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]
Instead of a foreign spouse learning how to speak Korean, now the Korean spouse can also learn to speak their partner’s language for a visa:
A foreigner applying for a spousal visa in South Korea will have a higher chance if the Korean spouse learns his or her native language, the Ministry of Justice said Monday.
The ministry has eased the assessment criteria for a foreigner’s spousal visa application if his or her Korean partner takes classes in the spouse’s native language for more than three months, or passes a proficiency test in that language, it said in a statement.
Until now, the foreign spouse had to obtain a Korean proficiency test certificate or take Korean lessons for over 120 hours to be eligible for the visa. [Korea Times]
Inspectors look around a charred oil storage tank in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, Monday. /Korea Times photo by Hong In-ki
The recent explosion of an oil tank in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province ― and the ensuing fire that consumed 2.6 million liters of gasoline over 17 hours ― has revealed the lack of adequate safety regulations at oil storage sites in the country.
The explosion on Sunday was caused by a sky lantern released by a young Sri Lankan migrant worker, about 300 meters from the oil storage site, police said.
The grass around the storage compound caught fire as the sky lantern, lifted by a burning flame inside, landed there, CCTV footage showed.
As there were no fire detectors installed outside the oil tank, the operators were unaware of the danger until the explosion came 18 minutes later, the police revealed in a briefing Tuesday.
Police suspect the explosion occurred as fire sparks from the grass made contact with oil and natural gas vapors emitted from the tank’s ventilation hatch. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but it seems it should take much more then a fire lantern to blow up a huge oil tank like this. I try to look at this from the perspective of a North Korean saboteur. If a sky lantern can do this much damage imagine what a coordinated North Korean sabotage attempt against the nations oil storage infrastructure could do?
Even if this is the cause of the fire, I have to wonder what the safety measures are around these fuel tanks if a “sky lantern” can blow one of these oil tanks up:
A blaze erupts at a gasoline storage tank operated by a state-run oil pipeline company in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, Oct. 7. Yonhap
The police have arrested a Sri Lankan national in its probe of a recent explosion at a local oil storage facility, police officials said Monday.
The arrest came one day after an explosion at the oil storage facility in Goyang, just north of Seoul, consumed a large storage tank with 2.66 million liters of gasoline, enough to fill 250 tank trucks.
The police said the 27-year-old Sri Lankan is believed to have accidentally caused the fire by releasing a sky lantern in the vicinity of the oil storage facility.
The police believe the sky lantern may have started the fire when it fell on the lawn of the oil storage facility, causing flames that later spread into the ventilation system of the oil tank, causing the explosion.
The 27-year-old is said to be a construction worker currently working at a site near the facility. [Korea Times]
