Category: Korea-General Topics

It must be a slow day for the Korean police to warrant raiding a blogger for rigging comments:

Police on Sunday raided a local publishing company run by an influential blogger as part of a probe into allegations that he ran a massive scheme to manipulate online comments in news articles about President Moon Jae-in.

Police sent investigators to search the premises in Paju, north of Seoul, and confiscate evidence, including digital files and surveillance footage, officials said.

Law enforcement authorities are investigating the suspected rigging of Internet news comments by the 48-year-old surnamed Kim, who’s now been charged along with two accomplices over the scandal. Kim, who goes by the nickname “Druking”, is alleged to have used a software program to jack up the number of clicks in support of the president.

The incident has sparked a fierce political dispute ahead of the June 13 local elections, as Rep. Kim Kyoung-soo of the ruling Democratic Party, a close aide to President Moon, is known to have been in contact with Druking for years.

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency on Friday said Kim had sent Druking messages that contained the web addresses of certain news articles related to the president.  [Yonhap]

Maybe the Vietnamese should put statues up in front of the ROK embassy protesting South Korean killing of civilians during the Vietnam War like they Koreans have done with a comfort woman statue in front of the Japanese embassy:

Two Vietnamese victims of South Korea’s wartime misdeeds have called on the Seoul government to apologize and take steps to verify the truth behind the alleged mass killings during the 1960-75 war in their country.

They claimed that they are still haunted by the harrowing memories of their families being killed by South Korean troops deployed to fight in support of the United States during the Vietnam War.

They came here to testify before the “People’s Tribunal” slated to convene in Seoul on Saturday and Sunday. The tribunal, a mock trial designed to look into the incidents, is led by the local progressive civic group, called MINBYUN-Lawyers for a Democratic Society.

“I want to ask … Why did South Korean troops fire guns and threw grenades at our family, then just women and children. Why did you set even our house on fire and bulldozed through dead bodies,” Nguyen Titan, a 58-year-old woman, said during a press conference at the National Assembly.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but the Minbyun group of lawyers are hard core leftists.  In the past they have attacked the USFK base relocation, tried to bring back the US beef issue, and tried to have North Korean defectors forcibly returned to North Korea.  So why would hard core leftists be bringing up this issue now with a left wing government in power?  They are likely going to use this issue to attack and blame conservative ROK politicians for since former South Korean strongman Park Chung-hee was in power at the time.

This seems like a long time after the fact to be complaining to the ROK Defense Ministry to clean up soil pollution:

The city government of Uijeongbu, north of Seoul, has demanded the defense ministry conduct an examination into soil contamination at a former U.S. military base site in the city, officials said Tuesday.

The Uijeongbu city government bought the former Camp Sears site from the defense ministry in 2012 after the land was returned to the ministry in 2007 under a base consolidation and relocation plan, known as the Land Partnership Program (LPP).

Nine oil tanks had existed on the base to supply oil to other American bases north of Seoul. When the site was returned, most of the land was contaminated, with total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) levels up to 73 times the maximum permissible levels.

The ministry commissioned the Korea Environment Corporation to clean up the site from 2009 and 2012 before the Uijeongbu city government purchased the land as part of a project to establish an administrative complex housing public and government agencies.

Last month, the city broke ground at the site to build a fire department headquarters.

But the construction was halted recently as oil residue was found at the site. Tests were conducted on samples taken from four locations at the site, and two of them had TPH levels of 836 mg per kilogram and 585 mg/kg, which is higher than the permissible 500 mg/kg, officials said.  [Korea Times]

You can read the rest at the link, but the ROK Defense Ministry wants tests to be done to prove the pollution is from military activity and not from someone dumping it there after the handover.  Camp Sears was closed all the way back in 2005 and it was no secret that fuel tanks were on the base.  Here is a 2011 picture of the fuel tanks from after the closure of Camp Sears:

You would think that the city would have done a thorough inspection for pollution around the old fuel tanks.  On the old site of Camp Sears a number of government offices were built after its closure and maybe the ROK Defense Ministry is concerned that construction companies were dumping waste on that side of the camp?

Korean TV channel asks: why are you stupid foreigners (Benedict Cumberbatch, Anne Hathaway, Keanu Reeves) coming here and doing a namaste to us? Is this your standard “oriental” greeting? https://t.co/6gHOTXMPGf

— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) April 16, 2018

In a just world, there would be a statue of a North Korean sex trafficking victim in front of the Chinese Embassy in Seoul.https://t.co/Yuifs0qkuv

— (((Joshua))) Stanton (@freekorea_us) April 13, 2018

This is absolutely horrible:

A missing dog has been found killed and eaten by a neighbor.

