Category: Korea-General Topics

I would not be surprised if the extradition procedures against Chung Yoo-ra does drag on considering how little evidence of a crime is at least publicly being offered by Korean prosecutors against her:

The extradition of Chung Yoo-ra, the daughter of Choi Soon-sil, the central figure in a massive scandal which has led to the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye, is expected to take some time.

Chung, 20, was arrested in Denmark’s northern city of Aalborg, Sunday, for staying there illegally. A local Danish court approved a four-week extension of her confinement the following day. Chung appealed, but the higher court denied her appeal.

Chung is reported to have accepted the higher court’s ruling, but is unwilling to return to Korea under any circumstances, according to a Yonhap report, Friday.

Earlier, Chung, who has a 19-month-old son with her, proposed to Korean authorities that she would be willing to go to Korea if she could remain with her son, whether at a welfare center or hospital. The authorities denied her request.

She reportedly changed her stance after seeing with her son at the detention center, Thursday.

Chung is arguing that her son is the main reason for her not to be extradited, as she will be detained when she arrives in Korea and won’t be able to take care of him.

By Jan. 30, Danish authorities will review whether the charges Chung faces justify her extradition to Korea. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Here is a good read about how the JTBC journalist track down Chung Yoo-ra in Denmark.  As it turns out it really wasn’t that hard to find her:

This is the inside story of how Chung Yoo-ra was captured in Aalborg, Denmark. An enterprising TV reporter from South Korea drove all night and tracked Chung down in a rented house in northern Denmark.  Inside, he found Chung, her 19-month old baby, 2 horse caretakers, a nanny, 3 dogs and 9 cats.  It was quite an entourage. What’s sad about this story is that Chung and her adult enablers became fugitives because this is the only way they knew how to behave. It may seem improbable and ludicrous for a single mom to be on the run with her toddler, adult hangers-on and 12 furry animals.  However, this is completely rational from the viewpoint of Chung, who never had to face consequences and always got her way while being raised in South Korea.  [All News Korea]

You can read the rest at the link, but not only did she have a large entourage, but she was hiding out in a large rented estate that she was known to keep horses at.  You would think with all the money Choi Soon-sil had that she would have hired someone competent to help her daughter hide out.

UPDATE: The monk has died:

 A South Korean monk was pronounced dead on Monday, two days after he set himself on fire during a mass rally in central Seoul against the country’s impeached president, hospital officials said.

The monk identified by his surname Seo had been in serious condition since he poured inflammables on his body and burned himself at around 10:30 p.m. on Saturday during the weekly candlelight vigil joined by tens of thousands of people, according to the officials.

He, who sustained serious burns all over his body, was pronounced dead at around 7:40 p.m. Multiple organ dysfunction was cited as the main cause of death.

The police suspect the 64-year-old monk tried to commit suicide since he left what is seen as a suicide note in which he called for President Park Geun-hye to immediately step down.  [Yonhap]

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Via a reader tip comes news that Korean monk has set himself on fire in protest of the comfort women deal struck back in 2015 between Korea and Japan.  I would love to know what this guy’s mental state was at the time because I would have to think you would have to be a little but nuts to set yourself on fire:

A South Korean Buddhist monk is in critical condition after setting himself on fire to protest the country’s settlement with Japan on compensation for wartime sex slaves, officials said Sunday.

The 64-year-old monk suffered third-degree burns across his body and serious damage to vital organs. He’s unconscious and unable to breathe on his own, said an official from the Seoul National University Hospital, who didn’t want to be named citing office rules.

The man set himself ablaze late Saturday during a large rally in Seoul calling for the ouster of impeached President Park Geun-hye, police said. In his notebook, the man called Park a “traitor” over her government’s 2015 agreement with Japan that sought to settle a long-standing row over South Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery by Japan’s World War II military, police said.  [Associated Press]

You can read the rest at the link, but I think Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe makes a fair point that this agreement should be implemented regardless of leadership changes as a matter of “creditability”.

Most former Korean 'comfort women' accepted 2015 apology & compensation from Japan. Activists did not. https://t.co/GXeKleLuP3

— Alastair Gale (@AlastairGale) January 6, 2017

This seems a bit overkill to put the guy in a prison jump suit, handcuff him and perp walk him in front of the media for having a teaching assistant take a test for a student:

4 years after he rose to literary stardom for his 1993 fiction “Eternal Empire” which sold over 1 million copies.

The then-27-year-old writer fascinated his readers with the well-investigated historical fiction about the murder of Joseon King Jeongjo (1752-1800), a conspiracy theory that had been passed down for centuries through the descendents of the Noron faction, one of the two dominant political factions of the Joseon era.

Owing to his early success, he was able to become a full-time faculty member at Ewha Womans University when he was 29 years old, even before completing his doctoral degree at Seoul National University’s Department of Korean Studies.

But the reason for Lyou’s recent reemergence into the public eye is something disgraceful. He is under fire for coercing his teaching assistant to take the final exam of his “Understanding Storytelling in Movies” course on behalf of Chung Yoo-ra, the daughter of the trouble-hit Choi Soon-sil. Chung never showed up for his class all semester and didn’t even take the final exam. But she earned a passing grade to maintain her status as a student, stirring suspicions of academic fraud.

