The South Korean left’s war on conservative media continues, but credit to the New York Times for taking notice of what is going on in South Korea:
Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon of South Korea in Seoul in August. He said misinformation about his visit to Ho Chi Minh’s compound in Vietnam had been “vicious.”
South Korea announced a sweeping crackdown on “fake news” on Tuesday, calling it “a destroyer of democracy.” Conservative critics of the government, however, cried foul, accusing it of trying to impede freedom of speech.
Speaking at a cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon said that fake news had spread so widely in South Korea that it was stymying not only citizens’ privacy but also the country’s national security and foreign policies, including its relations with North Korea.
Mr. Lee did not offer examples. But he was furious last week after he visited Vietnam for the state funeral for its president, Tran Dai Quang. While in Hanoi, he visited the stilt house of Ho Chi Minh and wrote in the visitors’ book at the compound that he felt “humble” before the “great” Vietnamese leader. South Korea fought against his Communist forces alongside the Americans during the Vietnam War.
So of course the Prime Minister has declared war on fake news and wants a new law to regulate the news:
Mr. Lee encouraged government agencies to report fake news to the law enforcement authorities for investigation. He also called for a new law regulating such information, which some lawmakers in his Democratic Party had already been advocating.
Opposition lawmakers denounced the government’s move as an attempt to silence criticism, especially YouTube videos used by conservative critics to attack the progressive government of President Moon Jae-in, whom they often call a North Korean stooge. Progressives have long criticized those channels as a main source of inaccurate and unfair information.
“They can already punish distribution of false information under the existing laws,” Park Dae-chul, a legislator affiliated with the conservative opposition Liberty Korea Party, said in a statement. “I cannot help suspecting that this is an attempt to crack down on right-wing podcasts. They want to shut down the voices the government doesn’t want to hear.”
ROK Drop readers may recall how the Korean left has already taken over control of most of the mainstream media in the country through union violence and those they don’t control they have threatened with legal action. They have even had conservative journalists arrested for libel.
The Moon administration is taking these actions because they need to change the South Korean public’s opinion of North Korea and Kim Jong-un. Conservative critics who keep bringing up North Korea’s poor human rights record, past atrocities, terrorism, and other inconvenient truths have to be silenced to continue to shape pro-North public messaging.
The Moon administration’s ultimate goal is a confederation with North Korea and he can’t realize that without the support of the South Korean public.
I may not be a nurse, but this sure seems inappropriate to pressure someone to have an enema:
A senior nurse shows how to insert needles into blood vessels, with a new nurse as the subject, during a training session at Daejeon St. Mary’s Hospital in this February photo. It was disclosed recently that at some nursing schools students are forced to receive an enema in front of classmates as a guinea pig, raising issues of human rights infringement. / Yonhap
A human rights violation controversy has emerged after it was found that some nursing schools here force students to act as guinea pigs by receiving an enema in front of classmates.
Act Now Nurse, a group advocating nurses’ human rights, said it plans to file a complaint with the National Human Rights Commission of Korea against seven schools for human rights infringement.
The practice became known after a student accused one school of randomly picking one student each from four- to five-member groups to become the “patient of the day” for the enema training.
“One student in each group is picked by drawing lots, and it is the atmosphere that the selected student cannot say no. Having to show my anus to others because of bad luck in the lots… I think this is an issue of human rights, and I wonder if other schools do this too,” the student said anonymously in an online community of nurses, Sept. 18. [Korea Times]
Here is a reminder to all my readers in South Korea, seatbelts are now mandatory to wear:
Starting tomorrow, all car passengers will have to buckle up.
The National Police Agency said Thursday that a new enforcement ordinance requiring all car passengers to wear seatbelts on Korea’s roads will come into force on Friday.
A driver will be fined 30,000 won ($27) if any passenger violates the rule. The fine will be 60,000 won if the passenger is 13 or younger.
Police said they are planning to start cracking down on seatbelt violations in December, after a two-month awareness campaign. [Korea Times]
Here is another study that shows the high quality of life the people in South Korea enjoy:
South Korea has improved its quality of life to become the world’s 18th best this year, a survey by a U.S. non-profit organization showed Thursday.
According to the survey conducted by the Social Progress Imperative, South Korea earned an overall score of 87.13 out of 100 in its “social progress index” survey for 2018, making it 18th of 146 nations surveyed across the globe. Last year, the Northeast Asian nation ranked 26th.
The index aggregates 51 social and environmental indicators that track three aspects of social progress: basic human needs, foundations of well-being and opportunity. The organization began compiling such data in 2013.
“South Korea earned relatively high scores in its solid education and IT infrastructure among others, but needs more efforts to improve environmental quality and to promote social inclusiveness for minorities,” said Cho Yong-ho, an official of international consultancy Deloitte Anjin which works with the non-profit group for the study.
Norway topped the list this year with 90.26 points, followed by Iceland, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Japan, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Germany and New Zealand. (Yonhap)
Interestingly according to the study South Korea has a higher quality of life than the United States. Also notice that they did not even include North Korea on the list. Here is the full list where South Korea’s arch rival Japan ranks 6th in the world in:
I don’t see any angle on how this rise of illegal immigration into South Korea during the Moon administration gives him any political advantage, unlike in the US. Does anyone have any ideas why the Moon administration is allowing a rise in illegal immigration?:
The number of foreign nationals staying in South Korea illegally increased by nearly 100,000 on-year to surpass 330,000 this year, government data showed Sunday.
