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:
Lyou Chul-gyun, center, better known by his penname Yi In-hwa, was arrested by the police on Jan. 1. He is one of several faculty members at Ewha Womans University who were systematically involved in the plot to help Chung Yoo-ra, the daughter of the scandal-ridden Choi Soojn-sil, maintain her student status by granting academic favors. / Yonhap
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? Â 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:
Chung Yoo-ra
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. Â [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.
Chung Yoo-Ra, the 20-year-old daughter of the woman dubbed South Korea’s “Rasputin”, is one of the figures in the influence-peddling scandal that sparked massive street protests demanding the removal of President Park Geun-Hye.
Danish police arrested Chung on Sunday night for overstaying her visa, Korean prosecutors said, adding they were in talks with Danish authorities to have her deported to Seoul.
Chung was arrested in the northern town of Aalborg after a tip-off from a Korean journalist, Danish police said in a statement on Monday.
At a court hearing at 1pm on Monday, police would ask that Chung be detained “until the issue of extradition is decided upon”.
Danish police said Chung was aware that South Korean authorities wanted to talk to her. She was in the country “in connection with equestrian sports”. Â [The Local]
Here is more details about the arrest from the Copenhagen Post which reveals that JTBC the Korean news organization who found the tablet computer the opened up the entire South Korean Presidential scandal are the ones that tracked her down:
Five South Korean nationals were arrested in Aalborg last night under suspicion they are illegally staying in the country.
However, this is no ordinary case, and it has grabbed the attention of the international media.
One of those under custody is Chung Yoo-ra, 20, the daughter of a confidant of South Korean President Park Geun-hye, who a special investigation team want to question in connection with the leader’s impeachment.
In recent days, South Korea’s foreign ministry has been making great efforts to track her down, enlisting the help of the German authorities and even Interpol.
But in the end, it was thanks to a number of South Korean journalists at JTBC TV that the Danish police were able to find her in the north Jutland city last night at 19:00.
Questionable paperwork
It is believed that Chung had the necessary visa to partake in equestrian training in Germany, but that the ministry has subsequently tried to invalidate it.
The authorities in Denmark, which has an extradition treaty with South Korea, reportedly have until 19:00 today to charge Chung will illegally staying in Denmark. Â [Copenhagen Post]
It seems that Chung was pretty incompetent in regards to hiding considering she was traveling with an entourage of Koreans and staying at luxury hotels. Â The fact she was on the run with a one-year child further made her stand out. Â She stood out enough that the JTBC reporter was able to find her. Â What will be interesting is the evidence that the ROK authorities have to produce to show she was in Denmark illegally.
When Chung does end up back in South Korea it will be interesting to see if her arrest cracks her mom, Choi Soon-sil to give up whatever information she knows that could implicate former President Park Geun-hye in any corruption. Â It seems that the ROK authorities working so hard to arrest Chung is an indication they don’t have a lot of solid evidence yet to prove corruption.
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.
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:
Choi Soon-sil pastries
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. Â [Joong Ang Ilbo]
This plan to build a cable car from Osaek to the summit of Seorak Mountain would just be a disaster.  For people who don’t have the mobility to hike there is already a cable car built at the National Park entrance that provides fantastic views of the park.  Installing a cable car at Osaek seems unnecessary to me.  I have hiked up to the summit of Seorak Mountain from Osaek before and saw how many people already hike up this mountain.  In fact there are so many hikers there is a lodge near the summit to house them.  A cable car would just bring that many more hordes of tourists to the top of mountain spreading trash everywhere and generally ruining what is a great hike to the summit Seoraksan:
Picture of Seorak Mountain’s summit with the lodge in the foreground.
A government panel on Wednesday rejected a proposal to set up a cable car on a popular mountain range near the country’s eastern coast, a plan that has been criticized for its potential harm to the regional environment, government officials said.
The project calls for a 3.5-kilometer-long cable car system to be built in the southern region of Mount Seorak in Yangyang County, some 215 kilometers east of Seoul, providing a means of convenient transportation all the way up to the peak of the Osaek area hiking course.
According to the officials, the panel under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has assessed that the project is feared to do harm to cultural assets and the habitat of the region.
The panel will review the plan again if the county proposes a revised version.
The cable car project has been a controversial issue among environmentalists here, who have argued that the mountain’s natural environment must be preserved.
The county government had submitted its cable car construction plans in 2012 and in 2013, but was rejected both times due to issues that the structure’s design could pose a threat to the habitat of some of the wildlife in the area.
Advocates, on the other hand, say that the cable car will help to boost tourism and thereby add to the economic development of the region, especially ahead of the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, located just south of the county. Â [Yonhap]
As I have said before, the installation of this statue is needlessly provocative against Japan which has apologized an offered compensation multiple times for its past wartime activities.  If these activist groups really cared about sexual slavery then they would be putting up a statue in front of the Chinese embassy in Seoul in protest of the modern day sexual slavery of North Korean women in China.  However, that would take real courage because China will retaliate unlike Japan that these activists know will just continue to take it:
This photo, taken on Dec. 30, 2016, shows people installing a statue of a girl representing victims of wartime sex slavery by the Japanese military in front of the Japanese Consulate in South Korea’s largest port city of Busan. (Yonhap)
A civic group installed a statue of a girl symbolizing the victims of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery in front of the Japanese Consulate in South Korea’s largest port city of Busan on Friday after the Dong Ward municipality gave its approval.
The ward municipality agreed earlier in the day to let the civic group install the statue on the sidewalk about 40 meters away from the consulate’s back door.
It marked the second of its kind established in front of Japan’s overseas diplomatic missions after one was installed in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul.
“We will not stop the civic group from installing the statue in front of the consulate if they wish to do so,” Park Sam-seok, chief of the municipality, said at a press conference. Â [Yonhap]