Lyou, 51, reportedly threatened his reluctant assistant into helping, saying she would face the consequences if she rejected his call because she would be blacklisted and as a result would never be able to find a job in a university or research institution even after successfully defending her dissertation. He was arrested earlier this week.

Lyou is one of several faculty members at Ewha Womans University who were systematically involved in the plot to help Chung maintain her student status by granting academic favors, despite her substandard academic performance. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but it appears that anyone even remotely related to the Choi Soon-sil influence peddling scandal can expect to get perp walked in a prison jump suit for the Korean media.

The real question I have which the Korean media so far has no interest in answering is, how prevalent in Korean universities is this special treatment for well connected students?  I find it hard to believe that Chung Yoo-ra was the only person getting special treatment.

It looks like some high school students in South Korea will have the opportunity to vote in the next South Korean presidential election:

The voting age is likely to be lowered to 18 for the 2017 presidential election.

The New Conservative Party for Reform (NCPR), created by lawmakers who left the Saenuri Party, said Wednesday that it will seek to lower the voting age from 19 to 18 and apply it to the next election.

With all three opposition parties supporting an increase in the number of eligible voters, there is a high possibility that the Election Lw could be revised during an extraordinary session of the National Assembly in January.

If revised, those who are 18, currently high school students, will be able to vote in the presidential election, which could take place earlier than scheduled. [Korea Times]

The most wanted Korean woman in the world who was on the run in Germany has now been arrested in Denmark:

The daughter of President Park Geun-hye’s close friend, who is at the heart of an influence-peddling scandal that has led to the president’s impeachment, has been arrested in Denmark, police said Monday.

According to the National Police Agency, law enforcement authorities in the European country notified their South Korean counterparts that Chung Yoo-ra was arrested in the northern Danish city of Aalborg on Sunday on charges of illegal stay.

Chung, a former member of the national equestrian team, is suspected of receiving undue favors from Seoul-based Ewha Womans University regarding admission and academic affairs by taking advantage of her mother’s ties to the president.

Special prosecutors looking into the corruption scandal allegedly surrounding President Park and her friend Choi Soon-sil had requested that Interpol put Choi’s daughter on the wanted list after she declined to respond to the investigation team’s repeated summons.

The investigation team said it is collaborating with the relevant bodies to bring Chung to South Korea.

The justice ministry said it has submitted an extradition request to the National Police Agency to swiftly get Chung back home.  [Yonhap]

Interestingly according to the Danish media it was a Korean journalist who tracked down Chung:

The daughter of Choi Soon-Sil, the woman at the centre of a corruption scandal that led to the impeachment of South Korea’s President, has been arrested in Denmark after months in hiding, Seoul prosecutors said on Monday.

Here we go again with netizen conspiracy theories:

The deadly sinking of the Sewol ferry two years ago was an accident, which left 295 dead and nine missing, not caused by the ship colliding with a submarine, the Navy said Tuesday.

The response comes after an online commenter named “Zaro — Netizens’ investigation team” argued that the ferry sinking was the result of the the passenger ship hitting a submarine in a nearly nine-hour-long documentary released Monday via YouTube.

But the Navy flatly denied the documentary as being based on “groundless” suspicions, saying there was no submarine in operation or conducting drills in the nearby waters on April 16, 2014, when the accident took place.

“The waters are 37 meters deep on average and not suitable for submarine action due to rapid currents and heavy commercial shipping and fishing boat traffic,” the Navy said in a statement.

In the documentary, the commenter pointed out that the route taken by the ill-fated ferry didn’t match conventional routes and external factors such as a submarine collision can explain the disaster. [The Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but I see no way that the ROK Navy could keep something like this quiet considering the amount of people that would have known about it.

Meanwhile in Pocheon the bird flu has spread to cats:

A highly pathogenic strain of bird flu was discovered in two dead cats on Saturday, a provincial government official said, marking the first infection of the virus found in mammals in two years.

The H5N6 strain of avian influenza (AI) which has infected chickens across the country was found in the bodies of the cats in Pocheon, some 46 kilometers north of Seoul, the official said, citing information from health authorities.

The cats were found dead earlier this week some 2 kilometers from a chicken farm where the strain of the virus was first reported last month. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but this seems pretty significant because if the bird flu spreads to cats it is an animal that people are more likely to handle than chickens.

If these pastries are such a hit you would think these bakers would want to keep selling them:

Pastry parodying the jailed friend of President Park Geun-hye and central figure of the Choi-gate political scandal, Choi Soon-sil, has become a hit with consumers, but was discontinued on Dec. 23.

The creators of the duly called “Choi Soon-sil Kkam Bbang,” which is a play on words using the Korean slang term for prison (gambang) and bread (bbang), said they were forced to discontinue their hit product at their bakery in Daegu since they “didn’t have any time to bake any other breads” due to the pastry’s popularity.

While they originally sold 10 to 15 of the pastry per day when it was first offered for sale on Dec. 10, they were soon selling over 100 a day due to viral popularity on social media.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.