According to the data by the Ministry of Justice, 330,005 foreigners were staying in the country without a valid visa as of July, up 97,834 from 232,171 logged July of last year.
The data — which showed the number of illegal aliens over the past 10 years — was submitted to the National Assembly.
The annual average number of reported crimes committed by foreigners came to 43,635 over the past five years, the data showed.
The number came to 34,460 in 2013 and steadily increased to peak at 53,151 in 2016 and slightly down to 45,671 in 2017. [Yonhap]
You have to like how the former ROK Culture Minister was quietly released from jail during Chuseok:
Former culture minister Cho Yoon-sun was released from prison Saturday.
An appeals court sentenced her to two years on charges of ordering the blacklisting of cultural figures during the Park Geun-hye administration.
The third of three extended detention deadlines expired Friday at midnight, as she awaits a Supreme Court review of her case.
The blacklist she was convicted of ordering targeted individuals critical of the former president for exclusion from state support. [KBS World Radio]
It is interesting how she was tossed in jail for having a blacklist of artists the government would not give funding to, but the Moon administration has their own blacklist where they have cut funding to think tanks they don’t agree with and launched libel lawsuits to silence opposition media critics.
South Korea’s leftists continue to do the Kim regime’s bidding by trying to draw doubt on North Korea’s responsibility for the downing of KAL 858 back in 1987. The latest ridiculous attack is that they think ROK intelligence blamed North Korea to quickly for the bombing by pinning blame on the Kim regime three days after the terrorist attack:
Debris from KAL 858
South Korea’s spy agency drew up a document with details about North Korea’s involvement in the 1987 midair bombing of a Korean Air flight just three days after the bombing took place and killed all 115 people aboard, court records showed Monday.
The document of the then-Agency for National Security Planning was about the code-named Operation Rainbow aimed at taking advantage of the Nov. 29 bombing to sway public opinion in favor of the then-ruling party candidate in the presidential election just a few weeks away.
Three pages of the five-page document have been classified, and a journalist filed a suit demanding its full disclosure. But the Seoul Administrative Court recently rejected the demand, saying its disclosure could have negative effects on diplomatic relations with foreign countries.
Still, it has been confirmed during the process of the lawsuit that the document included specific details about the culprits — Kim Hyon-hee and her accomplice Kim Sung-il, who killed himself right after arrest — such as how they were arrested and what they did before the bombing.
In addition, the document also included information about Kim Sung-il’s link to North Korea, as well as strategies for using the case on the international stage, such as increasing cooperation with foreign countries, including those with close ties with the North.
The revelation could further deepen suspicions about how the spy agency was able to draw up such a detailed report just a few days after the bombing happened.
Critics and some bereaved families of the bombing have raised suspicions about North Korea’s involvement in the bombing, claiming there is no objective evidence except Kim Hyon-hee’s confession to prove it was the North that blew up the jet. [Yonhap]
There is more evidence of North Korea’s responsibility for the bombing than just Kim Hyon-hee’s confession. You can read my detailed account about the bombing at the below link:
As far as South Korea’s spy agency, why should anyone be surprised that three days after the bombing they were drawing up a document blaming North Korea for the bombing? Especially when they had a suspect in custody?
This is just another attempt by South Korean leftists to cover up North Korea’s responsibility for this terrorist attack. Two months ago they launched a libel lawsuit against Kim Hyon-hee to keep her quiet as well.
South Korean leftists believe Kim was not a terrorist, but instead a ROK government secret operative that intentionally bombed the plane. It seems like total absurdity that someone would think the ROK government would bomb and murder 115 of their own citizens, but remember South Korean leftists still think the ROK government murdered their own sailors by intentionally sinking the ROK naval ship the Cheonan in 2010 instead of a North Korean torpedo.
This is the lengths that South Korean leftists will go to defect blame on their political opposition instead of holding the real culprits, the Kim regime, responsible for the murder of these ROK citizens.
The timing of this space launch makes me wonder if the Moon administration is trying to give the Kim regime in North Korea a rationale to protest the sanctions on their own rocket launches:
South Korea plans to conduct the first test flight of its locally developed booster engine at the end of next month, the ICT ministry said Sunday, as part of a long-term effort to produce the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-2 (KSLV-2), a three-stage rocket.
The single-stage rocket, with a 75-ton thrust engine, developed by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) is set to be launched between Oct. 25 and Oct. 31 from the Naro Space Center in Goheung, South Jeolla Province, the Ministry of Science and ICT said.
It said the launch date has been set after examining all variables and that related countries and agencies, such as the International Civil Aviation Organization and International Maritime Organization, will be notified in advance
“Barring any unforeseen developments, the launch should take place on the primary date of Oct. 25,” the ministry said.
The rocket will fly for about 10 minutes, during which the performance of the new engine, control system and other parts will be monitored, the ministry said. It is expected to attain a sub-orbital altitude of over 100 kilometers some 160 seconds after launch and reach its apogee 300 seconds into the flight, before hitting international waters between South Korea’s Jeju Island and Japan’s Okinawa Island. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but after this launch the Kim regime can argue that they should be allowed to conduct peaceful space launches just like the ROK. The Chinese and Russians of course would support them, the Moon administration may even openly support them. So called peaceful space launches would give the North Koreans a way to get around sanctions to continue to perfect components of their ICBM technology.
I wonder how many young people in "Hell Chosun" would like them to have one-way tickets. Not saying it's my preference, but just sayin'. https://t.co/Sla2mJgJBU
