigation into the cause of Warmbier's sudden death soon after his arrival in the U.S., whose health indicators were all normal at the time of his release."
It looks like the leaders of South Korea’s banks are not about to break sanctions like the Moon administration has been pushing them to do:
FSC Chairman Choi Jong-ku. (Yonhap)
South Korea will open bank branches in North Korea only after international sanctions are lifted in return for irreversible steps by the North to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, the top financial regulator here said Friday.
Choi Jong-ku, chairman of the Financial Services Commission (FSC), told a parliamentary audit meeting that Seoul has not discussed cooperation with North Korea in the financial sector.
“Opening bank branches in North Korea will be possible only after conditions are met,” Choi said. [Yonhap]
It looks like President Moon’s attempt to lobby European governments to drop North Korean sanctions is not working:
French President Emmanuel Macron
President Moon Jae-in has told French President Emmanuel Macron that North Korea’s denuclearization needs to be stimulated further by easing UN sanctions if the North’s measures to scrap its nuclear program are believed to have reached an irreversible level.
But North Korea has not remotely reached a point where denuclearization is irreversible. It has not even started. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un flatly refused to give the U.S. even a partial inventory of its nuclear facilities and stockpiles when visiting U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pleaded with him, and instead demanded that the U.S. officially declare an end to the Korean War to “build trust.”
The first step to denuclearization must be reporting all nuclear facilities and fissile materials, because how else will anyone know whether North Korea is scrapping anything? This is a no-brainer. Yet the North is vehemently protesting before taking even the first step, claiming that the demand is tantamount to “mafia-like tactics.”
Yet the South Korean president labors under the delusion that North Korea’s denuclearization has progressed significantly. During his summit last month with U.S. President Donald Trump, Moon even said the North’s denuclearization had almost reached an “irreversible” level already. U.S. nuclear experts, by contrast, say Pyongyang’s gestures so far — dismantling a moribund nuclear test site in Punggye-ri and a static missile launch pad it no longer needs — do not qualify as denuclearization at all.
Moon hopes that North Korea’s denuclearization can reach an irreversible level in a few months and is going around the world asking global leaders to stimulate the process by easing sanctions. Macron quite rightly brushed him off, saying sanctions must continue until “concrete denuclearization steps are taken.” [Chosun Ilbo]
S. Korea will grant refugee status to zero of the roughly 500 Yemenis that arrived on Jeju to flee the civil war in their home country, though many will have humanitarian visas allowing them to stay for one year.https://t.co/DFEljNiwwv
Despite the Moon admin saying it's "routine, the #SouthKorean banks are deathly scared of potential secondary sanctions. So should Moon and his circle, if they care about #SouthKorean economy. https://t.co/Nzwy8i8Yz2
It wouldn’t be Korea if somebody wasn’t protesting something:
Anti-carpool protesters raise pickets reading “Illegal carpool app service OUT,” “Illegal personal vehicle service in disguise of carpool OUT” and “Keep passenger transport industry ordered.”
A walkout by thousands of taxi drivers in protest against a commercial carpool service disrupted commuters heading to works during morning rush hour on Thursday.
The stoppage began at 4 a.m. to protest against the recent launch of Kakao T Carpool, a ride-sharing service designed to connect ordinary drivers to passengers during the morning and evening rush hours. The taxi drivers claim the top mobile messaging company’s service will kill the industry. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but the ride share apps are a threat to the established taxi industry across the world. The way I look at this is that this would be like retail store workers protesting against Amazon instead of evolving with the times and making a better service or product to entice consumers.
Two draft designs for South Korea’s new passport which will be adopted from 2020 were released by the culture and foreign affairs ministries Monday. The government will choose one of the two by the end of this year after considering public opinion. The design on the left has the Taegeuki and Rose of Sharon symbols, while the other has no national emblems. / Yonhap
Draft designs for a new passport are drawing a heated debate online as to whether the concept and color are appropriate. Observers also raised questions on the necessity to change the design. The culture and the foreign affairs ministries presented the draft designs Monday with two options, one having the Taegeuki (Korean flag) and Rose of Sharon design and the other without any national emblems.
They plan to choose one by the end of this year after considering public opinion. The new passport will begin to be issued from 2020.
After Monday’s disclosure of the drafts, some were skeptical of the first big change in 32 years. There was in particular the issue of the indigo color. The current passport is dark green.
They said the new passport looks like the North Korean passport or represents the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, which uses the color blue to symbolize itself. Some raised suspicion that the color was changed due to the reconciliatory mood with North Korea.
However, the change has been planned since 2007, and the design was selected from entries to a contest held that year. Also there have been requests to change the passport design for over a decade because the dark green cover is out of style and does not reflect Korea’s culture. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but who was in charge in 2007? Roh Moo-hyun a left wing President that current President Moon Jae-in was Chief of Staff for. Based on that fact it is fair for critics to wonder if the passport design was not intended to match North Korea’s?
I have to wonder how this guy walked around in the middle of the day and did this?:
Students at Dongduk Women’s University have been enraged after a man posted video clips of himself wandering around the campus, naked, and masturbating in a classroom.
Police are investigating the case and trying to identify the man after a complaint from the student council.
The case was made public Saturday after a student filed an online petition on Cheong Wa Dae’s website, calling on the government to guarantee women’s right to safety.
According to the petition, a man posted photos and video clips on Twitter, Oct. 6, in which he was wandering around empty classrooms and corridors of a building of the women’s university in the daytime naked. In one clip, he masturbated on a classroom desk. [Korea Times]
This is a pretty horrible accident that has killed five Korean mountain climbers in Nepal:
At least nine climbers, including five Korean nationals, are reported to have been killed in a massive landslide at Mt. Gurja in western Nepal.
The Himalayan Times reported on Saturday that the organizer of the expedition team said that the climbers were buried after the landslide hit their base camp.
According to AFP, a Nepalese police spokesman confirmed that a South Korean expedition was among a group of eight people killed in a snowstorm. The spokesman did not confirm the number of South Koreans killed or the details of the landslide.
The victims include Mountaineer Kim Chang-ho, the first Korean to summit the fourteen peaks above eight-thousand meters without supplemental oxygen.
The climbers were awaiting fair weather when a heavy snowstorm triggered the landslide that buried their base camp. [KBS World Radio]