According to the Pyeongtaek Police Station, Tuesday, a woman in her 30s reported to the police that her lost dog might have been eaten by someone.

She lost her two-year-old Welsh Corgi in Cheongbuk-eup, Pyeongtaek City, Gyeonggi Province, March 4.

The woman offered 1 million won ($936) as a reward to find the dog and put up signs in the streets.

While she was searching for the dog, she got a tip from a friend who said, “Someone has eaten the dog.”

The suspect was a 63-year-old neighbor.

He told the police that the dog was barking too much in the yard so he threw a rock at it. Then the dog was knocked out so he strangled him with electric wires.  [Korea Times]

The Cho family is back in the headlines today:

Cho Hyun-min, 35, the sister of Cho Hyun-ah (Heather Cho), the Korean Air heiress who made headlines around the world for the 2014 “nut rage” incident, has been caught up in her own rage controversy.

She has been accused of throwing a cup of water into the face of an employee from an advertising agency at a recent meeting.

According to local media outlets Thursday, Cho, a Korean Air executive, was dissatisfied with the agent’s performance for its new advertisement, so she “yelled and threw a cup of water at the employee.”

Korean Air denied the accusation. “It is true that she yelled and threw a cup to the floor,” a Korean Air official told The Korea Times. “But she did not throw the cup at the employee. After a while, she apologized to the person and others who attended the meeting.”

If the accusation is true, she could be prosecuted for assault.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but throwing a cup on the ground is nothing; I once saw a senior military leader throw a chair across the room that hit a wall to make a point of how displeased he was.

This may end of backfiring on the Moon administration:

The U.S.-Korea Institute (USKI) stated it will close next month due to a cut in funding from the South Korean government, media outlets reported Tuesday.

The USKI is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, affiliated with the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. It runs the website 38 North specializing in North Korea affairs.

The USKI received 2.1 billion won ($1.87 million) in annual funding from the government, through the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP) affiliated with the Prime Minister’s Office.

This is about 60 percent of its total budget, according to a KIEP official. The USKI also receives funding from Johns Hopkins University, she said.

According to AP, USKI Chairman Robert Gallucci said the think tank will close in May, after rejecting “utterly inappropriate meddling” in its academic affairs.

Earlier, the government stated it would stop funding the institute starting in June, citing problems with transparency in accounting and selecting visiting scholars and interns.

The USKI claimed there had been pressure from Cheong Wa Dae to oust the institute’s director Jae H. Ku, due to his conservative inclinations that were out of line with the liberal Moon Jae-in administration. Ku has headed the think tank since 2007.   [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.  For those who haven’t I recommend reading my prior post on this subject as well.  The 38North.org website operated by USKI has a posting up saying they will continue to publish.

The silencing of the US-Korea Institute I think may backfire because they have been largely friendly to the Moon administration’s policies.  Now that the organization is no longer funded by the Korean government their may be more of a willingness to take on the Moon administration.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

A sign with Donald Trump's face at the demonstrations in support of disgraced former South Korean president Park Geun-hye: "All Koreans love USA. Please save Korea's ex-president PGH" https://t.co/5umsrnQbLP pic.twitter.com/0xWtFcwGU0

— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) April 7, 2018

It looks like some apartment complexes in South Korea are having mountains of recyclable waste building up around them as private companies are having a harder time making money from recycling the waste:

As the confusion over recyclables continues in apartment complexes in Seoul and Gyeonggi, the Ministry of Environment on Thursday began an emergency round of checkups to find out which private companies are refusing to retrieve plastic and Styrofoam waste.

Forty-eight private recycling companies announced last week they would no longer retrieve plastic and foam waste because they could no longer make a profit from it. Paper collection was not affected.

The announcement threw people into confusion over how to discard their recyclables until Monday, when the Environment Ministry said in a statement that after negotiations, all 48 waste disposal companies agreed to resume regular services.

But the agreement may not have been as final as the ministry thought.

According to the Gyeonggi provincial government on Wednesday, 20 out of 31 local governments in the province said the companies were collecting recyclables the same way as before.

The rest are “in the process of negotiating.”

“We are in the process of negotiating to resume regular services, but some apartment complexes may experience inconveniences for a while,” said an official from the Resource Recirculation Division of the Gyeonggi provincial government. “We will try to reach agreement as soon as possible, and if we cannot, then we will have the city governments and county offices provide the services instead.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link, but the main issue appears to be the decision by China to cut the import of many types of recyclable waste.  China had been taking the waste and making solid fuel pellets for it to burn in factories or heat homes, but to decrease air pollution they have cut the import of the recyclables.